Israel’s slaughter of media workers in Gaza has been the most systemic attack on the press in world history. Shuruq As’ad of the Palestinian Journalist Syndicate shares the conditions Palestinian reporters are facing while reporting on the genocide.
October 17, 2024
MODNDOWEISS
MODNDOWEISS
Mourners and colleagues surround the bodies of Al-Jazeera Arabic journalist Ismail al-Ghoul and cameraman Rami al-Refee, killed in an Israeli strike during their coverage of Gaza’s Al-Shati refugee camp, on July 31, 2024. (Photo: Hadi Daoud/APA Images)
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Editor’s Note: This interview was originally published in The New York War Crimes’ anniversary edition “One Year Since Al-Aqsa Flood: Revolution Until Victory.”
Since the publication of this interview in the October 7th edition of The New York War Crimes, the Israeli Occupation Forces killed Omar Al-Balaawi and Mohammed Al-Tanani, two journalists who were reporting from northern Gaza. Occupation forces also critically injured Al-Jazeera cameramen Ali Al-Attar and Fadi Al-Wahidi. Shrapnel from an Israeli bomb hit Al-Attar in the head, causing severe brain damage; a sniper shot Al-Wahidi in the neck. Fadi is now a paraplegic. His colleagues Anas Al-Sharif and Hossam Shabat are calling for his evacuation from Gaza to receive emergency medical care.
On October 2, the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate (PJS) published a report titled Silencing Voices: The Plight of Palestinian Journalists Detained by Israeli Occupation During Ongoing Israeli Aggression. The document’s 26 pages include testimonies from more than a dozen Palestinian journalists from Gaza, the occupied West Bank, and East Jerusalem who were kidnapped by the Israeli occupation and held without due process after October 7, 2023 while on the job.
“They speak of beatings with sharp objects, prolonged hanging, forced stripping, attempted rape of both male and female prisoners, and death threats,” said PJS President Nasser Abu Bakr of the testimonies. “It is slow torture, carried out over hours, days, and sometimes months…We ask the conscience of humanity—where are you in all of this?”
Israel’s mass slaughter of media workers constitutes the largest and most systemic attack on the press in world history. Authors of the PJS report counted over 165 Palestinian journalist martyrs in Gaza since the start of the genocide and 107 media worker detentions throughout Gaza, the occupied West Bank, and East Jerusalem. Some remain behind bars; others are unaccounted for.
We sat down with Shuruq As’ad of the PJS to discuss the findings of the report and conditions that Palestinian reporters continue to face while reporting on the Israeli occupation.
NEW YORK WAR CRIMES: What was the impetus behind the report and why did the PJS decide to release it now?
Shuruq As’ad: I want to start by saying that this is nothing new. It’s not like the occupation was very nice to journalists and then after October 7 they started being violent. What we are experiencing is a systematic attack that has been escalating year after year.
We decided to launch this particular report because for a long time, we were focused on documenting the journalists being killed. Then we started to notice an escalation in home invasions, in journalists being violently taken from their families and held in prisons without any rights, without any international condemnation, without any due process. We couldn’t even visit them. We didn’t know where they were.
We knocked on the doors of international human rights organizations, but they didn’t have any answers. So our colleagues were left alone to face this military rule, this administrative detention, which is illegal under international law. We felt that we had to shed light on what was happening, not just so people understand what’s going on but so we can stop this. We want journalists in Palestine to have the same protections as journalists anywhere else.
NYWC: The report emphasizes the occupation’s use of administrative detention to intimidate and silence the Palestinian press. Can you talk about what this tactic constitutes and why the PJS is focusing on it?
SA: Administrative detention is an emergency military law that was used by the British during the mandate period. When the Israeli occupation took root in Palestine, they inherited this law, which gives them the right to come into your home at any time, to drag you to prison without saying why, without taking you to court, and without telling you when this arrest will end. They can renew your detention every three or six months simply because there’s supposedly a secret security file on you.
Israel uses this law when it has no legal case against people it wants to arrest. If they don’t like what you write, if they feel you may be going to demonstrations, if they sense that you are educating your students about Palestine, they can put you behind bars. So many people in Palestinian society — parents, teachers, doctors, activists, journalists — are in prison. Of the more than 10,700 Palestinians arrested since October 7, about 8,800 of them are administrative detainees. It’s not a small number.
NYWC: Let’s discuss the main findings of the report. What did you learn over the course of your interviews and research?
SA: The main finding is that Israel is waging a campaign of terror against Palestinian journalists. There is a sense that if a journalist simply does their job, they could pay a high price for it; they could be arrested, tortured. Everyone getting out of Israeli prison is 20 pounds lighter, even after only a month behind bars. They get out and they say, “I survived.” All of them appear traumatized, full of fear.
The stories are terrifying. They hang you until you are suspended only a few inches from the floor. Or they put your head in a bag that smells like human feces for hours. They beat you continuously. We heard of women who got their periods and were denied pads. They were shut in cells and not allowed to shower for days, and if they did shower, it was only a few seconds under the water. We heard of women who weren’t allowed to change their clothes for six months. Then there’s the humiliations, situations where they would, for example, order people to get down on their knees and howl, or lick food off the floor and say they love Israel. Some people contracted illnesses, skin conditions that they can’t name. Of course, they’re not given medication or allowed visitation. There’s also rape in the prisons. It didn’t happen to any of our colleagues, but it happened to many people from Gaza, according to people we spoke with who spent time inside.
NYWC: How did you collect testimonies of the journalists who were imprisoned after October 7?
SA: Our members in Gaza collected testimonies from their colleagues who were released, and we heard from a lot of families — mothers and sisters and such — many of whom gave us testimonies of what they heard from their relatives who were released. And in the West Bank, we met up with the journalists who were released and collected their testimonies in person. We also collected data and information from the official prisoner agencies and organizations like the Palestinian Ministry of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoner’s Club. We also met up with lawyers. Some of them were afraid to talk as well because they could be prevented from visiting their clients. And the ones who were visiting were only doing so once a month, imagine that.
NYWC: What kind of response and support have you gotten from international organizations?
SA: Organizations like the CPJ [Committee to Protect Journalists], all they do is publish reports saying the Israelis arrested this many journalists and broke this many cameras. They publish report after report after report after report — and then? They want more documentation, ok, and then? How are we going to get journalists to work safely, to film safely?
We went to the Red Cross’s office in Ramallah after one of our colleagues, Ibrahim Muhareb, was hit by Israeli shrapnel in Khan Younis and bled out for an entire day. The journalists he was with at the time called the Red Cross and asked them to come rescue him, but no one came and he died. When we asked the organization why they did not send anyone to save Ibrahim, or why they didn’t even issue a statement calling for his rescue or condemning his killing, they told us this is not their strategy, that they prefer to work through diplomacy. And I thought, ah, OK, if it was the war between Russia and Ukraine, then would it be your strategy? We didn’t even get a press release from the Red Cross.
NYWC: Whatever their strategy is, it does not appear to be doing anything.
SA: There needs to be a call from the UN and from all international humanitarian organizations to protect journalistic freedom in Palestine. We need to work together to apply real pressure on Israel, not just to put out press releases and documentation. Diplomats and foreign aid workers and NGOs need to take this documentation back to their governments and do lobbying, do something. They have a role to play. In the end, we are just a local syndicate working under occupation. We do what we can, but we don’t have any kind of authority.
NYWC: We’ve heard about the conditions of journalists in Gaza reporting while displaced, while deprived of food and water, and in the aftermath of their loved ones’ martyrdoms. We know less about the conditions of reporters in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Can you give us a sense of their experience on the job?
SA: My colleagues recently sent me a video, a snippet from Al Jazeera International. They were in Qabatiya, in a location far away from the action, far from the tanks and the military. The moment they came out of their cars — all of which were television production vans with TV stickers — and started putting on their vests, they immediately got showered with tear gas for absolutely no reason. Every time journalists have gone out to cover the Israeli raids on Jenin, Tulkarem, and Nablus, they have been chased by the occupation forces and, in some cases, injured.
Jerusalem is, of course, completely isolated. None of the reporters in the West Bank can get there. For us reporters from Jerusalem, when we go out, we’re faced with about 550 army checkpoints in addition to the wall. It should take half an hour for me to get from Ramallah to Jerusalem, but instead it takes three. And the moment you get to the front of the line and tell them you’re a journalist, they become aggressive. When they see you carrying a camera, showing your press cards, doing an interview, you’re opening yourself up to being attacked, not just by the army, but also by settlers.
So it’s really scary to go from place to place, and that is intentional. They want you to remain stuck in a small place, unable to leave and report elsewhere. They don’t want any narrative other than their own getting out.
NYWC: Despite all these risks, Palestinian journalists keep reporting. Can you explain the choice to carry on in spite of all the odds?
SA: I think about this question a lot. I can try to answer it from my own perspective. I covered invasions, I covered the [2006] war on the Lebanese border, and I kept functioning, even when we were besieged and scared, because in that situation you’re not just covering a story, you’re covering yourself. You’re covering your life, your country, your children, your friends, your hospitals, your schools, your streets, your future. It’s not just a story for you. And journalists in Gaza really feel like this is their role, like they have a responsibility to their people, especially because no one else is going to deliver the truth from Gaza. Some become frustrated because no matter how much they deliver, nothing changes, but they keep going because it gives them a little hope that they can contribute something.
For them, I think, it’s not just a job. They are witnesses more than they are reporters. They are witnesses to genocide, to massacres, to displacement. And they witness all this while they themselves are displaced. Some days, I think that if they stop reporting, they will be too devastated. It keeps them going. Yesterday I was telling a journalist I am working with, “Sorry, I know that you were just displaced from your tent, so if you don’t have time to do this today, don’t worry about it.” And she told me no, it’s the opposite. When I work, I feel like I’m getting out of the catastrophic conditions that I’m in. Instead of feeling like there’s no meaning, I have a purpose. When I do nothing, I just sit around and think about death and loss. I feel devastated.
I believe that they have taught a lot, the journalists of Gaza. We learned from them how to be really dedicated to what you do, how to work in the midst of a crisis, a crisis that you are a part of, a crisis in which you are an even bigger target than the people around you. They go through so much to capture a photo; They work so hard to find a little food, and then they give it to their families. Imagine, without these local journalists, we would have never known what happened in Gaza. Their patience is unbelievable. Each one of them is a story. Each one of them is a story.
Editor’s Note: This interview was originally published in The New York War Crimes’ anniversary edition “One Year Since Al-Aqsa Flood: Revolution Until Victory.”
Since the publication of this interview in the October 7th edition of The New York War Crimes, the Israeli Occupation Forces killed Omar Al-Balaawi and Mohammed Al-Tanani, two journalists who were reporting from northern Gaza. Occupation forces also critically injured Al-Jazeera cameramen Ali Al-Attar and Fadi Al-Wahidi. Shrapnel from an Israeli bomb hit Al-Attar in the head, causing severe brain damage; a sniper shot Al-Wahidi in the neck. Fadi is now a paraplegic. His colleagues Anas Al-Sharif and Hossam Shabat are calling for his evacuation from Gaza to receive emergency medical care.
On October 2, the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate (PJS) published a report titled Silencing Voices: The Plight of Palestinian Journalists Detained by Israeli Occupation During Ongoing Israeli Aggression. The document’s 26 pages include testimonies from more than a dozen Palestinian journalists from Gaza, the occupied West Bank, and East Jerusalem who were kidnapped by the Israeli occupation and held without due process after October 7, 2023 while on the job.
“They speak of beatings with sharp objects, prolonged hanging, forced stripping, attempted rape of both male and female prisoners, and death threats,” said PJS President Nasser Abu Bakr of the testimonies. “It is slow torture, carried out over hours, days, and sometimes months…We ask the conscience of humanity—where are you in all of this?”
Israel’s mass slaughter of media workers constitutes the largest and most systemic attack on the press in world history. Authors of the PJS report counted over 165 Palestinian journalist martyrs in Gaza since the start of the genocide and 107 media worker detentions throughout Gaza, the occupied West Bank, and East Jerusalem. Some remain behind bars; others are unaccounted for.
We sat down with Shuruq As’ad of the PJS to discuss the findings of the report and conditions that Palestinian reporters continue to face while reporting on the Israeli occupation.
NEW YORK WAR CRIMES: What was the impetus behind the report and why did the PJS decide to release it now?
Shuruq As’ad: I want to start by saying that this is nothing new. It’s not like the occupation was very nice to journalists and then after October 7 they started being violent. What we are experiencing is a systematic attack that has been escalating year after year.
We decided to launch this particular report because for a long time, we were focused on documenting the journalists being killed. Then we started to notice an escalation in home invasions, in journalists being violently taken from their families and held in prisons without any rights, without any international condemnation, without any due process. We couldn’t even visit them. We didn’t know where they were.
We knocked on the doors of international human rights organizations, but they didn’t have any answers. So our colleagues were left alone to face this military rule, this administrative detention, which is illegal under international law. We felt that we had to shed light on what was happening, not just so people understand what’s going on but so we can stop this. We want journalists in Palestine to have the same protections as journalists anywhere else.
NYWC: The report emphasizes the occupation’s use of administrative detention to intimidate and silence the Palestinian press. Can you talk about what this tactic constitutes and why the PJS is focusing on it?
SA: Administrative detention is an emergency military law that was used by the British during the mandate period. When the Israeli occupation took root in Palestine, they inherited this law, which gives them the right to come into your home at any time, to drag you to prison without saying why, without taking you to court, and without telling you when this arrest will end. They can renew your detention every three or six months simply because there’s supposedly a secret security file on you.
Israel uses this law when it has no legal case against people it wants to arrest. If they don’t like what you write, if they feel you may be going to demonstrations, if they sense that you are educating your students about Palestine, they can put you behind bars. So many people in Palestinian society — parents, teachers, doctors, activists, journalists — are in prison. Of the more than 10,700 Palestinians arrested since October 7, about 8,800 of them are administrative detainees. It’s not a small number.
NYWC: Let’s discuss the main findings of the report. What did you learn over the course of your interviews and research?
SA: The main finding is that Israel is waging a campaign of terror against Palestinian journalists. There is a sense that if a journalist simply does their job, they could pay a high price for it; they could be arrested, tortured. Everyone getting out of Israeli prison is 20 pounds lighter, even after only a month behind bars. They get out and they say, “I survived.” All of them appear traumatized, full of fear.
The stories are terrifying. They hang you until you are suspended only a few inches from the floor. Or they put your head in a bag that smells like human feces for hours. They beat you continuously. We heard of women who got their periods and were denied pads. They were shut in cells and not allowed to shower for days, and if they did shower, it was only a few seconds under the water. We heard of women who weren’t allowed to change their clothes for six months. Then there’s the humiliations, situations where they would, for example, order people to get down on their knees and howl, or lick food off the floor and say they love Israel. Some people contracted illnesses, skin conditions that they can’t name. Of course, they’re not given medication or allowed visitation. There’s also rape in the prisons. It didn’t happen to any of our colleagues, but it happened to many people from Gaza, according to people we spoke with who spent time inside.
NYWC: How did you collect testimonies of the journalists who were imprisoned after October 7?
SA: Our members in Gaza collected testimonies from their colleagues who were released, and we heard from a lot of families — mothers and sisters and such — many of whom gave us testimonies of what they heard from their relatives who were released. And in the West Bank, we met up with the journalists who were released and collected their testimonies in person. We also collected data and information from the official prisoner agencies and organizations like the Palestinian Ministry of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoner’s Club. We also met up with lawyers. Some of them were afraid to talk as well because they could be prevented from visiting their clients. And the ones who were visiting were only doing so once a month, imagine that.
NYWC: What kind of response and support have you gotten from international organizations?
SA: Organizations like the CPJ [Committee to Protect Journalists], all they do is publish reports saying the Israelis arrested this many journalists and broke this many cameras. They publish report after report after report after report — and then? They want more documentation, ok, and then? How are we going to get journalists to work safely, to film safely?
We went to the Red Cross’s office in Ramallah after one of our colleagues, Ibrahim Muhareb, was hit by Israeli shrapnel in Khan Younis and bled out for an entire day. The journalists he was with at the time called the Red Cross and asked them to come rescue him, but no one came and he died. When we asked the organization why they did not send anyone to save Ibrahim, or why they didn’t even issue a statement calling for his rescue or condemning his killing, they told us this is not their strategy, that they prefer to work through diplomacy. And I thought, ah, OK, if it was the war between Russia and Ukraine, then would it be your strategy? We didn’t even get a press release from the Red Cross.
NYWC: Whatever their strategy is, it does not appear to be doing anything.
SA: There needs to be a call from the UN and from all international humanitarian organizations to protect journalistic freedom in Palestine. We need to work together to apply real pressure on Israel, not just to put out press releases and documentation. Diplomats and foreign aid workers and NGOs need to take this documentation back to their governments and do lobbying, do something. They have a role to play. In the end, we are just a local syndicate working under occupation. We do what we can, but we don’t have any kind of authority.
NYWC: We’ve heard about the conditions of journalists in Gaza reporting while displaced, while deprived of food and water, and in the aftermath of their loved ones’ martyrdoms. We know less about the conditions of reporters in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Can you give us a sense of their experience on the job?
SA: My colleagues recently sent me a video, a snippet from Al Jazeera International. They were in Qabatiya, in a location far away from the action, far from the tanks and the military. The moment they came out of their cars — all of which were television production vans with TV stickers — and started putting on their vests, they immediately got showered with tear gas for absolutely no reason. Every time journalists have gone out to cover the Israeli raids on Jenin, Tulkarem, and Nablus, they have been chased by the occupation forces and, in some cases, injured.
Jerusalem is, of course, completely isolated. None of the reporters in the West Bank can get there. For us reporters from Jerusalem, when we go out, we’re faced with about 550 army checkpoints in addition to the wall. It should take half an hour for me to get from Ramallah to Jerusalem, but instead it takes three. And the moment you get to the front of the line and tell them you’re a journalist, they become aggressive. When they see you carrying a camera, showing your press cards, doing an interview, you’re opening yourself up to being attacked, not just by the army, but also by settlers.
So it’s really scary to go from place to place, and that is intentional. They want you to remain stuck in a small place, unable to leave and report elsewhere. They don’t want any narrative other than their own getting out.
NYWC: Despite all these risks, Palestinian journalists keep reporting. Can you explain the choice to carry on in spite of all the odds?
SA: I think about this question a lot. I can try to answer it from my own perspective. I covered invasions, I covered the [2006] war on the Lebanese border, and I kept functioning, even when we were besieged and scared, because in that situation you’re not just covering a story, you’re covering yourself. You’re covering your life, your country, your children, your friends, your hospitals, your schools, your streets, your future. It’s not just a story for you. And journalists in Gaza really feel like this is their role, like they have a responsibility to their people, especially because no one else is going to deliver the truth from Gaza. Some become frustrated because no matter how much they deliver, nothing changes, but they keep going because it gives them a little hope that they can contribute something.
For them, I think, it’s not just a job. They are witnesses more than they are reporters. They are witnesses to genocide, to massacres, to displacement. And they witness all this while they themselves are displaced. Some days, I think that if they stop reporting, they will be too devastated. It keeps them going. Yesterday I was telling a journalist I am working with, “Sorry, I know that you were just displaced from your tent, so if you don’t have time to do this today, don’t worry about it.” And she told me no, it’s the opposite. When I work, I feel like I’m getting out of the catastrophic conditions that I’m in. Instead of feeling like there’s no meaning, I have a purpose. When I do nothing, I just sit around and think about death and loss. I feel devastated.
I believe that they have taught a lot, the journalists of Gaza. We learned from them how to be really dedicated to what you do, how to work in the midst of a crisis, a crisis that you are a part of, a crisis in which you are an even bigger target than the people around you. They go through so much to capture a photo; They work so hard to find a little food, and then they give it to their families. Imagine, without these local journalists, we would have never known what happened in Gaza. Their patience is unbelievable. Each one of them is a story. Each one of them is a story.
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