Israel continues to target journalists because of the global failure to hold it accountable for abuses, advocates say.
The apparent targeted killing of three media workers in an Israeli air strike in southern Lebanon on Friday has renewed calls for ending impunity for Israel’s abuses.
Advocates say the mounting death toll of journalists killed by the Israeli military in the expanding conflict is a result of the failure of the international community – particularly the United States, Israel’s top backer – to hold the country accountable.
The killing of media workers in Lebanon came days after Israel baselessly accused several media journalists in Gaza of being members of Palestinian armed groups, raising concerns about their safety.
“The events of recent days are alarming, and should serve as a wake-up call for the US government and other states that have the power to hold the Israeli government to account and put a stop to this violence,” said Rebecca Vincent, campaign director at Reporters Without Borders (RSF).
Friday’s deadly attack in Lebanon targeted a compound where several journalists and media workers were staying – in an area removed from fighting. There was no warning before the strike, which destroyed several buildings and left cars marked “press” covered in rubble.
“This is an assassination, after monitoring and tracking, with premeditation and planning, as there were 18 journalists present at the location representing seven media institutions,” Lebanon’s Information Minister Ziad Makary wrote on social media.
The killings add to one of the deadliest records for journalists covering a conflict in years.
At least 128 journalists and media workers are among the tens of thousands of people Israel has killed in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon over the past year — the deadliest time for journalists since the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) began to track the killings more than four decades ago.
According to Palestinian officials, the death toll is even higher with 176 journalists killed in Gaza alone.
“CPJ is deeply outraged by yet another deadly Israeli airstrike on journalists, this time hitting a compound hosting 18 members of the press in south Lebanon,” CPJ Programme Director Carlos Martinez de la Serna said in a statement to media.
“Deliberately targeting journalists is a war crime under international law. This attack must be independently investigated and the perpetrators must be held to account.”
Israeli officials have regularly smeared the journalists slain in Gaza, accusing them without evidence of being members of Hamas and other groups.
This week, Israel accused six media journalists of being Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad “operatives” — sparking fear that it may be pre-emptively justifying their targeting. media categorically rejected the Israeli allegations.
Labeling journalists ‘terrorists’
Israel has killed several media journalists and their family members in Gaza since the war began, including the network’s correspondent Ismail al-Ghoul and cameraman Samer Abudaqa.
Critics accuse Israel – which banned foreign reporters from entering Gaza – targets journalists in the Palestinian territory to obscure the truth about its war crimes there.
Diana Buttu, a Palestinian lawyer and analyst, said Israel does not want the world to see what is happening in Gaza.
“On the one hand, they’re not allowing international journalists, and on the other hand, they’re assassinating those journalists who are there,” Buttu told media. “And then, they’re smearing those journalists who are there and somehow labelling them as targets.”
Buttu stressed that, under international law, people can only be considered legitimate targets in war if they are combatants who engage in fighting – accusing someone of being affiliated with an armed group, whether true or not, does not make them a legitimate target.
She added that Israel is “turning international law on its head” by labelling people as members of Hezbollah and Hamas to justify their killing.
Raed Jarrar, advocacy director at the US-based rights group DAWN said Israel’s accusations against media’s journalists is a “deliberate tactic to intimidate and silence those exposing its ongoing ethnic cleansing and forced displacement in northern Gaza”.
“This campaign against journalists reporting on the atrocities only further proves Israel’s desperation to cover up its war crimes and systematic genocide against Palestinians,” Jarrar added.
While Israel has targeted journalists at an unprecedented rate during the ongoing war, it killed dozens more in the years preceding it. But there was no consequence for those killings and this impunity has paved the way for the current escalation, analysts say.
Zaha Hassan, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told media that “the deadliest place to work these days for journalists is where Israel is waging war.”
The think tank published a video earlier this year, documenting the lives of Palestinian journalists in Gaza. Just before its release, one of the journalists it features, Sami Shehadeh, lost a leg in an Israeli attack on the Nuseirat refugee camp, where he was filming.
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