Since the beginning of the Israeli government\u2019s offensive on Iran on 13 June, at least four journalists and media workers have been killed in airstrikes \u2014 according to a report by the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The first casualty was Fereshteh Bagheri, who was killed alongside her father, the Chief of Staff of Iran\u2019s Armed Forces, in an assassination strike that hit their family home in Tehran on the first day of the offensive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the following Sunday, Saleh Bairami, a graphic designer and cartoonist, was killed while walking down the street during an airstrike on Tehran.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On Monday, news editor Nima Rajabpour and secretarial staff member Masoumeh Azimi were killed in the showcase bombing of the Iranian state broadcasting building \u2014 during a live broadcast and following a threat by Israeli Defence Minister, Israel Katz, that \u201cthe Iranian propaganda and incitement mouthpiece is about to disappear\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Israeli military\u2019s spokesperson Effie Defrin initially claimed that \u201cthe regime\u2019s media centre was used by Iran\u2019s armed forces for military activity\u201d, without providing any details or evidence \u2014 contradicting Prime Minister Netanyahu\u2019s own statement to Haaretz, in which he said the bombing aimed to \u201cneutralise the regime\u2019s propaganda power\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Beyond the fact that the Israeli government is deliberately targeting civilians \u2014 an act justly condemned by the IFJ as a war crime \u2014 the bombing of the Iranian broadcasting authority has effectively turned Israel\u2019s major news outlets and journalists into potential targets for the Iranian regime. Indeed, shortly thereafter, an unofficial threat was circulated against Channels 12 and 14: \u201cWarning. Evacuate the headquarters of N12 and now14 immediately\u201d. As Yoana Gonen wrote in Haaretz (18 June): \u201cOne cannot seriously claim that bombing the Iranian broadcasting authority is a brilliant or amusing idea, but a ballistic missile on the studios of Channel 12 or 14 would be a war crime by a rogue terror state\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a statement published by the Palestinian Journalists\u2019 Syndicate in April, following the bombing of the journalists\u2019 tent near the Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, it was noted that since 7 October 2023, the estimated number of Palestinian journalists killed had reached 209 at that time. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reported that as of 16 June it had already managed to confirm the death cases of 185 journalists and media workers, including 177 Palestinians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In some cases, journalists appear to have been deliberately targeted due to their work, and in others, they were mostly among the immense scale of civilian casualties inflicted by the Israeli military. During the same period, ten journalists and media workers were killed in Israeli strikes in Lebanon, and one journalist was killed in Syria. Four Israeli journalists and media workers were killed in the Hamas offensive on 7 October.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Targeted attacks on Palestinian journalists, of course, did not begin in October 2023. In May 2022, an Israeli sniper killed the respected Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, a respected Al Jazeera correspondent in the West Bank, during a raid on the Jenin refugee camp. The documentary Who Killed Shireen, produced by the independent platform Zeteo and released early last month, concluded that the Israeli sniper deliberately shot the journalist. A report in The New York Times noted that \u201ctwo Israeli military officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter, confirmed the documentary\u2019s conclusions\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The film reveals that although both Israeli military and US officials knew the identity of the shooter shortly after the incident, his name was never released and no legal action was taken. Moreover, after Abu Akleh\u2019s death, Israeli forces used her image as a target in shooting drills. Her cousin responded: \u201cWhen you see soldiers shooting at the image of someone who was murdered, you realise it\u2019s not just a crime \u2014 it\u2019s a pattern. They tried to erase her memory, just as they erased her body\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As reported already back in October 2023, a UN commission claimed to have identified the Israeli commander believed to have fired the fatal shot. The UN Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territories stated that the investigation concluded the Israeli military had used \u201clethal force without justification under international human rights law and intentionally or recklessly violated the right to life of Shireen Abu Akleh\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Over the past year and a half, journalists from France to Egypt have organised and taken protest action against attacks on journalists and the press, as part of the opposition to the onslaught on Gaza and the extermination of its infrastructure of life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The deliberate and incidental targeting of journalists across all theatres of war is added to the harassment of Palestinian, foreign, and also Israeli journalists, and to threats against them by military forces and settlers. Moreover, the Israeli military does not permit foreign journalists to enter the Gaza Strip and report on the ongoing war of extermination there, while Israeli journalists are only allowed in when embedded with military units and under their supervision \u2014 distorting and misrepresenting the reality presented to the Israeli public by local media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
From its inception, the Israeli coalition government of Netanyahu has promoted attacks on freedom of expression and the press, and since 7 October it has intensified censorship and blocked media outlets \u2014 most notably Al Jazeera, which has been extensively covering the bloodbath in Gaza, including from the ground. Now, under the cover of war with Iran, the Israeli government is advancing further assaults on press freedom, including tightening censorship of foreign correspondents and attempting, in the public broadcaster, to shut down the news division of Kan 11 and the Arabic-language channel Makan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Last November, a coalition of the Union of Journalists in Israel (UJI) and several organisations in the media sector launched a campaign against the erosion of the public broadcaster\u2019s financial independence, rightly arguing that \u2018a public broadcaster subordinate to the government is nothing more than a propaganda channel, not an independent media outlet\u2019. Nevertheless, the Israeli government of Netanyahu and the far right continues to enjoy broad support from an enlisted press that serves as a mouthpiece for regime propaganda, in line with the policies of both privately and state-owned establishment media outlets. Consistent defence of journalists and media workers must be grounded in the understanding that targeting journalists \u2014 anywhere and regardless of nationality \u2014 opens the door to further attacks on journalists and press freedom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is needed is cross-border solidarity with independent journalists and media workers around the world, including Palestinians and Iranians, who are often persecuted for exposing the crimes of oppressive oligarchic regimes against civilians. This is the stance that must also be adopted by Israeli organisations of journalists and media workers. But condemning isolated incidents, or even a categorical condemnation of harm to journalists, is not enough. There can be no \u2018neutrality\u2019 in the face of catastrophic military offensives that bring devastation to civilian populations across the region, including in Israel \u2014 all workers\u2019 organisations must act to expose the war\u2019s destructive consequences, challenge its underlying motives, and work to bring it to an end.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Since the beginning of the Israeli government\u2019s offensive on Iran on 13 June, at least four journalists and media workers have been killed in airstrikes \u2014 according to a report by the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ). The first casualty was Fereshteh Bagheri, who was killed alongside her father, the Chief of Staff of Iran\u2019s Armed Forces, in an assassination […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":144,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[28,2,26,27],"class_list":["post-143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-imperialism-war","category-middle-east","tag-ifj","tag-iran","tag-journalists-targeted","tag-uji"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/socialiststruggle.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/socialiststruggle.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/socialiststruggle.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socialiststruggle.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socialiststruggle.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/socialiststruggle.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":327,"href":"https:\/\/socialiststruggle.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143\/revisions\/327"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socialiststruggle.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/socialiststruggle.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socialiststruggle.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socialiststruggle.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}