![[Freelance]](../gif/fl3H.png)
Israeli government group denounces journalists as terrorists
A GROUP calling itself the "Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center" on 27 February issued a claim that "More than half of the Palestinian journalists killed in the Gaza Strip during Operation Iron Swords were affiliated with terrorist organizations". It was, unsurprisingly, a hit on Twitter (currently trading as X) and other social media. The Center identifies itself as "part of the Israel Intelligence Heritage and Commemoration Center, the government institution for commemorating the legacy of the Israeli intelligence community, located at Glilot in central Israel".
And how did the Center come up with this figure?
It looked at 131 names published by the media office of the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip. This contrasts with the 94 journalists and media workers whose killings the Freelance regarded as being confirmed at that time. The Center counted 78 who it says had "overt, obvious membership in an organization or its military branch [or] employment by a media outlet of one of the organizations". It alleges that 13 were "prominent members of a terrorist organization, Fatah or the Palestinian Authority". It makes confusing reference to a possibly-different group of 13.
The Center's list seems, therefore, to include 65 journalists who it condemns because of the outlet they worked for.
It seems that in July 2018 Israel's then defence minister, Avigdor Liberman, designated Al-Quds TV as a terrorist organisation. In that month, as the United Nations summarises it, Hamas and other militants fired 283 rockets and mortars from Gaza towards Israel, while the Israeli Air Force fired some 189 missiles and artillery shells against targets in Gaza.
Al-Quds TV and Al-Quds Radio are government stations, and in 2007 Hamas took control of the government of the Gaza Strip, in armed conflict with forces affiliated to Fatah, the party that controls the Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank.
That history makes the Center's reference to journalists affiliated with Fatah or with the Palestinian Authority particularly strange.
What the Center's accusations boil down to, then, is that of the 131 named by the Gazan authorities it is making serious accusations against half a dozen or so. These accusations are contested. The contestation is complicated. It is unusual to define a journalist who works for a government outlet as a terrorist. We leave listing analogies as an exercise for the reader.
25 June 2024
There are six bylines on the Guardian story that is essentially a rewite of this with added official Israeli denials: ‘The grey zone’: how IDF views some journalists in Gaza as legitimate targets.
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