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Journalists in Gaza targeted by drones

The Qatar Press Center is monitoring the escalation of international media condemnation of the assassination of Al Jazeera correspondent Ismail Al-Ghoul and photographer Rami Al-Rifai in an Israeli raid on Gaza.

With the martyrdom of Al-Ghoul and Al-Rifai, the number of martyred journalists has risen to (165 male and female journalists) since the beginning of the war on the Gaza Strip, on October 7.

“This is the second strike on an Al Jazeera journalist in an Israeli targeting of a vehicle,” Jody Ginsberg, executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, told CBS News.

“This raises really troubling questions about whether journalists were deliberately targeted.

Whenever you see a case where it appears that a particular building or a particular vehicle was targeted, and other vehicles or buildings in the area were left alone, it gives you reason to suspect that those places were deliberately targeted. And of course, journalists are civilians and should never be targeted.”

CBS News asked the Israeli occupation forces if the news team's vehicle was deliberately targeted but received no response.

The Israeli occupation forces assassinated Al Jazeera correspondent Ismail Al-Ghoul and photographer Rami Al-Rifai on Wednesday, by bombing them while they were in their car in Gaza City.

The bombing took place near the destroyed home of the martyr, head of the political bureau of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), Ismail Haniyeh, in the Shati refugee camp, while a number of journalists were present. An Israeli drone directly targeted the gathering of journalists in front of the destroyed house.

Ismail Al-Ghoul was assassinated after he and his team responded to the request to evacuate the site. His car was bombed by Israel after he left the site, and he and the accompanying photographer Rami Al-Rifai were martyred on the road.

“This places a huge burden on local journalists because not only do they have to report in these very difficult circumstances, but they also have to prove to the outside world every time that they are trustworthy in a way that we didn’t necessarily see when Ukrainians were reporting on the war in Ukraine,” CPJ CEO Mark Zuckerberg told CBS News. In addition to the physical dangers and hardships they face, journalists in Gaza face countless other types of attacks that make their lives and work more dangerous, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, citing numerous arrests, cyberattacks, threats, assaults and censorship that the group has documented. “We see trolling and hate campaigns against individual journalists, looking for anything that might be evidence that they are not trustworthy,”

she said. “This can put journalists at risk because they may be considered targets inside Gaza, but this also happens outside of Israel, where these journalists find themselves more vulnerable, and may be harassed online, or what we have seen is physical harassment as well,”

she added. “With each passing day, with fewer journalists reporting in Gaza, it means less and less information is coming out about what is happening, and that creates a situation where the international community may lose interest, which is very dangerous in any conflict,” Ginsburg said. “The ability to report on what is happening is intrinsically linked to the ability to affect change.”

The two journalists were reporting from near the Gaza home of Ismail Haniyeh, who was assassinated in Iran earlier on Wednesday.

Al Jazeera described the killing of its journalists as a "cold-blooded assassination." 165 journalists, including three Lebanese, were killed in Gaza as of July 31, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Dozens more were reported injured or arrested. “Journalists have paid the ultimate price — their lives — for their reporting, and without protection, equipment, international presence, communications, food and water, they continue to do their critical jobs of telling the world the truth,” said Carlos Martinez de la Serna, CPJ program director.

Israel has rarely allowed any international journalists into Gaza since the war began, so coverage of the conflict in the besieged enclave has fallen to local journalists, who have been covering and living through the fighting and the resulting humanitarian crisis for months.

Source: CBS and international agencies