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Showing posts with label Press Freedom. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Press Freedom. Show all posts

Monday, May 11, 2026

FOUR YEAR AGO Shireen Abu Akleh, a Palestinian Christian journalist, was assassinated by an Israeli sniper while covering the events taking place in the Jenin. Shireen was, and still is, an icon of the free Palestinian voice. May she rest in peace, and may her memory live forever. شيرين أبو عاقلة، شهيدة الحق.

Four years ago, the martyr of truth Shireen Abu Akleh, a Palestinian Christian journalist, was assassinated by an Israeli sniper while covering the events taking place in the Jenin. 

Shireen was, and still is, an icon of the free Palestinian voice. 

May she rest in peace, and may her memory live forever. شيرين أبو عاقلة، شهيدة الحق. 

https://x.com/PalCatholic/status/2053746402149200161 

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 Committee to Protect Journalists
Journalists are civilians under international humanitarian law. 
 
Facilities and equipment utilized for reporting and disseminating news are also civilian structures. 
 
They must be respected and protected. 
 
Journalists are #NotATarget.
 
 
Shireen Abu Akleh’s family issued a public statement affirming that they “will not stop” pursuing “justice for Shireen through all available avenues,” to mark the fourth anniversary of her murder. 
 
The family is “deeply disappointed by the lack of meaningful action from both the current and previous United States administrations.” 
 
CPJ and Abu Akleh’s family demand the FBI provide transparency into its stalled investigation and bring those responsible to justice. 
 
Read the statement: cpj.org/?p=587113
 
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A vigil organized for slain Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh outside the Washington, D.C., offices of Al Jazeera English on August 18, 2022. (Photo: Chris Sheridan/Al Jazeera English)
 
May 7, 2026

To mark the upcoming fourth anniversary of the killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, on May 11, 2026, the Abu Akleh family issued a public statement affirming that they “will not stop” pursuing “justice for Shireen through all available avenues.”

Abu Akleh was murdered while covering an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) operation in the West Bank town of Jenin on May 11, 2022, despite wearing a clearly marked “Press” vest. Her killing is part of a wider pattern of journalist deaths by Israeli military fire in which no one has been held accountable.

Read the statement below:

Four years have passed since the Israeli killing of our beloved Shireen Abu Akleh, a dedicated journalist, a fearless truth-teller, and a voice for the voiceless. Yet, despite the passage of time, justice remains elusive.

Shireen was a Palestinian-American journalist who was deliberately targeted by an Israeli sniper while carrying out her professional duty, wearing a press vest, clearly identified as a journalist. Her killing was not only a tragic loss for our family, but also a grave attack on press freedom and the fundamental right to report the truth. 

Over the past four years, we have witnessed a persistent failure to hold those responsible accountable. No one has been brought to justice, neither for her killing nor for the attack on her funeral. This ongoing impunity sends a dangerous message that journalists can be targeted without consequence.

We have seen that pattern repeated in Gaza and Lebanon for more than two years now. At least 260 journalists and media workers have been killed by Israel’s military since 2023. 

We are deeply disappointed by the lack of meaningful action from both the current and previous United States administrations. Shireen was a U.S. citizen and the government has so far failed to act on behalf of its own citizens. That status should have triggered a clear, forceful obligation from the U.S. government to pursue accountability with the same urgency it would for any American killed abroad. The lack of progress in the FBI investigation into Shireen’s killing further demonstrates the government’s failure to deliver justice.

Despite repeated calls for accountability and transparency, concrete measures have not been taken to ensure justice for Shireen. This lack of support has only compounded our pain and strengthened the culture of impunity.

Accountability is not only about justice for Shireen; it is about protecting journalists everywhere. Without accountability, the targeting of journalists will continue, and the truth itself will remain under threat.

As a family, we reaffirm today what we have said from the very beginning: “we will not stop”. We will continue to pursue justice for Shireen through all available avenues, until those responsible are held accountable. 

Shireen’s voice echoes through us as we resolve, again, to remember and carry forth her spirit and legacy, and to make our ceaseless demand for justice.

Justice for Shireen is justice for all.

https://cpj.org/2026/05/cpj-shares-statement-from-shireen-abu-aklehs-family-4-years-after-journalists-murder/ 
  
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Wednesday, May 6, 2026

Know Her Name: Shireen Abu Akleh [a prominent Palestinian-American Journalist] spent 25 years making sure people could not claim they did not know what was happening. Then she was killed by Israeli military fire doing exactly that.

On the morning of May 11 2022, Shireen Abu Akleh put on her press vest, marked clearly with the word PRESS, and went to cover an Israeli military raid in Jenin. She was shot in the head within minutes of arriving.

She was one of the most recognisable journalists in the Arab world, a face millions trusted for over two decades on Al Jazeera. The bullet that killed her came from Israeli military fire. Multiple investigations, including one by the United States government, confirmed it. Israel called it unintentional. No one was charged.

Abu Akleh had reported from Palestinian territories since 1997, covering the second intifada, the siege of Ramallah and the daily reality of life under occupation when few Western outlets were present. Her death triggered a global outcry. At her funeral in Jerusalem, Israeli police beat mourners carrying her coffin. The images circled the world before her body reached the ground.

She spent 25 years making sure people could not claim they did not know what was happening. Then she was killed doing exactly that.

Follow Know Her Name — a new name every day.

#KnowHerName #WomensHistory #PressFreedom

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Monday, December 22, 2025

"In July, international agencies warned of the danger he was in as the Israel Defense Forces stepped up online attacks, falsely labelling him a Hamas terrorist." It was lethal to be in Gaza this year, and deadly for those who tried to tell the world

A protester holds a photo of Al Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif during a march in New York, 16 August 2025. Photograph: Stephanie Keith/Getty Images
The Al Jazeera reporter Anas al-Sharif was the most prominent name among so many targeted for simply bearing witness to the truth

 

in The Guardian

In January this year, Anas al-Sharif was filmed being lifted into the air after taking off his helmet and flak jacket to celebrate a ceasefire that would prove all too temporary in Gaza. This summer, the Palestinian journalist broke down while reporting on starvation in his home town that is now a war zone. A bystander told him: “Persist, Anas, you are our voice”.

But al-Sharif’s popularity in Gaza made him a target. In July, international agencies warned of the danger he was in as the Israel Defense Forces stepped up online attacks, falsely labelling him a Hamas terrorist. His employer, Al Jazeera, insisted he restrict his reporting to the more protected al-Shifa hospital after his father and many colleagues were killed. In August, a few months short of his 29th birthday, al-Sharif and six others were killed in a direct attack on a media tent next to the hospital. In a posthumous post he said: “If these words reach you, know that Israel has succeeded in killing me and silencing my voice.”

Anas al-Sharif is just one of 67 media professionals who were killed in 2025 while doing their jobs, identified by press freedom advocates Reporters Without Borders (RSF) in its annual report on journalists’ safety. The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) goes even further – they found 111 journalists have been killed in 2025, nearly half in Gaza.

Each one of these deaths is a tragedy, an abuse of the right of journalists to bear witness. Yet it is worth remembering the story of al-Sharif, not least because he became one of the highest profile examples of the tactic of discrediting journalists by accusing them of bias.... READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/dec/22/palestinian-reporters-journalist-killings-al-jazeera-anas-al-sharif

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Sunday, October 26, 2025

Foreign journalists are still not allowed in Gaza & Israeli Settlers nearly club a Palestinian woman to death in the West Bank ... Arwa Mahdawi

 ".... Foreign journalists are still not allowed in Gaza

The Foreign Press Association (FPA) has said it is disappointed in the Israeli supreme court’s decision to grant the state of Israel another delay regarding the independent entry of journalists into Gaza. It’s a shame that more journalists in the western media aren’t screaming at the top of their lungs about the murders of their colleagues in Gaza and this assault on press freedom – not to mention the fact that Israel is still not allowing adequate aid into Gaza. At the very least, the western media should be asking what it is that Israel doesn’t want reporters to see. Evidence of torture, perhaps?

Settlers nearly club a Palestinian woman to death

The United Nations office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs recorded 71 incidents of Israeli settler violence against Palestinians and their property in the occupied West Bank across just one week. These include a brutal attack on a 55-year-old woman that was caught on camera...."

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/oct/25/why-is-trump-demolishing-the-white-houses-east-wing-because-he-wants-to 

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Wednesday, February 5, 2025

It's been 1,000 days since Israeli forces INTENTIONALLY TARGETED & killed renowned Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh [April 3, 1971 – May 11, 2022]

https://www.aljazeera.com/features/longform/2023/5/11/shireen-abu-akleh-al-jazeera-reporter-and-daughter-of-palestine

1998

Marking 50 years since the Nakba, or the Catastrophe, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were expelled from their homes, Shireen reported from various cities in Palestine, covering the outrage of the Palestinians continuously fighting against the Israeli occupation and its brutality.

2017

For years, Shireen shed light on the particularly bittersweet event of Christmas for Palestinians. Restrictions imposed by Israel’s occupation put a damper on this joyous public holiday, normally a time of celebration and gathering, celebrated by Muslims and Christians alike. The separation wall, as well as the checkpoints that peppered the West Bank, have made it difficult, if not impossible, for Palestinians to travel between Jerusalem and Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus. Shireen was there to tell those stories.

2018

Shireen had an eye and an affinity for Palestinian culture in its various forms, including dance and art. In this particular story, she reported on traditional Palestinian embroidery, better known in Arabic as "tatreez". For decades, Palestinians have tried to keep their heritage alive through tatreez, and Shireen ensured she introduced viewers to the women and men who embroidered despite physical challenges or from inside Israeli prisons.

It's been 1,000 days since Israeli forces killed renowned Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. Al Jazeera reflects on her remarkable career aje.io/n5p1a6

Sunday, October 27, 2024

Chris Hedges: Israel’s War on Journalism... "Israel spins out its lies and fabrications, from Hamas using Palestinians as human shields, to mass rape and beheaded babies, to a captive press that slavishly amplifies them. By the time the lies are exposed, often weeks or months later, the media cycle has moved on and few notice."

 

There are some 4,000 foreign reporters accredited in Israel to cover the war. They stay in luxury hotels. They go on dog and pony shows orchestrated by the Israeli military. They can, on rare occasions, be escorted by Israeli soldiers on lightning visits to Gaza, where they are shown alleged weapons caches or tunnels the military says are used by Hamas. They dutifully attend daily press conferences. They are given off-the-record briefings by senior Israeli officials who feed them information that often turns out to be untrue. They are Israel’s unwitting and sometimes witting propagandists, stenographers for the architects of apartheid and genocide, hotel room warriors. Bertolt Brecht acidly called them the spokesmen of the spokesmen.
 
And how many foreign reporters are there in Gaza? None.
 
The Palestinian reporters in Gaza who fill the void often pay with their lives. They are targeted, along with their families, for assassination. At least 128 journalists and media workers in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon, have been killed and 69 have been imprisoned,
according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, marking the deadliest period for journalists since the organization began collecting data in 1992.
 
Israel bombed a building on Friday in southern Lebanon housing seven media organizations, killing three journalists ... READ MORE https://x.com/ChrisLynnHedges/status/1850217151925465400

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Sunday, May 5, 2024

4 Palestinian female journalists detained in Israel jails

A group of Palestinian journalists, holding photos of Palestinian journalists killed by the Israeli army, organise a demonstration ahead of the “World Press Freedom Day” on May 3 in Ramallah, West Bank on May 02, 2024 [Issam Rimawi/Anadolu Agency]

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https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240503-4-palestinian-female-journalists-detained-in-israel-jails/

At least four Palestinian women journalists are among the journalists detained in Israeli jails, a Palestinian prisoners’ group said on Friday, Anadolu Agency reports.

“Four female journalists are under arrest (in Israeli jails), including a nursing mother,” the Palestinian Prisoner Society said in a statement marking the World Press Freedom Day.

The statement identified them as Ikhlas Sawalha, Rola Hasanein, Bushra Al-Tawil and Asmaa Heresh, noting that three of them – Sawalha, Al-Tawil and Heresh – are under administrative detention without a trial or charge.

The Palestinian rights group also said that a fifth journalist, Somaya Jawabreh, is under house arrest after her release from Israeli prison in November last year.

Earlier on Friday, the group said in a joint statement, along with other rights groups, that Israel has been detaining 53 Palestinian journalists in its prisons and detention facilities, including 43 arrested after 7 October.

~~~~~

READ: ‘World powers allowing Israel to keep killing Gaza journalists to hide war crimes’

 

Funerals are held for Palestinians journalists killed by Israeli occupation forces in the besieged Gaza Strip [Mohammed Asad/Middle East Monitor]
 

World powers are intentionally looking the other way as Israel continues its deadly attacks on journalists in Gaza, while also not letting in others from outside, to cover up its crimes, according to Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, co-founder of British group, Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL), Anadolu Agency reports.

“It’s very clear that they are trying to prevent the news about … what they are guilty of in Gaza reaching the rest of the world, so they have banned outside journalists from going into Gaza to see what’s happening,” she told Anadolu in an interview in London.

“So, the fact that there are courageous, heroic journalists working there is obviously a serious problem for them, and they are trying to silence these people.”

The latest journalist to fall victim to an Israeli attack was Salem Abu Toyor, a reporter for Al-Quds Today television station, who was killed along with his son in a 30 April airstrike on their home in Gaza’s Nuseirat Refugee Camp.

WATCH: Gaza residents express gratitude and solidarity with US student protesters

The number of journalists killed in Gaza since last October is now at 142, according to Palestinian authorities. International watchdogs, including the Committee to Protect Journalists, have already said that Israel’s war on Gaza is the deadliest in modern history for journalists.

Wimborne-Idrissi, who has been campaigning for Palestine for many years, termed it a “heinous” policy that is yet another “war crime” being perpetrated by Israel.

“It’s horrendous that this is allowed to go on. The major powers, the US and European countries, allow this to go on, even while their people are marching on the streets to demand that it stop,” she said.

Israel has ‘completely ignored’ ICJ

Israel is facing a genocide case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for its assault on Gaza, which has now killed nearly 34,600 Palestinians, the vast majority being women and children, and wounded over 77,800.

It has displaced millions more, around 85 per cent of the population, leaving them facing famine and acute shortages of medical aid and other essentials.

Israeli attacks have also laid waste to large swathes of the besieged enclave, devastating everything, from housing to medical facilities, educational institutes and all sorts of civic infrastructure.

Wimborne-Idrissi called out Western nations for their failure to hold Israel accountable or make it comply with international humanitarian law.

She hailed South Africa for taking Israel to the ICJ, praising its legal team for putting up an “amazingly well-researched and thoroughly well-argued case.”

“We should all be thanking them for it,” she said.

The strength of the case was the reason that, despite the expectation that governments would pressure the ICJ judges, the Court gave an interim decision in favour of South Africa and ordered Israel to take provisional measures, she said.

“The problem is, of course, that Israel has completely ignored it,” said the JVL official.

“Those countries which are signatories to the Genocide Convention, who have an obligation to make sure the judgment of the Court is carried out, have not done anything to make Israel comply.”

She said these nations have been putting their hands up, claiming that Israeli Prime Benjamin Netanyahu “doesn’t seem to be listening to our concerns”.

“They can act. They can take action right now. They can institute sanctions against the State of Israel, which is committing war crimes. They choose not to do so,” she asserted.

“It’s a political calculation on their part, which history will condemn them for, I have no doubt about that.”​​​​​​​