Over 110 journalists have been killed in Gaza. Their Israeli counterparts keep silent

The funeral of journalist Ismail al-Ghoul in Gaza, August 2024

Hanin Majadli writes in Haaretz on 7 August 2024:

On the day when Israel assassinated Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, it also assassinated Ismail al-Ghoul, a young journalist in Gaza for Al Jazeera. After his name was released, a battle of narratives erupted between Al Jazeera and Israel: Which was he more, a terrorist or a journalist?

According to the IDF’s Spokesperson Unit, “A 2021 document retrieved from the Hamas terrorist organization’s computers captured in the Gaza Strip lists thousands of activists in the organization’s military wing and confirms that, as of 2021, al-Ghoul was an engineer for Hamas’ Gaza brigade.”

In a response released in several languages, Al Jazeera said that the claim by the Israeli army and intelligence was completely false. It said that “the Israeli occupation forces had previously abducted Ismail on March 18, 2024, during their raid on Al-Shifa Hospital, detaining him for a period of time before his release, which debunks and refutes their false claim of his affiliation with any organisation.”

This battle of narratives echoes the debate from earlier in the war about journalists from international news agencies. Some of them helped document the October 7 massacre, and any involvement in the actual acts – and the extent to which the media companies knew about this – has never been fully clarified.

The question is: Does it even matter? And to whom? Either way, to Israel and the Israelis, Al Jazeera isn’t a popular Arab world news network but “a propaganda branch for terrorism.” And either way, for Israel and the Israelis, there are no innocents in Gaza – not women, not children, and certainly not journalists.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, over 110 reporters and media crew members have been killed in Gaza since October 7, a worse result than in World War II, the Korea War, the Vietnam War and the wars in Iraq. This development doesn’t get much attention because in Israel, including in the media, all journalists from Gaza – actually everybody in the Strip – are members of Hamas, its elite Nukhba force, murderers and rapists. Or at the very least, they’re accomplices and supporters of terrorism.

What if these journalists are the Gazans’ only way to broadcast their plight to the world? What if the rest of the world views these reporters as journalists risking their lives on the battlefield to get the story – the way journalists are supposed to – and they’re having a hard time due to Israel’s hermetic control over Gaza? Foreign journalists rarely go into Gaza, and anyone who enters must be closely accompanied by soldiers from the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit.

Only a state in breach of international law would so closely monitor news reports about what’s happening under its rule. Only a state that feels threatened by a free, independent media would consider the death of over 110 journalists “collateral damage.”

With the number of dead in Gaza approaching 40,000, the notion that journalists, of all people, will be protected sounds particularly ludicrous. Reporters’ efforts to identify themselves have failed to protect them, and there have been claims that journalists actually have been targeted by the army. The Israeli military officially denies that it views journalists in Gaza as targets, so why are so many of them getting killed?

Apparently, because they can be. Because most Israeli journalists are indifferent to the fate of their peers in Gaza, and too many of them ascribe some measure of guilt to Gazan journalists – to the point of considering them Nukhba force members who deserve to die.

This is why there hasn’t been one petition against the killing of journalists in Gaza, not one demonstration in front of a single newsroom. Who will sign something like that? Anchorman-cum-hard-liner Dany Cushmaro? Yinon Magal and Shimon Riklin of Benjamin Netanyahu’s mouthpiece, Channel 14? Even Channel 12 military correspondent Nir Dvori is fully spouting Israel’s messages.

Actually, what can you expect from a media that raises its future generation in Army Radio? Will these journalists save the day?

This article is reproduced in its entirety