Palestinian journalists in Gaza have discarded their press jackets after an Israel drone struck the car of Al Jazeera correspondent Ismail al-Ghoul and cameraman Rami al-Rifi west of Gaza City, killing both of them, along with a Palestinian boy on his bicycle.
Al Jazeera Media Network condemned the killing as a “targeted assassination”. It vowed to “pursue all legal actions to prosecute the perpetrators of these crimes”.
The UN Human Rights office stated “journalists are civilians and thus protected from attack under international humanitarian law unless they are directly participating in hostilities… the intentional killing of journalists is a war crime.”
Ghoul and Rifi were both wearing press jackets and had identification signs on their car when Israel struck them. But that didn’t protect them. Nor did such identification stop Israel targeting the 155 other journalists it has killed since October 2023.
Dark day for a free press, thanks to Israel
So, other Palestinian journalists have removed their jackets in protest:
Palestinian journalists in Gaza threw their press vests to the ground in protest against Israel’s killing of Al Jazeera correspondent Ismail al-Ghoul and cameraman Rami al-Rifi. pic.twitter.com/Dmi4D1MoQ3
— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) August 1, 2024
On social media, a number of Western journalists called on corporate media reporters to treat Israel’s mass killing of their Gazan counterparts with the same respect as they would if the Palestinians were white.
Drop Site News journalist Jeremy Scahill called for them to reflect:
If you’re an American journalist who posts regularly demanding freedom for US journalists detained or imprisoned or you have condemned the killing of journalists for US media, but have been silent in the face of Israel’s mass murder of our colleagues in Gaza, ask yourself, “Why?”
— jeremy scahill (@jeremyscahill) July 31, 2024
And editor-in-chief of Zeteo Mehdi Hasan put shame on them:
Shame on every journalist in the West who has sat silently by and not said a word as over a hundred of their colleagues in Gaza have been killed by Israel, again and again and again. What happened to ‘journalism is not a crime’? To standing for press freedom? Shame on them. https://t.co/7bL5zOFiKK
— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) July 31, 2024
Ghoul’s work
The day before Israel killed him, Ghoul documented first hand Israel striking the Orthodox Church of St. Porphyrius in Gaza City. The church was sheltering many displaced Palestinian people. It is said to be the third oldest church in the world.
And on 28 July, Ghoul reported on the decapitation of another Palestinian child after an Israeli airstrike hit a crowded house in Khan Younis, southern Gaza. The corporate media launched wall-to-wall front pages for the fake claim that Hamas beheaded ’40 babies’ on 7 October. Yet it’s again silent when there is an actual beheaded Palestinian child.
Ghoul said the strike was in a zone that Israel designated as safe. There have been many occasions where Israel has instructed Palestinian people to move to a safe zone, only to then kill them.
Since 7 October, Israel has killed over 40,000 Palestinian people. That includes more than 15,000 children.
And it is trying to stop journalists reporting the genocide. As well as killing journalists in Gaza, including a number of other Al Jazeera journalists and their families, Israel banned Al Jazeera from Israel in May. As part of the ban, Israel raided Al Jazeera offices in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem and took away their equipment.
Featured image via Al Jazeera English – X
