Reuters
Wed, October 23, 2024
Israeli army raids Al Jazeera Ramallah's office
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - The Israeli military named on Wednesday six Palestinians in Gaza as Al Jazeera reporters who it said were also members of the Hamas or Islamic Jihad militant groups, an allegation which the Qatari network rejected as an attempt to silence journalists.
"Al Jazeera condemns Israeli accusations against its journalists in Gaza and warns against (this) being a justification for targeting them," the network said in a statement.
The Israeli military published documents which it said it had found in Gaza that proved the men had a military affiliation to the groups. Reuters was not able to immediately verify the authenticity of the documents.
The Israeli military said the papers included Hamas and Islamic Jihad lists of personnel details, salaries and militant training courses, phone directories and injury reports.
"These documents serve as proof of the integration of Hamas terrorists within the Qatari Al Jazeera media network," the military said.
Al Jazeera said that "The Network views these fabricated accusations as a blatant attempt to silence the few remaining journalists in the region, thereby obscuring the harsh realities of the war from audiences worldwide."
Israel has long accused Al Jazeera of being a Hamas mouthpiece and over the past year its authorities have ordered it to shut down its operations for security reasons, raided its offices and confiscated equipment.
Al Jazeera has said the Israeli actions against it were criminal, draconian and irresponsible and that the latest allegations were "part of a wider pattern of hostility" towards it.
The network says it has no affiliation with militant groups and has accused Israeli forces of deliberately killing several of its journalists in the Gaza war, including Samer Abu Daqqa and Hamza AlDahdooh. Israel says it does not target journalists.
Qatar established Al Jazeera in 1996 and sees the network as a way to bolster its global profile.
Along with Egypt and the United States it has mediated ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas, though the talks have been deadlocked for months.
(Reporting by Maayan Lubell in Jerusalem and Andrew Mills in Doha; Editing by James Mackenzie and William Maclean)
Israel's military accuses 6 Al Jazeera journalists of acting as Hamas operatives
Chris Benson
Wed, October 23, 2024
Participants hold a poster that reads, 'Targeting Journalists is a Crime.' (Pictured in Malaysia, 2024) According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, as of May of this year, preliminary investigations showed at least 97 journalists and media workers were among the more than 35,000 killed since the war October 2023 Gaza war began. File Photo by Fazry Ismail/EPA-EFE
Oct. 23 (UPI) -- Israel's military said it uncovered documents that it says proves six journalists with the Middle East-based news source Al Jazeera are operatives with Hamas and other Palestinian-linked terror squads.
However, a New York-based international journalism association was skeptical of Israel's accusations against the journalists.
On Wednesday, the Israeli Defense Forces said documents recovered in the Gaza Strip -- including spreadsheets, training course lists, telephone and salary records -- "unequivocally prove" that six journalists with Al-Jazeera were operatives who also functioned as members of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist syndicates.
The IDF named Anas Al-Sharif, Alaa Salama, Hossam Shabat, Ashraf Saraj, Ismail Abu Amr, and Talal Aruki as the accused.
In May, the Israeli government banned Al Jazeera from the country because of its coverage of Israel's war in Gaza. The ban was extended, too.
"These documents are proof of the involvement of Hamas terrorists in the Qatari media network, Al Jazeera," Israel's military said in a statement.
Israel claimed the accused staff journalists are "spearheading" propaganda for Hamas by using Al Jazeera's global platform.
It's alleged that al-Sharif was head of a rocket launching squad. Salameh, IDF officials claimed, was deputy head of a propaganda outfit and a sniper. And al-Sarraj, according to the IDF, was a member of an Islamic Jihadist military unit while Abu Omar had been a training company commander previously wounded in an IDF airstrike several months prior. It's also alleged that al-Arrouqi was a team commander in a Hamas batallion.
On Wednesday, the international Committee to Protect Journalists took to social media to say it was aware of the IDF's accusations against the Al Jazeera reporters and it voiced skepticism over the IDF claims.
"Israel has repeatedly made similar unproven claims without producing credible evidence," the New York City-based nonprofit posted on X close to noon.
The global Al Jazeera network has fiercely denied Israel's claims and accused the IDF of targeting Al Jazeera staff working in Gaza.
In January, the Israeli government iclaimed that an Al Jazeera staff reporter and a freelancer killed in an airstrike also were Hamas operatives. That was followed a month later by accusations that another Al Jazeera journalist who had been wounded in a different IDF strike was a Hamas leader, as well.
According to the CPJ, Israel was responsible for the July killing of Al Jazeera correspondent Ismail Al-Ghoul.
However, Israel's military "previously produced a similar document, which contained contradictory information, showing that Al-Ghoul, born in 1997, received a Hamas military ranking in 2007 -- when he would have been 10 years old," the journalist watchdog group added on Wednesday.
This follows an incident in May this year when Israeli officials wrongly detained journalists it incorrectly believed were working for the Israeli-banned Al Jazeera news broadcaster
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