Gaza, a Palestinian enclave run by the militant group Hamas, has been under bombardment since Oct. 7 when Hamas gunmen burst through the Gaza border into Israel and killed some 1,400 people. Gaza's health ministry says around 7,000 people have been killed by Israeli strikes.

The Israel Defense Forces wrote to Reuters and AFP this week after they had sought assurances that their journalists in Gaza would not be targeted by Israeli strikes.

“The IDF is targeting all Hamas military activity throughout Gaza,” the IDF letter said, adding that Hamas deliberately put military operations “in the vicinity of journalists and civilians”.

The IDF also noted that its high-intensity strikes on Hamas targets could cause damage to surrounding buildings and that Hamas rockets could also misfire and kill people inside Gaza.

  • filister@lemmy.worldEnglish
    82·
    1 year ago

    I will leave this here too: https://www.refworld.org/docid/498857ac31.html and https://rsf.org/en/recherche?text=Gaza

    If this doesn’t convince you that there is an intentional targeting of journalists working from Gaza I don’t know what would.

    And don’t forget the killing of Shireen Abu Aqla, who then initially declined and then admitted. The same killing which was supposed to be independently investigated but this independent investigation never happened.

    And don’t forget that right now there is a complete internet blackout in Gaza. So the world would only hear the Israeli side of the narrative.

    • DarkGamer@kbin.social
      45·
      1 year ago

      https://www.refworld.org/docid/498857ac31.html

      Same incident was in the above article; a building was destroyed, Israel warned everyone there before they struck it and claimed Hamas was using the building. If killing journalists was their goal this doesn’t seem like the way to behave, though it would certainly disrupt reporting.

      rsf.org/en/recherche?text=Gaza

      A search query for the term “gaza?” You expect me to read every article that matches that term on this site?
      I clicked through a few, reporters killed in airstrikes in Gaza, some more buildings that had media organizations in them were hit among many others, some reporters harassed by IDF soldiers years ago, some journalists arrested. I don’t see any of them offering evidence that IDF intentionally targets journalists (or their families which has been suggested elsewhere) with airstrikes, or that anyone intentionally shot journalists.

      don’t forget the killing of Shireen Abu Aqla

      Hard to forget something I’ve never heard of before.
      And there it is, compelling evidence of a journalist being targeted by IDF! Thank you. I wish y’all had opened with that it would have saved me reading a lot of tangentially related articles.

      A CNN investigation in May last year unearthed evidence – including two videos of the scene of the shooting – that there was no active combat, nor any Palestinian militants, near Abu Akleh in the moments leading up to her death.
      Footage obtained by CNN, corroborated by testimony from eight eyewitnesses, an audio forensic analyst and an explosive weapons expert, suggested that Israeli forces took aim at the journalist.
      While the IDF admitted for the first time last September that there was a “high possibility” Abu Akleh was “accidentally” shot and killed by Israeli fire, its Military Advocate General’s Office said in a statement that it did not intend to pursue criminal charges or prosecutions of any of the soldiers involved.

      This seems like tacit if not explicit approval of killing a journalist by IDF, I stand corrected. They publicly apologized but did not punish the one who did it.