COMMENTARY: By Caitlin Johnstone
An Israeli airstrike destroyed the press office of the Lebanese news broadcaster Al Mayadeen on Wednesday night, continuing Israel’s historically unprecedented military assault on the press.
Also in continuation of Israel’s war on journalism, the IDF has published the names of six Al Jazeera reporters who it claims are actually members of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, citing as evidence documents which it claims Israeli forces found in Gaza.
These allegations would mark these journalists as legitimate military targets.
- LISTEN: A reading of this article by Tim Foley
- READ MORE: UN rapporteur condemns Israeli ‘death sentence’ claim trying to silence last Gaza journalists
- WATCH: Gaza: Investigating war crimes in Gaza – Al Jazeera Investigations
- One year in Gaza: how Israel orchestrated a media blackout on a region at war
- Silencing the messenger: Israel kills journalists, while the West merely censors them — David Robie
Al Jazeera has denounced these claims as unfounded, saying in a statement: “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.”
There is of course no reason to ever believe any claim Israel makes about anything whatsoever absent mountains of independently verifiable evidence, after the mountains of lies it has churned out over the last year.
The fact that Western news outlets are treating these allegations as plausible is evidence of their propagandistic nature.
Israel claims everyone it wants to kill is Hamas. The journalists are Hamas, the hospitals are Hamas, the UN is Hamas, the aid trucks are Hamas, the schools are Hamas, the mosques are Hamas, the water infrastructure is Hamas, the civilian homes are all Hamas, and Hamas is hiding behind every woman and child in Gaza.
The only exception to this rule is in Lebanon, in which case everyone Israel wants to kill is Hezbollah.
“Israel hates truth” . . . Gaza: The Al Jazeera investigation into Israeli war crimes.
Why journalists are killed
Israel hates truth, which is why it kills journalists at every opportunity and blocks them from entering Gaza. This is because truth tends to have a marked anti-Israel bias.
We saw this illustrated recently when Israel announced that there is a secret Hezbollah bunker underneath a hospital in Beirut, so the press simply sent a bunch of reporters to go and investigate because Israel can’t block the press from entering Lebanon like it can in Gaza.
Even Western outlets like the BBC and Sky News entered the hospital and interviewed medical staff, reporting that they found no trace of evidence supporting Israel’s claims and that the hospital staff all denied the existence of any Hezbollah bunker on the premises.
And you may be sure those outlets would have eagerly reported any sign of Hezbollah if they were given the opportunity.
Israel Continues Its War On Journalism
Article with supporting links.https://t.co/hnsKnHaOqZ
— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) October 24, 2024
Criminal institutions need to function in the dark. They cannot function in the light of visibility and critical journalism and inconvenient video footage.
That’s why the mafia murders witnesses. That’s why the inner workings of the US war machine are shrouded in government secrecy. That’s why Julian Assange spent five years in a maximum security prison.
And that’s why Israel does everything it can to kill and obstruct journalists who tell the truth about its crimes.
Caitlin Johnstone is an Australian independent journalist and poet. Her articles include The UN Torture Report On Assange Is An Indictment Of Our Entire Society. She publishes a website and Caitlin’s Newsletter. This article is republished with permission.
