The Israeli Plot to Extinguish the Journalists Documenting Genocide

On Monday journalist Ibrahim Abu Ghazaleh was on his way to meet his friends and colleagues at Al-Baqa Cafe an area of relative normalcy near the beach in Gaza City where civilians and journalists used to meet and work Just before he stepped inside a missile hit the building killing his friend Ismail Abu Hatab and injuring another alongside more than other civilians Hatab was a Palestinian filmmaker the founder of a TV production company and a great person Ghazaleh explained He served his people and photographed everything in Gaza City conveying the suffering through pictures In Gaza a camera is a threat Israeli forces have killed hundreds of Palestinian journalists as Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continue the ongoing genocide of Gaza and the West Bank Since October the Israeli regime has murdered close to Palestinians leaving an uncountable number vaporized trapped under the rubble dying of starvation or shot while attempting to receive food The bloodshed coincides with a ban on international media and a calculated extermination campaign to assassinate the limited number of people left to document and expose Israel s atrocities In Gaza a camera is a threat Ghazaleh commented When you witness the truth you become a target Related Israel s War on Gaza Is the Deadliest Conflict on Record for Journalists In Gaza and the West Bank Israeli soldiers consistently threaten journalists and their families Before attacking they warn reporters to cease reporting pressuring them to abandon what is often the the majority urgent story of their lives Last month the Washington Post obtained audio of a threatening call from an Israeli intelligence operative to an Iranian general You have hours to escape with your wife and child Otherwise you re on our list right now The calls and messages journalists statement receiving aren t much different Reporters are often killed when greater part identifiable while wearing their press vests Ibrahim Abu Ghazaleh stands in front of Al-Ahli Hospital while reporting in November Photo TKTK Ghazaleh is one of five Palestinian journalists targeted by Israeli military forces who spoke with The Intercept about how Israel s genocidal attacks on Palestinian people go hand in hand with the suppression of a free press These reporters face a constant tension between competing urgencies exposing the truth and protecting their personal safety Two have since evacuated from Gaza with their families Two are in north Gaza and continue reporting under the constant bombardment and manmade famine One is reporting from the illegally occupied West Bank Living through Israel s relentless attacks on civilians and knowing they menace being targeted for their work these reporters and a sparse set of their colleagues are those left to tell the world of the atrocities they have faced as Palestinians during the deadliest years in journalism s history Over journalists and counting have been killed since October Direct Threats At a m in Gaza on October Youmna El Sayed broke the news of the attack on Israel that Hamas called Operation Al-Aqsa Flood A former Al Jazeera English correspondent and mother of four El Sayed declared she has covered all of the escalations in Gaza since including the -day war in May where Israel destroyed plenty of media offices in Gaza After October she knew things would be different It was very clear from the beginning that it is going to be unprecedented retaliation El Sayed declared In the first frantic days of Israel s assault El Sayed documented mass civilian killings as missiles fell She described being thrown by the pressure of a missile falling and it just blows you away with everything else That strong sound beeping in your ears when you stop hearing anything Wearing my very heavy vest and helmet I kept on running and running because I was trying to escape for my life Then Israel began its ground invasion El Sayed and her family had tried to escape Gaza City but she stated it was hard to find housing because various people did not want to rent apartments to journalists as they are seen as a threat When the ground invasion came the family was trapped in their apartment I couldn t get any signal on my phone so I got another SIM card that was not on my name and two days later my husband received this call El Sayed recalled It was someone who identified himself as an Israel Defense Forces officer He first identified my husband s full name and he commented We know who you are take your wife and kids and leave your home otherwise your lives will be in danger in the upcoming hours The call was not unique Mohammed Mhawish a journalist born and raised in Gaza City who was reporting for Al Jazeera explained that he was one of the insufficient journalists covering his area for the system when he began receiving threatening calls On December he disclosed I received another call from a military officer saying You have to leave the house or we re going to bomb it He was living in a three-story building with several of his family members and others trying to find refuge under bombardment Youmna El Sayed reports for Al Jazeera with the rest of the bureau from the Al Tabaa Tower when a drone missile hit Palestine Tower a -story building behind them in central Gaza City in October The next morning on December th at around in the morning the house collapsed in milliseconds Mhawish announced It was targeted by an Israeli warplane I made it but I lost family people I loved who are very close to my heart I even lost neighbors to that attack and people who were only passersby at the moment The only thing I could do to protect my children is make them promise me they would never look at the ground Even if you didn t you could smell the decomposed bodies After El Sayed s husband received the call the first thing I did was call our bureau chief in Jerusalem and confirm it was a direct threat she reported For the first time it was not me in danger because I was in the field or in an unsafe area I was a danger to my children to my family I waited for any of the other families in our building to receive any calls and they didn t at all None of them Two days later the Israeli army surrounded El Sayed s home The first thing they did was shoot at the windows El Sayed commented They rained the gate of the building with bullets Then the tank shelled the gate Everyone in the building was screaming It was minutes of unprecedented hell They called us on their mics and revealed You have five minutes to leave the building El Sayed explained her family left everything and drove away while Israeli soldiers shot at them They traveled on foot across what Israel called a safe corridor stretching seven kilometers from the north to the south where no cameras were allowed She described corpses strewn across the ground where the Israeli army had barred ambulances from picking them up I did not want my children to go through that trauma but it was the only response left to save their lives she disclosed The only thing I could do to protect them is make them promise me they would never look at the ground Even if you didn t you could smell the decomposed bodies I could see the formula bottles and the bags of children and families killed We were instructed that whoever falls is not even to be lifted off the ground It was to this extent dehumanizing El Sayed and Mhawish were lucky just to survive Hassan Hamad a -year-old journalist whose work frequently appeared on Al Jazeera received a text from an Israeli officer saying Hamad and his family would be next if he did not stop filming On October Israel struck his home in the Jabalia refugee camp and killed him We either speak about it or we re gonna be erased declared Mhawish I kept filing stories through the voice recordings on my iPhone at the moment as I lived through it the shortage of anatomical healing the collapse of supplies and food and the rates of killings that were taking place across the city in northern Gaza Constant Attacks Mohammed al-Sawwaf like so a multitude of Palestinians from Gaza has lost dozens of relatives to Israel s brutal assault An award-winning filmmaker and founder of Alef Multimedia Company al-Sawwaf is from a family of journalists His father founded Falasteen one of the largest circulating daily newspapers in Gaza Al-Sawwaf recalled being a child witnessing the First Intifada a multi-year protest and revolutionary movement when Palestinians rose up against the Israeli occupation between and I also witnessed the imprisonment of my father and most of of my male relatives in Israeli prisons from my childhood until they were killed by Israeli bombs in November and December he commented Al-Sawwaf declared that in November with no prior warning his family home was targeted in an Israeli attack He believes the Israeli military was waiting for the whole family to be inside the building before bombing it The attack killed his parents two of his four brothers their children and several other family members Al-Sawwaf and his two surviving brothers Montaser and Marwan continued their reporting of the genocide Montaser was a videographer for Anadolu Agency who helped Al-Sawwaf with projects and Marwan was a sound technician and film producer for Alef Multimedia Later in the same month not long after the short-lived ceasefire of November Israel bombed the house where the brothers were sheltering killing Montaser and Marwan In total al-Sawwaf has lost relatives Montaser and Marwan al-Sawwaf assist their brother Mohammed on a film project about the students of Gaza as a part of the Al-Fakhoura scholarship for university instruction in Their deaths drained my desire for life al-Sawwaf revealed of his brothers I still feel immense injustice as we continue to endure suffering without accountability Yet I am still trying to rise and continue our work and mission Al-Sawwaf was injured in the bombing too leaving him paralyzed for months after the attacks Two days after he was brought to Al-Awda Hospital in December it was besieged for the first time by Israeli forces Two doctors overseeing his affair were killed and al-Sawwaf disclosed he barely escaped With little to no anatomical supplies water or food al-Sawwaf has still not received proper care Constant bombing collapsed healthcare infrastructure hunger and thirst Journalists in Gaza are forced to live through the same brutal conditions they cover Mhawish experienced something similar in December after his family s house was toppled Bulk of the hospitals in northern Gaza were already under siege so he spent the next month trying to recover from his injuries until he could resume reporting The Story Ghazaleh now has been reporting since he was I have documented multiple massacres and offensive shellings on Gaza City since the genocide began he disclosed He was sheltering in Gaza s Indonesian Hospital in November he declared when the Israeli army advanced on the hospital and we were holding our breath whilst reporting on what was happening There were so countless sick and wounded who were sheltering in the hospital and we were forced to leave or become martyrs ourselves Ghazaleh announced he had to leave his laptop and camera equipment behind He later detected them vandalized and broken His family moved to the Jabalia refugee camp where he disclosed plenty of fellow journalists were targeted or directly threatened to stop their coverage of northern Gaza Documenting the truth has become a moral duty before it is a profession Israeli forces bombed the camp too and Ghazaleh and his family have since been displaced over times Several of his friends including Hossam Shabat a journalist who worked for Al Jazeera Mubasher have been killed Shabat along with five other journalists in north Gaza was put on a hit list by Israel in October and he received threatening phone calls to stop his reporting before Israeli forces targeted his car and killed him on March claiming without evidence that he was a sniper for Hamas The journalist here does not have protection Ghazaleh disclosed but despite the danger we cannot back down because documenting the truth has become a moral duty before it is a profession Related Israel s West Bank Attacks Fuel Its Annexation Plans In the West Bank where Israeli settlers emboldened by the ongoing genocide have increased their violence against Palestinians -year-old freelance journalist Mojahid Nawahda was reporting in Nablus when Israeli forces arrested him Mojahid Nawahda reports on the Israeli occupation raids on September in Jenin north of the West Bank He was detained before the October attacks on July They vandalized and broke my camera equipment and I was interrogated for days at the al-Jalma Analysis Center Nawahda commented He was then held in Megiddo Prison for a year under indescribable and unbearable conditions without any form of due process The prison is often compared to hell with several testimonials including reports of torture and sexual abuse Upon his release Nawahda resumed reporting on the occupied West Bank where previous ceasefires in Gaza have not applied The Palestinian Prisoners Society stated that over people including anatomical workers and journalists have been arrested in the West Bank Settlers have been responsible for several of the daily attacks on Palestinian journalists In Nablus and Jenin Nawahda announced Israeli soldiers fired tear gas bombs at him and other reporters on May Meanwhile under the protection of Israeli soldiers settlers attacked their colleague Issam al-Rimawi in Ramallah Again on June Israeli soldiers fired at journalists in Jenin while they were reporting on the demolition of Palestinians homes in the Tulkarm refugee camp part of a large-scale project Israel approved to build more illegal settlements across the West Bank I am now invariably working on reports about the camps of the northern West Bank specifically that the occupation has evacuated and displaced the people of these camps and is now blowing up and demolishing their homes Nawahda disclosed I like my city because it is perpetually steadfast in the face of this occupation despite everything People here reject the existence of the occupation and constantly do anything to get it out of the city However things are getting worse in the West Bank The occupation is still working to demolish homes close roads and attack journalists and civilians I felt this very strange feeling that whatever I was saying in front of the camera was not moving the world It can be hard however to keep the faith under such conditions In a span of three months El Sayed the former Al Jazeera English correspondent stated her family was displaced six times all while she continued reporting on atrocities committed against other families the targeting of robustness care facilities and the lack of menstrual products and overall aid I felt this very strange feeling that whatever I was saying in front of the camera was not moving the world El Sayed announced When you re a journalist you re not the story You can t stand in front of the camera and say as a mother My children are suffering from diseases My children are losing weight because there is no food They re dehydrated because there s no water My -year-old was terrified Every single night she narrated me Let s sleep very close to each other so that when the missile falls it kills us all and I don t become the only survivor Read our complete coverage Israel s War on Gaza Leaving Home In January after months of constant upheaval El Sayed and her family evacuated from Rafah to Egypt With his -year-old and pregnant wife Mhawish left the same year in mid-April It was a very tough decision Mhawish stated you could be the story before you even file your story He noted he had begun receiving more threats from Israeli forces who advised him This time it s not going to be fun They really also indicated that I m not gonna survive it this time Mhawish mentioned Nawahda remains in the West Bank documenting settler violence and al-Sawwaf and Ghazaleh are still in Gaza Al-Sawwaf announced that he s begun to recover from his injuries but without better medical care the process is arduous I still need an accurate evaluation and MRI scans for my spine and head tests that are unavailable in Gaza he disclosed Everything in Gaza is destroyed buildings homes factories infrastructure Prices are exorbitant with chosen items costing times their original price People have lost their sources of income and various remain unemployed How do we build again if another Israeli war will bring it down Wars have not stopped since I was born Matters are worsened Ghazaleh mentioned by the aid blockade imposed by Netanyahu now stretching into its fifth month Ghazaleh was nearly killed during an Israeli bombing attack on al-Ahli Hospital where he d been hospitalized due to lack of food While Israel has claimed to allow dozens of aid trucks into Gaza Palestinian people and the United Nations have called this a gross misrepresentation Ghazaleh noted that various of the food that does arrive is contaminated or expired The markets have run out of food and the aid that did reach the north of Gaza was not enough Ghazaleh announced July Once food arrives certain is contaminated or old but we have no choice but to take risks and eat it because hunger is merciless Various children have been poisoned and particular families have thoroughly lost confidence in any truck that enters Everything costs money to buy tents to buy food which we do not have either Related Israeli Soldiers Killed at Least People at Food Aid Sites in Gaza This Month The U S -backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation started aid distribution centers in May which has resulted in over civilians being killed deliberately by Israeli soldiers while trying to reach them Others have also announced incidents of kidnappings and grenades being thrown at them My friends and I went to the aid sites and it was a harsh experience Ghazaleh commented The queues stretch for kilometers and the protection is missing I saw mothers crying from the intensity of hunger and sometimes you wait for hours and come back with nothing Doctors Without Borders which sends curative workers regularly to Gaza has condemned the sites as slaughter masquerading as humanitarian aid while a total of aid groups have called for the GHF to close The U S meanwhile has spent over billion in military financing weapons sales and transfers from U S weapons stockpiles to aid Israel The psychological effects of witnessing this massacre up close and afar are torturous Mhawish commented As Palestinian journalists we can t separate ourselves from Gaza or the struggles that we lived and it just adds more to the weight of the emotional toll he announced Gaza is a piece of life and that life is being taken out of it one soul at a time We lost children that we were never supposed to lose We lost parents We lost families We lost loved ones only for the sake of just proving to the world over and over that we are only ordinary human beings who should be able to live The post The Israeli Plot to Extinguish the Journalists Documenting Genocide appeared first on The Intercept