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The Qatar Center for Journalism condemns the fabricated accusations against Al Jazeera journalists.

The Qatar Center for Journalism expresses its full solidarity with Al Jazeera journalists in the face of false Israeli accusations, which are part of a systematic policy to silence, intimidate, and terrorize journalists and media workers from Al Jazeera through assassination, bombings of their locations and homes, and wrongful arrests due to their coverage of the brutal aggression against Gaza since October 7, 2023.

The Center condemns the ongoing Israeli occupation's incitement against Al Jazeera journalists, which serves as a pretext for further direct targeting through killing and arrest. It calls on the international community, as well as human rights and media organizations, to act to protect journalists in Gaza, ensure their safety, condemn the Israeli incitement, and take urgent action to hold the occupation accountable for war crimes against journalists and media workers.

Al Jazeera Media Network has strongly condemned the false accusations made today by the Israeli occupation army against its journalists operating in northern Gaza. In a statement, it confirmed that these fabricated accusations are merely a new attempt to silence the few remaining journalists in the sector and to hide the atrocities being committed there. The network rejected the Israeli occupation forces' labeling of its journalists as terrorists and condemned the use of forged documents and fabricated evidence to substantiate these baseless claims.

War Crimes
Al Jazeera Media Network explained in its statement that the Israeli allegations come after the network recently revealed war crimes committed by the Israeli occupation forces during the ongoing war on Gaza. This is while its field journalists continue to document what is happening in northern Gaza, as the only international media outlet that records the daily humanitarian crisis resulting from the ongoing Israeli siege and the deliberate targeting of innocent civilians. The network confirmed that its journalists are performing their work professionally, striving to document the plight of nearly two million civilians living in difficult conditions in the region.

Systematic Targeting
Al Jazeera considered these accusations a new link in a chain of systematic targeting by Israeli authorities against it and warns that these claims may serve as a pretext for targeting its correspondents, after Israel has killed an unprecedented number of journalists and media workers in the sector since the outbreak of the war. Over the past two years, Israeli occupation forces have targeted and killed several Al Jazeera journalists in the West Bank and Gaza, including Shireen Abu Akleh, the Palestinian-American journalist who was deliberately assassinated in 2022, as well as colleagues Samer Abu Daqa, Hamza Al-Dahdouh, and Ismail Al-Ghul, who were martyred in Gaza. The Israeli authorities fabricated charges against some of these colleagues to justify their crimes against them. Al Jazeera has filed cases with the International Criminal Court in The Hague to hold their killers accountable.

The network reaffirms its commitment to providing objective and reliable news coverage from the field, despite the grave risks and accusations faced by its reporters. It is noted that international organizations concerned with press freedom have documented more than 171 murders of journalists in Gaza committed by Israeli occupation forces since October 7, 2023, to date.