<div dir="ltr">
<div id="gmail-toolbar" class="gmail-toolbar-container">
</div><div class="gmail-container" dir="ltr">
<div class="gmail-header gmail-reader-header gmail-reader-show-element">
<a class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain" href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/palestine-women-journalists-speak-up-pa-attacks">middleeasteye.net</a>
<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Palestinian women journalists speak out against 'deliberate' attacks by PA forces</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">By Aziza Nofal in Ramallah - July 2, 2021<br></div>
</div>
<hr>
<div class="gmail-content">
<div class="gmail-moz-reader-content gmail-reader-show-element"><div id="gmail-readability-page-1" class="gmail-page">
<div><p>For several days now, Palestinian journalist
Najlaa Zaitoun has been trying to convince her children, 11-year-old
Haytham and 8-year-old Zein, to leave the house. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>'A person wearing plain clothes threatened me, to my face, that he would rape me, and then defame my reputation'</p>
<p><em>- Najlaa Zaitoun, journalist</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>“I’m afraid the person who beat you will come and beat me,” Zein said
to her, as she urged them to keep up their training at the sports club
they usually go to every day. </p>
<p>On 26 June, the 35-year-old was assaulted by plainclothes security
forces while she was covering protests called following the death of
popular Palestinian activist Nizar Banat while in Palestinian Security
Forces custody two days earlier. </p>
<p>The security forces chased Zaitoun, seized her phone, which she was
using to film the protest, and violently attacked her with a truncheon.
She was also threatened with rape.</p>
<p>"A person wearing plain clothes threatened me, to my face, that he
would rape me, and then defame my reputation," she tells Middle East
Eye.</p>
<div>
<p><img src="https://www.middleeasteye.net/sites/default/files/Najlaa%20Zaitoun_0.jpeg" alt="Palestinian female journalists attacked by PA forces" style="margin-right: 25px;" width="449" height="337"></p>
Bruises Najlaa Zaitoun sustained while covering the protests can be seen on her arm (Supplied)</div>
<p>Zaitoun has been living in a state of fear ever since and the violent beating she received has left visible marks on her body.</p>
<p>"I don't feel safe, not even in my own home," she says. Since the attack, Zaitoun has been staying at her parents’ house. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, the assault on the journalist has moved online, with a
smear campaign targeting her on social media accounts affiliated with
the Palestinian Authority (PA) and accusing her of being the “one who
attacked the security forces.” </p>
<h3>Targeted attacks</h3>
<p>The attack on Zaitoun is one of several instances of violence against
women journalists in the course of their work covering the protests.
The incidents indicate that Palestinian security forces are specifically
targeting women journalists, as reflected in the escalating levels of
hostility and violence towars them compared to their male counterparts.</p>
<p>Attacks on women journalists have included physical violence, as was
the case with Zaitoun and four others; confiscation of electronic
devices used to cover the events; intimidation and harassment; chasing
journalists in the street; arrest attempts and a ban on reporting. </p>
<p>The assaults have continued even after the protests were over, with
many female journalists receiving veiled threats that they will be
discredited and defamed.</p>
<p>Saja al-Alamy is one of those attacked while reporting on the
protests. On 24 June, Alamy was subjected to several attempts by
security forces to prevent her from doing her job, and had to show her
Palestinian Journalists Syndicate membership card each time. </p>
<div>
<p><img src="https://www.middleeasteye.net/sites/default/files/Saja%20al-Alamy.jpeg" alt="Palestinian female journalists attacked by PA forces" style="margin-right: 25px;" width="449" height="337"></p>
'My press armour helped the perpetrators to identify me as a journalist, and attack me', Saja Alamy says (Supplied)</div>
<p>Two days later, expecting journalist to go on being
obstructed, Alamy wore her bulletproof press body armour and affixed her
press card on the back of her phone, which she was using to film the
events. </p>
<p>None of this stopped her from being attacked. Instead, she believes the measures did her more harm than good.</p>
<p>“My press armour helped the perpetrators to identify me as a
journalist, and attack me,” she says, adding that she was only able to
escape the scene after she had taken off her press vest and concealed
her identity as a journalist.</p>
<p>“There was a direct attack on us. One of the security officers in
plainclothes was pointing at my female journalist colleague and me,
asking his partner to take a photo of us so that he can identify us
later,” she says.</p>
<p>Security forces had first attacked a group of journalists, including
Alamy, with tear gas, but upon noticing her filming an attack on
protesters, she was directly targeted. Alamy resisted the officers’
violent attempt to confiscate her phone, and refused to hand it over.
She then managed to flee the scene to a nearby building and hide in a
women’s toilet.</p>
<p>Alamy tried for more than an hour to reach her colleagues for help,
but all entrances were being watched by security officers, including
those who had chased her. She was eventually able to escape, after
shedding her press armour, and pretended to be out shopping.</p>
<h3>Life threatening</h3>
<p>MEE reporter Shatha Hammad was also among the women journalists who were targeted in the attacks of 26 June.</p>
<p>She sustained a shrapnel wound to her face from a tear gas canister
that a security officer shot directly at her after failing to confiscate
her phone. </p>
<p>Hammad says that security officers in plainclothes had focused their
attention on women reporters, singling them out by pointing at them,
even before the clashes erupted, which, she believes, suggests that the
assault was planned and deliberate.</p>
<p>According to Hammad, the unprecedented violence against women journalists made her feel insecure and trapped.</p>
<p>“What happened is life threatening,” she says, demanding immediate
action from local and international organisations to provide the
necessary protection for them.</p>
<div>
<p><img src="https://www.middleeasteye.net/sites/default/files/Shatha%20Hammad.jpeg" alt="Palestinian female journalists attacked by PA forces" style="margin-right: 25px;" width="449" height="265"></p>
Shatha Hammad sustained wounds to face after being directly targeted with a tear gas cannister </div>
<p>The detailed testimonies of women journalists were shocking
to many, especially the Palestinian Authority’s use of cultural norms to
shame and intimidate women, exercising social pressure against them as
an attempt to silence and prevent them from performing their work. </p>
<p>According to Ghazi Bani Odeh, head of the monitoring and
documentation unit at the Palestinian Centre for Development and Media
Freedoms (Mada), these exponential attacks against women journalists are
unprecedented and planned. </p>
<p>“The assaults on female journalists have two levels. The first is the
direct physical violence in the streets; then comes the online attacks
designed to incite people to exert social pressure on them,” Bani Odeh
tells MEE, in reference to the smear campaigns that use hate speech that
could fuel violence against them. </p>
<h3>Smear campaigns</h3>
<p>One of the journalists targeted by a defamation campaign was Fayhaa
Khanfar, who was beaten up in the street on 26 June, with her phone
stolen from her as she covered the protest.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>'When I regained consciousness, I went to security officers crying and asking for help. But no one moved a muscle'</p>
<p>- <em>Fayhaa Khanfar, journalist</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Security officers in plain clothes had chased Khanfar to confiscate
her device and knocked her to the ground, causing her to briefly lose
consciousness. </p>
<p>No one had intervened to help her. The attack resulted in a hairline fracture to her shoulder and bruises all over her body.</p>
<p>“I was attacked by security officers wearing plain clothes. They pushed me to the ground and stole my phone,” Khanfar tells MEE.</p>
<p>“When I regained consciousness, I went to security officers crying and asking for help. But no one moved a muscle.”</p>
<p>Orchestrated online attacks targeted Khanfar, who wears the hijab,
aimed to discredit her in a conservative society by circulating images
of a girl in beachwear, who looks very similar to Khanfar, and falsely
identifying her as the journalist.</p>
<p>Khanfar was later summoned for interrogation at the intelligence
headquarters in Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, and told that she
had to appear if she wanted to collect her phone, a move she considered
an attempt to lure her in and arrest her.</p>
<p>Wafa Abdulrahman, the director of Filistiniat, a civil society
organisation, sees the attacks on journalists as a chilling attempt to
silence the women who have been spearheading the protests. </p>
<div>
<p><img src="https://www.middleeasteye.net/sites/default/files/Fayhaa%20Khanfar_0.jpeg" alt="Palestinian female journalists attacked by PA forces" style="margin-right: 25px;" width="449" height="337"></p>
Fayhaa Khanfar suffered a hairline fracture to her shoulder and bruises all over her body (Supplied)</div>
<p>Abdulrahman says that the systematic targeting of
women journalists is intended to first send them a threatening message,
and second, to warn the society that women reporters will not be spared
and that the power of the security forces is unbreakable. </p>
<p>As attacks on women journalists continue through online defamation
campaigns and veiled threats, they find themselves living in constant
danger and feeling personally insecure. </p>
<p>According to Majid Arori, a media freedom activist and a human rights
specialist, there has to be individual and collective legal actions to
deter such attacks in the future. </p>
<p>“The attacked women journalists must file legal complaints, providing
the necessary documentation via local and international legal
organisations to exert pressure on those who perpetrated the assaults,”
he says, adding that these attacks are attempts to suppress critical
voices and any protests against corruption. </p>
</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<div>
</div>
</div>
</div>