Israel accuses six reporters from the Qatari channel Al Jazeera who cover the war in Gaza of belonging to Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the two main fundamentalist armed groups that the army fights in the Palestinian enclave. The army has released documentation obtained by the secret services in the Strip that would prove it, such as telephone lists, date of arrival to the group or battalion. The television network “categorically” rejects the accusations, denouncing the use of “fabricated evidence.” “These accusations are part of a pattern of hostility towards Al Jazeera, derived from its unwavering commitment to transmitting the truth about Gaza and elsewhere,” they explained in a statement. “Al Jazeera fears that these accusations could serve as a pretext for further violence against journalists.” More than 120 reporters or media employees have been killed in the Strip during Israeli attacks since the war began on October 7, 2023, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
In a siege that has been tightening throughout the conflict, the Israeli authorities already closed the offices of the Qatari channel in East Jerusalem last May and in September those in Ramallah, the administrative capital of the West Bank, both Palestinian territories under occupation. Sources from the television network point out from Doha that they are trying to protect the lives of those affected in the face of accusations that they describe as “irresponsible.”
“Terrorists,” reads the pamphlet-like advertisement made public by the Israeli authorities, which includes a photo of each of them wearing a bulletproof vest. The army claims that it has “intelligence information and numerous documents found in the Strip that confirm the military affiliation of six Al Jazeera journalists in Gaza,” a statement said.
Those accused of belonging to these two armed groups are, according to Israel: Anas Jamal Mahmoud Al Sharif, Alaa Abdul Aziz Muhammad Salama, Hossam Basel Abdul Karim Shabat, Ashraf Sami Ashour Saraj, Ismail Farid Muhammad Abu Omar and Talal Mahmoud Abdul Rahman Aruki. The military has released documentation that it says proves the reporters’ relationship with Hamas and Islamic Jihad, especially in northern Gaza.
The media considers that these are elaborate evidence and “unfounded” claims and associates them with a report they recently published about possible war crimes committed by Israeli forces during the ongoing war in Gaza. For Israel, however, the aforementioned documentation is “unequivocal proof” that the journalists are “military agents of terrorist organizations,” including telephone lists, training courses or what, the statement adds, would be receipts for having received salaries. . The documentation is also attached, in addition to personal data, date of entry into the organization, number in the military organization or battalion in which they were assigned. In this way, adds the text published by the army, the link between Al Jazeera and Hamas would be demonstrated.
CPJ has reported that it is aware of the allegations by the Israeli military after they previously “repeatedly spread similar unsubstantiated claims without presenting credible evidence,” according to a statement. After killing Al Jazeera correspondent Ismail Al Ghoul in July, the Israeli army presented a document with which it wanted to show the deceased, born in 1997, as a member of the military branch of Hamas in 2007, when he was 10 years old, CPJ adds .
In the first weeks of the war, accusations were already made against reporters from different media, some international, of having participated in the massacre by Hamas of some 1,200 people in Israeli territory. Among them were collaborators of the newspaper The New York Times,CNN or the Reuters and Associated Press agencies. They all rejected these accusations against four photographers freelance in Gaza, who even said that they knew in advance that the Islamist movement was going to carry out that attack.
“It is reckless to make allegations like this, endangering our journalists on the ground in Israel and Gaza” and undermining work that serves the public interest, he defended. The New York Timesin a statement. The accusations had initially been made by the pro-Israel website Honest Reportingwhich did not provide evidence, but whose trail was followed by different authorities in the country.
Takeover of the Ramallah offices
Al Jazeera last month considered the assault by Israeli troops on its offices in Ramallah as a “criminal act.” A group of armed and hooded soldiers took over the facilities on September 22. The broadcast was at that time live on its Arabic channel, followed by millions of people around the world. The image remained while the uniformed officers issued the 45-day closure order. Meanwhile, the head of the office, Walid Al-Omari, read the document to all the viewers surrounded by soldiers and several fellow cameramen. That irruption was preceded by the closure in May of the channel’s headquarters in East Jerusalem and the ban on broadcasting in Israel.
Qatari network reporters have suffered Israeli attacks in Gaza since the start of the war. A symbol of this harassment is the Palestinian journalist Wael Dahdouh, head of Al Jazeera in the Strip, who a few days after the fighting broke out lost his wife, two children, a grandson and other relatives in a bombing. Two months later, Dahdouh himself was wounded in an Israeli attack that killed his cameraman, Samer Abu Daqqa. Last January, his eldest son, Hamza, died when his car was targeted by a bombing.
Cameraman Fadi al Wahid remains in a hospital bed in northern Gaza in very serious condition after being shot in the neck. He accompanied Anas Al Sharif, one of the now accused, when they were attacked along with other informants on October 9. His companions, targeted like him on several occasions by Israeli attacks, still demand that he be evacuated so that he can receive care outside the Strip.
On May 11, 2022, the murder of the reporter for this same network Shireen Abu Akleh, of Palestinian and American nationality, by a shot to the neck by an Israeli soldier in Jenin (West Bank) caused great commotion.
