The Israeli government’s gruesome bombardment of Gaza has killed dozens of journalists reporting on the conflict — and it’s arguably killing Israel’s credibility on the global stage, too.
Reporters Without Borders, an international organization focused on press freedoms, received confirmation this week that the International Criminal Court, which prosecutes individuals, is looking into attacks on journalists as it investigates potential war crimes that have occurred amid the Israel-Hamas conflict. (Neither Israel nor the United States recognize the court’s jurisdiction.)
Calls for investigations into the deaths of journalists and their associates in Gaza have grown since last weekend, when the son of Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief, Wael al-Dahdouh, was killed by an airstrike. Dahdouh’s wife, two of his other children and one of his grandchildren were killed in an earlier bombing in October. The recent attack has led some observers, like the Committee to Protect Journalists and Al Jazeera, to call for probes into whether the attack — as well as other attacks on journalists and their associates — might have been targeted.
On Wednesday, Reporters Without Borders also called on the United Nations Security Council to hold an emergency meeting on Israel’s potential violations of a rule known as Resolution 2222, which was adopted in 2015 to protect journalists from harm as they report in combat zones.
Israel’s government, for the record, has told news outlets reporting in Gaza that it can’t guarantee their safety as it bombs the region repeatedly. The Israel Defense Forces allege that Dahdouh’s son, Hamza, was a member of Islamic Jihad “involved with the organization’s terrorist activities” — a claim that has not been verified by NBC News, which has reached out to Al Jazeera for comment.
According to a tally compiled by the CPJ, 79 media workers have been killed to date in Gaza since Israel started its bombing campaign. And dozens more…
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