The Israeli government is explicitly targeting and assassinating journalists while Western media look the other way.
When Ida B. Wells defied the status quote of white supremacy by documenting and condemning racist mob lynchings against Black folks in the South, she was labeled a “race agitator” and targeted for assassination.
Born into a system of slavery, the famous Black journalist–who went on to co-found the NAACP–appealed to the world when her own government ignored her reporting. Today in Gaza, Palestinian journalists risk their lives, dodging bombs and bullets to show the world raw images of the Israeli military’s genocidal actions.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) released a statement Monday condemning Israel’s targeted killing of Palestinian journalist Hossam Shabat in Gaza. Like other journalists before him, I and many others in the West had been following him on social media for on-the-ground reporting up until the day an Israeli airstrike ended his life.
(Photo: Drop Site News)
“CPJ is appalled that we are once again seeing Palestinians weeping over the bodies of dead journalists in Gaza,” said CPJ’s Program Director Carlos Martinez de la Serna in New York.
Israel’s targeted killing of journalists: Hossam Shabat
Shabat was reporting on the targeted killing of his colleague Mohammed Mansour when strikes hit his vehicle near the town of Beit Lahia in northern Gaza. Shabat’s death on March 24 marked at least the 173rd journalist in occupied Palestinian territory killed by Israel since Palestinian militant group Hamas launched an attack on Israeli communities on October 7, 2023.
In response to the attack, when Hamas killed over 1,000 Israelis and took over 200 hostage, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) began a military campaign of total destruction, killing over 50,000 Palestinians, most of whom are women and children, according to figures from the Palestinian Health Ministry that have been deemed reliable by the vast majority of the international community.
“If you’re reading this, it means I have been killed–most likely targeted–by the Israeli occupation forces,” Shabat’s media team posted to his Instagram account after his death. “When this all began, I was only 21 years old–a college student with dreams like anyone else.”
(Photo: Drop Site News)
The Committee to Protect Journalists has called for an independent investigation into whether Israel targeted the journalists, a violation of international humanitarian law and the Geneva Convention.
Western media ignore Israel’s attacks on journalists
According to CPJ, at least 173 journalists and media workers have been killed over the last 16 months in Gaza and surrounding areas, the highest number since CPJ began gathering data in 1992. The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate puts the journalist killing spree even higher, at 206.
Despite the blatant attacks on the messengers of information, countries that claim to be democracies have failed to intervene or even condemn the targeting of journalists.
American mainstream media outlets and broadcasters violate their own conscience when they ignore the attacks on their Middle Eastern colleagues. Or, maybe they never had one. Perhaps the idea that a democracy requires a free press is nothing more than a fantasy put on paper like a children’s drawing.
How else do you explain Western media outlets refusing to condemn Israel’s actions. Israel, which claims to be the only democracy in the Middle East, acts more like the brutal bigotry of South Africa under apartheid.
As of late Tuesday evening, USA Today, NBC News, ABC News, and CBS News had no articles covering the killing of Hossam Shabat or other Palestinian journalists.
Netanyahu is a war criminal
So, it was fitting when South Africa became the first nation to launch a case of genocide against Israel at the International Court of Justice. The ICJ found it at least “plausible” that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza, allowing the case to proceed.
Yet, that decision wasn’t enough for Western media to sound the alarm.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces an arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court, corruption charges at the Israeli Supreme Court, and calls from Israeli citizens for his resignation.
Yet, Western media outlets continue to provide cover for a regime hell-bent on eradicating Palestinians from the face of the Earth. Do journalists lose their humanity based on geographic location and ethnicity? Why are we allowing Israel to be the arbiter of human worth?
Who decides who is human?
We live in a world in which powerful people want us to believe that in order to recognize the humanity of one group of people, we have to ignore the humanity of others. Supporters of Israel’s genocidal campaign will justify the murder of a Palestinian infant based on the actions of Hamas on October 7, 2023.
Meanwhile, for decades Palestinians have toiled under colonization and subjugation since hundreds of thousands of their relatives and ancestors were expelled from their homes and killed during the forced establishment of the modern Israeli state, a time Palestinians refer to as the Nakba, (catastrophe in English).
There’s no need to go through mental gymnastics, contorting your mind to try to understand how a people whose ancestors endured the Jewish Holocaust could allow their government to orchestrate a modern-day genocide in Gaza.
There’s no need to play whataboutism by comparing genocides in Sudan or other parts of the world to mask or downplay the actions in Palestine.
Find your voice
It’s simple. Human beings anywhere and everywhere are capable of committing great and terrible things. And, as the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “an injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
If Western media outlets and the reporters who work for them don’t have the courage to condemn the targeting of their colleagues across the ocean, don’t complain when respect for a free press completely dissolves in your own country.
I am a descendant of enslaved Africans and formerly enslaved Cherokee Freedmen. My ancestors survived the Middle Passage on the Atlantic Ocean and a forced death march during the Trail of Tears, slavery, Jim Crow apartheid and systemic racism.
I learned about the Jewish Holocaust as a child in school and empathized with the story of Anne Frank. In 2022, I visited Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp in Germany, and saw for myself the brutal, systemic horrors Jewish people endured.
The least I can do is use my voice to call out the Israeli’s government targeting of Palestinian journalists in Gaza. The time to find your voice is now.
Read Hossam Shabat’s final message in full below:
“If you’re reading this, it means I have been killed—most likely targeted—by the Israeli occupation forces. When this all began, I was only 21 years old—a college student with dreams like anyone else. For past 18 months, I have dedicated every moment of my life to my people. I documented the horrors in northern Gaza minute by minute, determined to show the world the truth they tried to bury. I slept on pavements, in schools, in tents—anywhere I could. Each day was a battle for survival. I endured hunger for months, yet I never left my people’s side.
By God, I fulfilled my duty as a journalist. I risked everything to report the truth, and now, I am finally at rest—something I haven’t known in the past 18 months . I did all this because I believe in the Palestinian cause. I believe this land is ours, and it has been the highest honor of my life to die defending it and serving its people.
I ask you now: do not stop speaking about Gaza. Do not let the world look away. Keep fighting, keep telling our stories—until Palestine is free.”
— For the last time, Hossam Shabat, from northern Gaza.
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