After the bombing of several towers and commercial and residential buildings that house the offices of Palestinian and international institutions and media agencies in the center of Gaza City;

The killing of the journalist at Sawt al-Aqsa Radio Yusef Abu Hussein by bombing his house at dawn on Wednesday, May 19, this added to a milestone in the Israeli targeting of journalists during the recent Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip.

After announcing the ceasefire and suspending the aggression - the first on Friday - the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate documented the destruction of more than 33 media institutions within 10 days of the Israeli bombing.

According to a statement by the Syndicate, Israel committed massacres against journalists in their safe homes or during their field coverage, as the bombing resulted in injuries and damage to more than 70 journalists in the Gaza Strip, in addition to recording about 100 violations against Palestinian journalists in the West Bank and Jerusalem during their coverage of the Israeli confrontations and attacks. In the last two months.

Recurring targeting

Al-Jazeera Net met with Gaza photographer Moamen Qureiqa, who lived on Eid al-Fitr on May 13th, a new calamity in his journalistic work when the Idea Media Production Foundation - which he founded a few months ago - was destroyed after the bombing of Al-Walid building, west of Gaza City.

Qureiqa 'works with 6 journalists, all of whom lost their jobs and equipment due to the bombing.

Qureiqa was severely wounded while covering the first Israeli aggression on Gaza in 2009, and again during the 2012 aggression, which caused the loss of both legs.

Qureiqi said that Israel's targeting of journalists and their headquarters is aimed at removing the image of the destructive effects of the aggression from the international media.

Among the dozens of injured journalists, the Anadolu Agency photographer, Muhammad Al-Aloul, escaped death, after an Israeli missile fell near his agency's car, which had the press badge.

Aloul and 3 of his colleagues took her while covering the bombing of Umm al-Nasr village in the northern Gaza Strip.

Al-Aloul told Al-Jazeera Net that he was hit by various shrapnel throughout his body and underwent surgical operations, and his injury stopped his work.

A special archive photo of the Israeli occupation's targeting of the Palestinian press (Al-Jazeera)

Destruction of the press headquarters

The Independent Commission for Human Rights documented the targeting of infrastructure, including residential and commercial towers, which included a large number of offices of local and international press institutions, the first being the Al-Jawhara Tower on the second day of the aggression, which led to the destruction of 12 media headquarters, including the offices of the Palestine and Al-Arabi Al-Jadeed newspapers and Al-Arabi channels and the Kingdom And APA.

On the same day, the occupation bombed Al-Shorouk Tower, which housed 6 media institutions, including the headquarters of Al-Aqsa TV and Radio Station and the Palestine Today channel.

The bombing of the Evacuation Tower and its collapse were in front of the lens of the world press;

The media headquarters are the most prominent targeting, as the tower contained 8 media institutions;

These include the offices and studios of Al-Jazeera and the headquarters of the American Associated Press.

Al-Jazeera correspondent in Gaza, Hisham Zaqout, says that the targeting of Al-Galaa Tower and Al-Jazeera TV office in particular "was intentional," and that there is no justification for destroying an entire tower of this size except for an attempt to obliterate the voice of the media that is broadcast from it.

Zaqout added that Al-Jazeera's coverage of the aggression against Gaza came after weeks of intense coverage of the events in Jerusalem and the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, and this was accompanied by continuous incitement on the channel, leading to the targeting of its offices in Gaza.

“It is really an attempt to silence the witnesses,” Zaqout says. “This has damaged the work of the press crews, but it did not affect the press coverage, which was not interrupted even during the destruction of the evacuation tower, as the channel team was deployed in more than one place in the Gaza Strip in order to continue broadcasting the image.”

Earlier, the occupation army suppressed a march that the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) participated in (social networking sites)

On the same day, the channel and the media - which were bombed - covered the massacre on Al-Wehda Street in central Gaza, which killed more than 45 Palestinians, and reported the recovery of the bodies from under the rubble.

And at the Al-Jazeera headquarters in Gaza - which has been established on this size since 2009 - at least 20 journalists and technicians have lost all of their equipment, after the occupation refused to give them a deadline to remove it.

In addition to the journalist Yusef Abu Hussein, and two media activists, they were killed in the recent aggression on the Gaza Strip;

The Palestinian Information Center has documented the martyrdom of at least 45 Palestinian journalists since the intifada in 2000, including two journalists, Yasser Murtaji and Ahmed Abu Hussein, who were killed by Israeli bullets and bombs during their coverage of the return marches on the borders of the Gaza Strip in 2018, during which more than 400 journalists were injured.

In the Israeli aggression on Gaza - which lasted 50 days in the summer of 2014 - the Israeli bombing killed 16 Palestinian journalists as well.

Crimes to silence the press

The coordinator of the Committee to Support Journalists in Palestine, Saleh Al-Masry, says that in the recent aggression, Israel committed war crimes that targeted civilians and journalists, and this is evidenced by the deliberate targeting of civilian towers despite its knowledge of the existence of media centers there.

According to Al-Masry, the goal was "to silence the press, so that Israel practices its crimes silently and away from the world's eyes ... Despite that, the image of aggression remained live."

In the context, Al-Masry also pointed out that the Israeli occupation prevented foreign press crews from entering the Gaza Strip throughout the aggression.

Al-Masri called on the Palestinian government, as it has legal jurisdiction over the Gaza Strip, to include war crimes against journalists in the investigation files of the International Criminal Court, so that the occupation does not escape punishment.