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<font size="1"><a href="https://theintercept.com/2021/05/18/gaza-journalists-israel-palestine-attacks/">https://theintercept.com/2021/05/18/gaza-journalists-israel-palestine-attacks/</a>
</font><h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Israel Destroyed Offices of More Than 20 Palestinian Media Outlets in Gaza</h1>
<div class="gmail-PostByline-names"><a class="gmail-PostByline-link" rel="author" href="https://theintercept.com/staff/shrouq-aila/"><span>Shrouq Aila</span></a>, <a class="gmail-PostByline-link" rel="author" href="https://theintercept.com/staff/anna-therese-day/"><span>Anna Therese Day</span></a><span class="gmail-PostByline-date"><span> - May 18 2021</span></span>
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<div class="gmail-moz-reader-content gmail-reader-show-element"><div id="gmail-readability-page-1" class="gmail-page"><div><div><p>GAZA CITY — <u>In 2008, Momen</u>
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.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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.”</p></div><blockquote><span></span><p>“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.”</p></blockquote><div><p>“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.”</p>
<p>Quraiqea’s agency is just one of more than 20 Gazan media outlets <a href="https://rsf.org/en/news/rsf-asks-icc-prosecutor-say-whether-israeli-airstrikes-media-gaza-constitute-war-crimes">razed</a>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>Israel announced on Tuesday evening that it would be reopening the
Erez Crossing to Gaza on Wednesday for international journalists.</p></div><div><p>This week, human rights groups <a href="https://cpj.org/2021/05/israel-bombs-building-in-gaza-city-housing-ap-al-jazeera-offices/">accused</a> Israel of disrupting international coverage of the war on Gaza and <a href="https://rsf.org/en/news/rsf-asks-icc-prosecutor-say-whether-israeli-airstrikes-media-gaza-constitute-war-crimes">referred</a> Israel to the International Criminal Court, following Saturday’s Israeli airstrikes on a 12-story tower <a href="https://apnews.com/article/israel-middle-east-israel-palestinian-conflict-media-business-050b1cc02293d702cfbe7db59b6ecbf4">housing</a> international media, including Al Jazeera and the Associated Press.</p>
<p>“Deliberately targeting media outlets constitutes a war crime,” Reporters Without Borders said in a Sunday<a href="https://rsf.org/en/news/rsf-asks-icc-prosecutor-say-whether-israeli-airstrikes-media-gaza-constitute-war-crimes"> statement</a>.
“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.”</p></div><div><p><img src="https://theintercept.imgix.net/wp-uploads/sites/1/2021/05/GettyImages-1232905923-palestine-media_2.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&q=90" alt="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)" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="476" height="317"></p><p class="gmail-caption">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.</p>
<p class="gmail-caption">
Photo: Mohammed Talatene/Picture Alliance via Getty Images</p></div><div><p><u>Since Israel launched</u>
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.</p>
<p>“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.”</p></div><blockquote><span></span><p>“When Israel restricts or threatens the press, it dehumanizes Palestinians.”</p></blockquote><div><p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><u>All the reporting</u> 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 <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/anadolu-agency-journalists-mohammed-alaloul-mustafa-hassona-recount-israeli-airstrike-in-gaza?ref=author">were hit</a> by an Israeli airstrike while driving in a vehicle clearly marked “TV,” leaving Alaloul seriously injured.</p>
<p>“Nowhere in the Gaza Strip are journalists safe,” said CPJ’s Delgado.
“Gazan journalists are taking life-threatening risks to report the
news.”</p></div><blockquote><span></span><p>“Nowhere in the Gaza Strip are journalists safe. Gazan journalists are taking life-threatening risks to report the news.”</p></blockquote><div><p>“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.”</p>
<p>At the time of publication, 12 Israelis have been<a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-gaza-violence-shows-few-signs-slowing-global-diplomacy-ramps-up-2021-05-18/"> killed</a> by rockets fired by Gazan militants, including two children. In Gaza, Israeli airstrikes have <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-gaza-violence-shows-few-signs-slowing-global-diplomacy-ramps-up-2021-05-18/">killed</a> at least 215 people, 61 of whom are children. More than 1,400 Gazans <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/gaza-flare-up-198-gazans-killed-in-conflict-as-idf-pummels-hamas-targets-1.9817905">have been</a> wounded and upward of 50,000 <a href="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.">are</a> currently displaced by Israeli airstrikes that have damaged or razed nearly 450 buildings.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>Like all Gazan reporters, Quraiqea’s life beyond journalism is a uniquely Palestinian story.</p>
<p>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 <a href="https://theintercept.com/2018/03/30/israel-gaza-march-killed-protest/">Great March of Return</a>.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>Within hours of Idea Media’s destruction, Quraiqea had “resumed his work of documenting the Occupation’s crimes.”</p>
<p>“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.”</p></div></div></div></div>
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