On May 3, World Press Freedom Day, the Israeli government banned Al Jazeera from operating within Israeli-controlled territory. Israel had already killed scores of journalists, many of them from Al Jazeera, but to use powers granted under an emergency law to shut down the network’s operations on a day the United Nations created to underscore journalists’ right to do their work without retaliation was the cherry on top, a symbolic middle finger to Palestinian journalists who have been working heroically, on empty stomachs and often without electricity, to cover the genocide of their own people.
This week saw more new assassinations of Palestinian journalists. Yesterday, journalists in Gaza had traveled to the home of Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s political leader who was assassinated early Wednesday while he was in Tehran attending Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian’s inauguration, a death Hamas has attributed to Israel. Near Haniyeh’s home west of Gaza City in the al-Shati refugee camp, an Israeli air strike killed Al Jazeera Gaza correspondent Ismail al-Ghoul and cameraman Rami al-Rifi as they sat in their car, according to initial reports. Al Jazeera called the killing of its journalists “a cold-blooded assassination.”
Al-Ghoul was a familiar presence to those following Israel’s now nearly year-long war on Gaza. He covered some of the year’s most horrific crimes, including Israel’s siege on al-Shifa Hospital. As al-Ghoul testified before his death, this work took a toll.
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
“I no longer know the taste of sleep,” he said. “The bodies of children and the screams of the injured and their blood-soaked images never leave my sight. The cries of mothers and the wailing of…
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Auteur: Alex N. Press
