Israeli forces reportedly focused and killed Palestinian journalist Hasan ‘Abdel Rahim Hamad on Oct. 6, 2024, bringing the whole variety of Palestinian journalists killed to 176, which consultants say constitutes struggle crimes.
The assault was carried out after he spent the earlier night time voice-recording and publishing movies streaming the most recent developments in Jabalia, and the most recent video he posted was simply half an hour earlier than being focused.
The 19-year-old Hamad, who labored at Media Town Company and cooperated with completely different media establishments, was protecting and filming the Israeli bombardment and floor assault on the Jabalia refugee camp from his home.
On May 13, 2024, Hamad reportedly acquired a message on WhatsApp from an Israeli quantity threatening to kill him and his household if he continued reporting on Israel’s struggle crimes.
The variety of journalists killed by Israeli forces up to now outnumbers the mixed whole variety of journalists killed within the entirety of World War II, Vietnam and the Ukraine struggle. As of Oct. 4, 2024, earlier than Hamad’s demise, 175 journalists, together with 13 feminine reporters, had been killed in Gaza.
The majority of journalists (170) have been killed in Israeli warplane and drone airstrikes and the remaining 4 have been shot lifeless by Israeli snipers. Around 72 journalists have been killed with their households in assaults on their homes.
Additionally, 53 journalists have been killed throughout indiscriminate bombings all through the continuing genocidal marketing campaign; 24 have been killed in direct focused assaults, and 22 have been killed whereas on obligation – although it stays unclear whether or not they have been intentionally focused.
Some 185 journalists have additionally been injured in the course of the struggle in numerous circumstances. There can be the focusing on of social media activists by the Israeli Defense Forces, which proceed to incite violence in opposition to them and threaten to kill them if they don’t stay silent.
‘Grave private threat’
The Israeli struggle falls below a fancy worldwide system of justice that has emerged since World War II, a lot of it geared toward defending civilians.
Even if states say they’re performing in self-defense, worldwide guidelines relating to armed battle apply to all individuals in a struggle.
Article 79 of the Geneva Conventions treats journalists working in battle settings as protected civilians if they do not interact within the preventing.
In March, senior leaders at a number of international media retailers signed a letter urging Israeli authorities to guard journalists in Gaza, saying reporters have been working in unprecedented situations and confronted “grave personal risk.”
What the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has known as Israel’s assaults “the most dangerous” struggle for journalists, has reverberated internationally, placing worry into reporters who’re involved in regards to the setting of lethal precedents – extra journalists than ever have died in the midst of any yr since CPJ started documenting journalist killings in 1992.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the United States’ largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy group, known as on media retailers within the U.S. and worldwide to sentence Israel’s focused assassination of the Palestinian journalist.
In a press release, CAIR National Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper stated: “Israeli forces are assassinating journalists to be able to cowl up their struggle crimes and different atrocities and crimes in opposition to humanity. Media professionals within the United States and internationally should break their silence and converse out to sentence Israel’s intentional focusing on of journalists. The far-right Israeli authorities can’t be allowed to commit such struggle crimes with out being held accountable.
“Through its silence on such atrocities and its ongoing support for Israel’s genocide, the Biden administration shares the blame for these crimes.”
CAIR stated it’s “running out of words to condemn Israeli atrocities” after 26 folks have been killed and 93 wounded in an Israeli airstrike on a mosque and a faculty sheltering displaced folks in Gaza on Oct. 6, 2024.
Experts say by killing journalists, Israel makes an attempt to monopolize the narrative so the world wouldn’t see the crimes it commits in opposition to the Palestinian folks at a time when worldwide journalists are denied entry to Gaza to cowl this genocidal struggle. The focusing on of journalists intends to isolate the victims and stop the documentation of Israel’s genocidal acts in opposition to Palestinian civilians within the Gaza Strip.
The willful killing of journalists constitutes a struggle crime inside the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC), in response to Article 8 of the ICC Rome Statute.
Source: www.dailysabah.com