They Shoot Journalists Don't They?
Israel's War on (Press) Freedom
Dearest Reader,
A page is turning in the American zeitgeist and though things could potentially get weird in the next few weeks and months, I think Vice President Kamala Harris still has the wind at her back. At the very least I think Harris is the candidate most representative of the American Empire as it stands plus I suspect most of the public and the organizations that service the U.S. economy or government would much prefer a Harris/Walz win over Trump/Vance. In an attempt to secure a victory, the Democrats are shoring up disaffected GOP voters, conservative white women, conservative people of color and independents. Unfortunately, this pivot to the right may lose some people of color, some young people and certainly most Muslim/Arab voters. Potential congressional victories favoring Democrats might also surprise us. Now, Donald Trump may yet pull it off electorally or legally (using the courts to eek out a victory like Bush in 2000) and Congress could stay messy. But before a new president takes power and narratives are spun by a new White House press secretary, I want to explore the current state of truth telling through the eyes of front-line journalism in Palestine.
The Harris/Walz campaign seems to have opted to alienate the anti-war left and American Muslims/Arabs because of the Biden administration’s inability or unwillingness to broker a lasting ceasefire in Gaza or prevent a regional war that now involves Lebanon and Iran. It’s a gamble that may well pay off politically, but moral questions abound. According to an October 4th report from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) at least 128 journalists have been killed since the the start of the war in Gaza beginning October 2023 and all but five have been Palestinian. To put that in perspective, a staggering 75% of journalists killed in 2023 died in Gaza. In fact, the next deadliest year on record is 2006 where 56 journalists were killed in Iraq.
Since the beginning of 2024, 65 journalists have been killed worldwide according to the CPJ. Without question Gaza and the West Bank, Palestine are the two most deadly places to be a journalist in 2024. The war in Gaza has officially killed some 45,155 civilians according the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor. This war has broken almost every horrific record imaginable including a record number of health facilities attacked (part of a global trend), the most aid workers killed (at least 280 and the most UN workers killed in history), some of the oldest churches and mosques destroyed, a record number of women and children killed in a single year (at least 27,000) and more children killed in one year than in four years of global conflict combined. In fact, the prevailing opinion among medical professionals is that at least 92,000 civilians have been killed in Gaza, as stated in a recent letter to the White House, whereas Lancet Medical Journal thinks 186,000 or more could be dead. I personally think, when the dust settles, the civilian death toll for this gruesome war in Gaza (let alone Lebanon and beyond) will be easily upwards of 300,000 innocent souls lost. These numbers should horrify you.
It’s notable that the CPJ’s closest record of journalists killed in a single year is Iraq 2006, a few years after the September 11th attacks that sparked the “global war on terror.” The Middle East has been a site of war and extracted resources for the United States for over 50 years. And the U.S. has changed a great deal during the course of it’s successive military failures in the region. For example as the “global war on terror” raged across Iraq (then Afghanistan) government surveillance accelerated stateside so that today, most young people have a completely different perception of “privacy” than I had when I was growing up.
Today in the United States, there is no privacy…or at least there is a culture of relinquishing one’s privacy through things like predatory online ‘terms of use’ agreements, the reality TV industry, social media, and blanket email/phone tracking. None of the aforementioned existed before the year 2001, co-emerging in an age of mass surveillance. So as surveillance rises, truth tellers—like journalists who report the facts—are increasingly at risk of censorship or erasure. In the early aughts, unlike today, most people believed there were “weapons of mass destruction” and social media didn’t exist so dissent had a higher bar to entry. Whereas today, aghast by gruesome images and live streams of carnage, 61% of Americans want a ceasefire with the number growing month upon month. As a result, numerous people have been marginalized or fired for expressing humanitarian messages for Palestine or for being critical of Israel/Zionism creating a self-censoring ‘chilling effect’ in politics, on campus, online, in journalism and at work.
As I detailed in a May 2024 newsletter called “The DEI Boogeyman”, one of the major fault lines of ongoing censorship concerning the war is a 2016 definition of antisemitism by International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) that conflates criticism of the state of Israel or Zionism with prejudice towards Jewish people. Led by the GOP, the House passed a bill 320 to 91 called the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act in support of Israel under the pretense of protecting Jewish Americans. This legislation follows the IHRA definition of antisemitism. Though the Senate has yet to pass the legislation, it’s likely they will before the end of the year, according to reporting from The Forward. If the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act passes the Senate, Congress may effectively criminalize speech critical of Israel or Zionism even in instances where they are worthy of criticism. In an Orwellian twist, since many protesters against the war are Jewish themselves, the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act may portend a rise in charges of antisemitism against Jews.
Meanwhile in Gaza, just last week six Al Jazeera journalists in the North were unceremoniously designated as terrorists and marked for death by Israel—Al Jazeera, the sole international journalism outlet on the Strip, rejects this claim and describes the alleged evidence as ‘fabricated.’ Numerous publications including The Washington Post, TIME, Associated Press and The New York Times reported the charge and Al Jazeera’s denial. In September, Israel raided and closed down Al Jazeera’s West Bank offices in Ramallah. In addition to killing journalists and their family members (on occasion), Israel has targeted whole news outfits, like Al Jazeera and others doing uncompromising reporting.
Just this month Israel detained a Jewish-American independent journalist, Jeremy Loffredo, for four days following his arrest in the West Bank. Loffredo was on the ground reporting on Iran’s counterattack against Israel in their escalating conflict. His lawyer Lea Tsemel, a respected Israeli civil rights attorney, said the government’s efforts to charge Loffredo were “nonsense.” He was arrested on suspicion of assisting an enemy in war, an allegation that carries a maximum sentence of life in prison or death. Following a preliminary investigation, Loffredo was informally asked to leave the country and has no imminent plans to return.
Similar charges of terrorism or assisting the enemy were levied against the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) earlier this year when Israel claimed without a stitch of evidence that ‘a significant number’ of employees were members of terrorist organizations linked to October 7th. An immediate review triggered the firing of nine employees with possible ties, out of its 30,000 person staff, before concluding the full investigation in August 2024. According Human Rights Watch, only the United States, United Kingdom and Israel are keeping up the ruse that UNRWA is infiltrated by terrorists—most other donor countries felt too ashamed or legally exposed to continue punishing the single most important humanitarian agency for Palestinians. These two Western nations alongside Germany are likely the ‘third states’ legally most complicit in Israel’s litany of atrocities.
Is marking journalists for death or indefinite detention worthy of criticism? Would such criticism be antisemitic under the impending Anti-Semitism Awareness Act? In the past week Israel has reportedly killed three additional Lebanese journalists bringing the war’s journalist death toll to at least 131 as of October 28th. Indeed, targeted attacks and killing of journalists are war crimes. CPJ found at least five of the journalists killed by Israel were specifically targeted and is investigating at least 10 more cases of assassination. One could argue sweepingly designating a journalist a terrorist is a kind of targeting, as well. With Northern Gaza currently on the verge of famine and suffering from ongoing ethnic cleansing, as designated by the United Nations (UN) and Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, I doubt Israel wants any journalists on the scene.
Part of my passion for writing and truth-telling was inspired by my late Uncle Odhiambo Okite, my father’s cousin. Uncle Odhiambo was an editor of Lingo & Target, a journal of the National Christian Council of Kenya and taught journalism in Nairobi. He lost his eyesight after prolonged abuse and detention on spurious charges of subversion in the 1970s by the Jomo Kenyatta administration. His so-called crime was telling students to report ‘the most important news of the day regardless of someone’s station.’ Kenyans respect journalism today because people like my uncle sacrificed and even died to deliver the truth concerning everyday people’s lives and wellbeing. Because of my uncle and other truth tellers in my family, I grew up with a palpable sense of virtue for telling the truth and not pandering to the powerful.
For many developing nations, like Kenya or Palestine, even though journalism can easily become a font of propaganda, it is more often a coveted bulwark against duplicitous neo-colonial governments, the rich and international agendas. However, in the West, journalism is often conflated with entertainment or commerce in service of Western hegemony. Even though Western journalists technically are barred from entering Gaza, there has been a clear dereliction of duty in reporting on Palestine or collaborating with experts from the region proportional to the scale of ‘plausible genocide’ as warned by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in January 2024 in Israel’s ongoing genocide trial.
In fact, in a recent report from the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights (OHCHR) they accuse Israel of war crimes and crimes against humanity for systematic detention, torture and extermination of civilians including medical staff—all clear illustrations of violating the UN Convention on Genocide. Israel is also responsible for the mass starvation of people in Gaza with at least 40% of the population at imminent risk of death. The entire strip is in danger of famine as Israelis actively obstruct entry of aid trucks blocking 83% of food aid in Gaza according to painstaking research from the Norwegian Refugee Council.
By most accounts Israel is violating so many rules of international humanitarian law (laws of war), human rights law, and international law to a point that some fear the legal system is irreparably damaged, especially if Israel is not held to account. This summer the ICJ deemed Israel’s occupation of Palestine illegal and officially identified the crime of apartheid in the occupied territories. In September, the UN General Assembly adopted a landmark non-binding resolution, drafted by Palestine, demanding Israel end “its unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory” within 12 months. By October Israel banned UN Secretary-General António Guterres from entering the country and this week the Israeli parliament officially banned UNRWA (the main and most critical UN agency for Palestinian refugees) from conducting any business in Israel and occupied East Jerusalem (Palestine), 75 years after its founding in the region. This move is expected to have a devastating impact on desperately needed aid in in Gaza and the West Bank, occupied territories dominated by Israel. Such a radical breach of international law will destabilize access to food, education, healthcare and even livelihoods.
A second Donald Trump presidency is totally undesirable for those who believe in human rights and human dignity. But I never would have thought a ‘plausible genocide’ would happen on the Democrats’ watch, but then again the United States is a settler colony that exterminated 90% of the indigenous population so this is in America’s wheelhouse. Looking beyond the election, as emotional as it makes us, what awaits this country and the world amidst such stark U.S. hypocrisy on Gaza? Last week Biden randomly apologized to Native Americans in swing-state Arizona for the government funded boarding schools that sought to exterminate indigenous identity and culture. To paraphrase Shakespeare, ‘the gentleman doth protest too much!’ Can this nation even be taken seriously with its current unyielding cover of the crime of crimes in Palestine?
All I know is my soul and where I come from. And everything in my being knows I must tell the truth even when it’s not convenient because without just conduct, there is no virtue. No matter who wins the race, I hope we don’t collectively lose our souls even if/when our electoral fears are abated. As I have said before and will continue to say: we need a ceasefire now— regardless of who occupies the White House today or in the future.
With Love During End Times,
Agunda