Mounting Journalist Deaths In Gaza: 2 Prominent IE Voices Share Views

INLAND EMPIRE, CA — The high death rate of journalists in the Gaza Strip, under siege for nearly two years now, points to the Israeli government's objective of trying to suppress the "truth of what's happening" there, according to an Inland Empire media professor, while a former local columnist questioned whether "bad intelligence" or deliberate acts were to blame for the casualties.

Oct. 7 will mark 24 months since the initial clash between Hamas insurgents and the Israeli military, after the former raided southern Israel, taking hostages during the Nova Music Festival, where around 1,200 died. That triggered an Israeli Defense Forces invasion of parts of Gaza, where the Palestinian Ministry of Health has documented over 64,000 confirmed deaths -- one-third of them children -- and almost 160,000 wounded.

The number of IDF soldiers killed is close to 1,000, according to published reports.

The United Nations Human Rights Council, relying on figures reported by different organizations, has estimated the number of Palestinian journalist fatalities at 250.

"They are targeting journalists, healthcare workers, teachers, relief workers and anyone else, getting rid of as many Palestinians as possible," Cal State San Bernardino Professor Ahlam Muhtaseb, who lectures on mass media at both the main campus and the Palm Desert satellite campus, told City News Service. "It's a textbook case of genocide. The fact that Israel doesn't want international media in there says everything. They don't want the truth of what's happening to be told."

Longtime Press-Enterprise columnist Dan Bernstein, who has since retired from the newspaper, acknowledged that "Israel is not being careful with journalists or civilians generally."

"It's very disturbing," he told CNS. "But Hamas is accused of being worse, using civilians as shields. I don't think they really care about their people."

The IDF has barred admittance of western journalists into Gaza, citing safety concerns, leaving it to Palestinian journalists contracting with news agencies to report on events.

The prohibition recently prompted worldwide circulation of a petition titled "Freedom to Report" -- https://freedomtoreport.org/ -- signed by almost 2,000 media professionals, demanding that Israel stop "the erosion of press freedom" with restrictions intended to "shut down access to truth in times of war."

Deaths of Palestinian journalists in August reached a crescendo, following the loss of Al Jazeera's Gaza Bureau Chief Anas al-Sharif, along with three of his colleagues and two freelancers, who were struck by a missile adjacent to the Al-Shifa Medical Complex. The IDF classified al-Sharif as a "Hamas operative." But the International Committee to Protect Journalists rejected the government's unsubstantiated claims, describing his death as a deliberate "murder."

Two weeks after al-Sharif and his colleagues' deaths, Associated Press photojournalist Mariam Abu Daqqa, Reuters photojournalist Hussam al-Masri and three other reporters were killed in a double missile strike on Nasser Hospital -- where they were documenting a recovery operation after an earlier IDF attack on the hospital.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is under indictment by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes, referred to the killings as a "tragic mishap." The IDF stated that it "regrets any harm to uninvolved individuals and does not target journalists as such. The IDF acts to mitigate harm to uninvolved individuals as much as possible while maintaining the safety of IDF troops."

"It's kind of a difficult situation," Bernstein said. "We hear there's nothing better than Israeli intelligence. Then something like this happens. What's provoking these things? Are they calculated hit jobs, or is it just bad intelligence?"

Muhtaseb said there's no question any civilian death, journalist or otherwise, constitutes a "war crime -- full stop."

The professor is co-director of the Gaza XR Project, which began as a documentary of the Palestinian land before hostilities erupted, then turned into a record of the ensuing devastation. Journalist Yahya Sobeih was leading the effort to create a video archive. The 32-year-old father of three was celebrating the birth of his daughter on May 7 at one of the few cafes still in business in Gaza City when an IDF missile strike killed him and two dozen others, according to Muhtaseb.

"The Netanyahu regime, the military, they're getting away with these mass killings, the starvation and everything else with the full support of the United States," she said. "They're breaking every article of international law, and they're doing it with impunity."

The professor, who has lost 18 members of her extended family in Gaza and the West Bank, expressed admiration for journalists such as Sobeih and Duha al-Saife, a freelance journalist who lost three of her four children and was disfigured after her jawbone was wrecked in an Israeli missile strike on a school where her family was sheltering on May 30.

"She was beautiful. Now she is totally deformed, and only one child left," Muhtaseb said. "I don't know how she goes on living, honestly."

Bernstein said if the IDF is guilty of intentionally targeting journalists, "it is totally wrong, and they should be condemned."

"It's a complex web on both sides," he said. "This has been going on almost two years, and I just want it to be over."

In a report last week, the U.N. Human Rights Council emphasized the need for "investigations into the killings and attacks on (Palestinian) journalists" who "are the world's only professional lens into the agony of genocide and famine in Gaza."

"Journalists under fire is very disheartening," Riverside City College Journalism Professor Angela Burrell told CNS. "I often tell students that being a journalist is a noble public service. However, it can be very dangerous, especially being a correspondent in a war zone. Those who do it perform the ultimate sacrifice in the name of truth, accuracy and democracy."

—By Paul Young, City News Service