Israeli forces injured one of the only journalists left in north Gaza on Tuesday in an airstrike, after the military publicly threatened the Al Jazeera reporter with assassination in October.
The journalist, Hossam Shabat, said that he was “deliberately targeted” by Israeli forces when they carried out a seeming double tap strike — an illegal practice under international law — on a house late Tuesday night. Shabat was injured in the strike, but has already resumed reporting, pledging to continue his journalism.
The 23-year-old journalist had traveled to the site of a nearby strike on a house in order to report when he was caught by the blast.
“Upon arriving at the house packed with terrified people, I could hear their desperate screams for help from the second floor,” Shabat recounted on a post on social media.
“The moment I stepped inside, the house was bombed again, and dismembered body parts of the wounded flew around me,” Shabat said. “Rubble crashed down on me and my colleagues; One first responder was killed, and while my colleague and I were injured, many others did not survive.”
Shabat is one of six Palestinians that Israeli forces included on a list of some of the only journalists left reporting in north Gaza in late October. Israeli forces had, without evidence, accused the Al Jazeera journalists on the list of being affiliated with “Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorist” groups — an accusation that laid the groundwork for Israeli forces to target them. The list constituted a clear “assassination threat” against the media workers, Shabat and others noted.
Al Jazeera Media Network rejected the Israeli military’s accusations, saying they were a “blatant attempt to silence the few remaining journalists” in north Gaza.
The threat is especially potent as, without the journalists, there would be little to no reliable information coming out of north Gaza as Israel carries out its brutal ethnic cleansing and extermination campaign in the region. Israeli forces have already killed at least 188 journalists and media workers in Gaza, while Israel’s violence against journalists and their families has pushed numerous journalists out of Gaza.
Shortly after the strike, Shabat posted a video of him consoling distraught paramedics who lost their colleague in the attack. Civil defense workers have also come under fierce aggression by Israeli forces, and the civil defense ministry has been forced to halt its operations in north Gaza due to Israel’s targeting.
“Sitting next to me are the paramedics who were in the same house that was bombed,” Shabat wrote. “They lost their colleague, who was trying to rescue people and was blown to pieces. I’m trying to console them, but I’m overwhelmed by the pain from my injuries.”
In a recent report, a UN special committee raised concern over Israel’s relentless targeting of journalists, saying that Israel’s attacks “severely limit” press freedom while journalists are covering Israeli tactics that the committee said are “consistent with genocide.”
“Since the start of the current escalation, extraordinarily high numbers of journalists have been killed, attacked, injured and detained in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, particularly in Gaza, making it one of the deadliest, most dangerous conflicts for journalists in recent history,” the report said. “United Nations experts have emphasized that unlawful attacks on clearly identifiable journalists appear to be a deliberate strategy by Israeli forces to obstruct the media and silence critical reporting.”
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