[News] Israel Destroyed Offices of More Than 20 Palestinian Media Outlets in Gaza

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://theintercept.com/2021/05/18/gaza-journalists-israel-palestine-attacks/
Israel
Destroyed Offices of More Than 20 Palestinian Media Outlets in Gaza
Shrouq Aila <https://theintercept.com/staff/shrouq-aila/>, Anna Therese Day
<https://theintercept.com/staff/anna-therese-day/> - May 18 2021
------------------------------

GAZA CITY — *In 2008, Momen* Faiz Quraiqea was a budding 21-year-old video
journalist when an Israeli airstrike blew off his legs. The experience as a
victim of what many considered a war crime only hardened his resolve to
document the civilian costs of armed conflict.

“When the Israelis attacked me, I felt it is my life’s role to spread the
truth about the crimes against other civilians and journalists in Gaza,”
Quraiqea said. “Israel seeks to obliterate the Palestinian message, but
each injury only makes us ready to expose their crimes. Our narration will
never stop.”

Despite requiring a wheelchair, Quraiqea spent the next decade establishing
himself as an internationally recognized photojournalist. His images from
the occupied Gaza Strip — a densely populated strip besieged by Israel’s
powerful military — have appeared across international publications and in
exhibitions abroad. He formed a small company called Idea Media and got an
office space.

In spite of the challenges and threats he endured reporting in Gaza,
Quraiqea says he had “built his dream” — until last week, when an Israeli
airstrike blew up his life once again.

“My colleagues called, said the IDF” — Israel Defense Forces — “just warned
they were going to bomb the building, so I rushed to the office,” Quraiqea
told The Intercept. “But I didn’t make it in time. It was bombed before I
arrived. Totally destroyed.”

“My colleagues called, said the IDF just warned they were going to bomb the
building, so I rushed to the office. But I didn’t make it in time.”

“I just stood in front of the rubble of my company,” said Quraiqea. “I saw
my dreams, the long days of working, our archive and equipment, all in
rubble. It is all gone now.”

Quraiqea’s agency is just one of more than 20 Gazan media outlets razed
<https://rsf.org/en/news/rsf-asks-icc-prosecutor-say-whether-israeli-airstrikes-media-gaza-constitute-war-crimes>
by Israeli airstrikes in the past week. Much attention has been focused on
the airstrikes that destroyed international media organizations’ Gaza
offices, but local journalists bear enormous burdens of not only their work
for the foreign press, but also to tell the stories of their neighbors and
kin. Unlike international colleagues, Gazan journalists cannot leave, for
lack of Israeli permission, and, without the protection afforded by global
media, take on added risks just by dint of being Palestinians.

Despite their unique risks — and the costs they pay — Gazan journalists
continue to do their work, to tell the story of their people. The more they
do so, the more the international press relies on them, the larger the
targets on their backs become. And yet the attacks that have destroyed so
many of their offices and equipment garner less attention than the very
international organizations that rely on them taking these extraordinary
risks.

“Every outlet that has been leveled to the ground is a loss for journalism
and veracity,” Ignacio Miguel Delgado, the Middle East and North Africa
representative for the Committee to Protect Journalists, told The
Intercept. “The relentless bombings of media outlets in the Gaza Strip,
along with the ban on the entry of foreign journalists to Gaza, is
depriving not only the world of a much-needed coverage, but it also raises
the suspicion that Israel is deliberately trying to prevent coverage of the
ongoing military operations in Gaza.”

Israel announced on Tuesday evening that it would be reopening the Erez
Crossing to Gaza on Wednesday for international journalists.

This week, human rights groups accused
<https://cpj.org/2021/05/israel-bombs-building-in-gaza-city-housing-ap-al-jazeera-offices/>
Israel of disrupting international coverage of the war on Gaza and referred
<https://rsf.org/en/news/rsf-asks-icc-prosecutor-say-whether-israeli-airstrikes-media-gaza-constitute-war-crimes>
Israel to the International Criminal Court, following Saturday’s Israeli
airstrikes on a 12-story tower housing
<https://apnews.com/article/israel-middle-east-israel-palestinian-conflict-media-business-050b1cc02293d702cfbe7db59b6ecbf4>
international media, including Al Jazeera and the Associated Press.

“Deliberately targeting media outlets constitutes a war crime,” Reporters
Without Borders said in a Sunday statement
<https://rsf.org/en/news/rsf-asks-icc-prosecutor-say-whether-israeli-airstrikes-media-gaza-constitute-war-crimes>.
“By intentionally destroying media outlets, the IDF are not only inflicting
unacceptable material damage on news operations. They are also, more
broadly, obstructing media coverage of a conflict that directly affects the
civilian population.”

[image: 14 May 2021, Palestinian Territories, Gaza City: Media personnel
stand amid the rubble of Al-Jalaa tower, which housed several media outlets
including The Associated Press and Al Jazeera, after it was hit by an
Israeli airstrike amid the escalating flare-up of Israeli-Palestinian
violence. Photo: Mohammed Talatene/dpa (Photo by Mohammed Talatene/picture
alliance via Getty Images)]

Journalists stand on the rubble of Al Jala tower, which housed several
media outlets including The Associated Press and Al Jazeera, after it was
targeted by Israeli airstrikes and collapsed, in Gaza City on May 14, 2021.

Photo: Mohammed Talatene/Picture Alliance via Getty Images

*Since Israel launched* its latest campaign in Gaza, the Israeli military
has prevented foreign press and human rights groups from accessing the Gaza
Strip from Israel, despite the mounting numbers of civilian casualties and
the magnitude of destruction.

“When Israel restricts or threatens the press, it dehumanizes
Palestinians,” Amnesty International’s Sherine Tadros said. “The story of a
‘4-year-old named Ahmed who loved Pokemon and playing with his older
sister’ is much more powerful than a single line in a script ‘One Dead
Child in Gaza’ or the death toll that is so often reported. Israel’s doing
this intentionally, lest we forget where the international press is
reporting from in lieu of access to Gaza: the Israeli border towns.”

“When Israel restricts or threatens the press, it dehumanizes Palestinians.”

A week ago, following Israel’s first round of airstrikes on Gaza, the
Israeli Government Press Office announced that there would be “no passage
for journalists through Erez Crossing until further notice.” The next day,
the Press Office hosted a guided tour of Israeli towns near Gaza for
foreign reporters — in coordination with the IDF.

Erez is the only crossing of the Israel-Gaza barrier open to journalists
and its weeklong suspension prevented international news media access to a
major Israeli military operation in Gaza for the first time since the
2008-2009 Gaza War.

On the Gazan side, both the Government Press Office and Ministry of
Interior of Gaza, which are controlled by the Hamas political party and
militant group, confirmed to The Intercept that Israel alone was preventing
access through the Erez Crossing. “Unlike the Israelis,” a spokesperson
said, Hamas welcomes foreign press and human rights groups to monitor the
escalating crisis.

*All the reporting* currently coming out of the territory is being done by
Gazan journalists, many of whom describe a week of sleepless nights under
Israeli bombardment and emotionally exhausting days of documenting civilian
carnage. Last Thursday, Gazan journalists Mohammed Alaloul and Mustafa
Hassona were hit
<https://www.thedailybeast.com/anadolu-agency-journalists-mohammed-alaloul-mustafa-hassona-recount-israeli-airstrike-in-gaza?ref=author>
by an Israeli airstrike while driving in a vehicle clearly marked “TV,”
leaving Alaloul seriously injured.

“Nowhere in the Gaza Strip are journalists safe,” said CPJ’s Delgado.
“Gazan journalists are taking life-threatening risks to report the news.”

“Nowhere in the Gaza Strip are journalists safe. Gazan journalists are
taking life-threatening risks to report the news.”

“When international access to a war zone is restricted, we rely on
journalists inside reporting on the ground,” said Tadros, of Amnesty
International. “In the grand scheme of accountability, they become the
primary people that human rights investigators rely on for evidence, so the
targeting of them is completely unacceptable — these are witness to
potential war crimes for the international community.”

At the time of publication, 12 Israelis have been killed
<https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-gaza-violence-shows-few-signs-slowing-global-diplomacy-ramps-up-2021-05-18/>
by rockets fired by Gazan militants, including two children. In Gaza,
Israeli airstrikes have killed
<https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-gaza-violence-shows-few-signs-slowing-global-diplomacy-ramps-up-2021-05-18/>
at least 215 people, 61 of whom are children. More than 1,400 Gazans have
been
<https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/gaza-flare-up-198-gazans-killed-in-conflict-as-idf-pummels-hamas-targets-1.9817905>
wounded and upward of 50,000 are
<https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/more-than-52000-palestinians-displaced-gaza-un-aid-agency-2021-05-18/#:~:text=More%20than%2052%2C000%20Palestinians%20have,aid%20agency%20said%20on%20Tuesday.>
currently displaced by Israeli airstrikes that have damaged or razed nearly
450 buildings.

“For the Gazan journalists reporting inside now, it’s an incredible and
unfair burden to shoulder,” Tadros said. “But if they can document what’s
going on as precisely as possible, all of these facts matter.” Tadros
added, “I hope they matter, and the only thing we can hold onto is, at the
very least, that no one can claim that this didn’t happen.”

Like all Gazan reporters, Quraiqea’s life beyond journalism is a uniquely
Palestinian story.

Israel killed his father and demolished his home in 1987. In the 2014 war,
his home was destroyed again and, in 2018, he was injured again while
reporting on the popular demonstrations at the Israel-Gaza barrier, known
as the Great March of Return
<https://theintercept.com/2018/03/30/israel-gaza-march-killed-protest/>.

“I suffered a lot from the Occupation. We witnessed three wars, and this is
the fourth. We have lost some of our friends, and lots of colleagues have
been injured,” Quraiqea said. “We really need a real change. We want an
international and legal guarantee that prevents the Occupation from
attacking us and targeting us, as civilians and journalists.”

Within hours of Idea Media’s destruction, Quraiqea had “resumed his work of
documenting the Occupation’s crimes.”

“We will rebuild what the army destroyed,” he told The Intercept, referring
to the Israelis. “And we will keep documenting the Israeli crimes against
the Palestinians.”
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