The assassination of Al-Jazeera correspondent in the occupied Palestinian territories, Shireen Abu Aqleh, reveals the conditions of monitoring and surveillance that surrounded the crime of field execution carried out by the Israeli occupation forces against Abu Aqila during the exercise of her media activity.

Where she was targeted by sniper bullets, killing her below the ear, an area not covered by the helmet she was wearing.

The video, which was broadcast by Al-Jazeera, documents the scene of shooting against journalists, which was direct, continuous and deliberate, as recounted by journalist Shatha Hanaysha, who was one of the witnesses to the crime of field execution of Abu Aqila, which was also mentioned by journalist Ali Al-Samoudi, Al-Jazeera's producer and accompanying Sherine. Abu Aqila, while covering the storming of the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank by the occupation forces. He was the first wounded by a sniper’s bullet in the back.

The circumstances of the assassination of Al-Jazeera correspondent, Shireen Abu Aqleh, raise two direct questions amid a torrent of questions about the Israeli occupation policy in dealing with the media and journalists outside the law and international treaties and without any accountability for Israeli policies or accountability for the perpetrators of the murders and attacks on journalists: Why did the Israeli army The field execution of Abu Aqleh while she was legally practicing her journalistic work?

And why does the Israeli occupation army insist on violating international humanitarian law, which guarantees the protection of journalists from forms of deliberate attack?

To answer these two questions, it is not enough in the crime of field execution of Abu Aqila - and the journalists who died before it while performing their professional work - to look at the record of the Israeli occupation’s relationship with international media institutions and networks that cover the Palestinian issue and the policies of the occupation, and try to convey the Palestinian narrative to recipients around the world, and to highlight The forms of violations that the Palestinian people are exposed to, but we also need to consider the policies of the Israeli occupation towards the Palestinian cause and all the activities and actions affecting its paths and its development.

This helps us to understand the Israeli perspective and its dealings with media institutions and journalists working in them, as it is the broader context in which all the policies of the occupation, including its policy towards the media, fall.

It also allows understanding the policies of the occupation in dealing with societal sectors and other areas.

Israeli policy in dealing with the media

Photojournalist Moamen Qureiqi in front of the building that housed the Idea Media Production Foundation and was destroyed by the Israeli bombing (Al-Jazeera)

The record of Israeli violations and violations, which targeted journalists working in the occupied Palestinian territories during the past two decades, refers to a combination of different forms of attacks (beatings, arrests, killings, bombing and destruction of media premises...).

Despite the apparent dissonance between these violations, they reveal the specificity of Israeli policy and a regulating perspective on dealing with the media.

The evidence and cases documented by the reports of Palestinian centers and international organizations, as well as the facts that took place in the successive wars on Gaza, including the last war waged by the occupation on the Strip, in May 2021, refer to the tripartite perspective on which this policy is based, which includes: Terror, intimidation, and deterrence.

How is that?

What are the boundaries between them?

There is no clearer evidence and evidence in the statement of the first basis of the "terrorism of Israeli politics" against the media and the journalists working in it - within the trilogy of perspective we mentioned - from the killings and field executions of journalists and media professionals after monitoring and surveillance, as well as cases of direct targeting that lead to permanent disability during performance of their activity and professional work.

The reports of Palestinian and international organizations are awash with daily follow-up to the forms of physical terrorism of journalists, as mentioned above. To date, the Israeli occupation forces have killed 55 Palestinian journalists while practicing their media activities since the Al-Aqsa Intifada in 2000. And only in the Israeli aggression on Gaza - which lasted 50 days in the summer of 2014 - The Israeli bombing killed 16 Palestinian journalists.

Journalist Yasser Murtaja was shot dead by the occupation in April 2018 while covering the "return marches" in Gaza (Reuters)

It should be noted here that the policy of terrorism that targets the physical liquidation and physical execution of others is not a specific approach in dealing with the media and the journalistic community, nor is it an abnormal tendency in dealing with this societal sector. its foundations and pillars;

What makes the policy of terrorism an institutionalized and organized act that expresses the entity of the state, which is doing its best to abolish the existence of everything that it deems contrary to its existence.

This is indicated by the reality of the Israeli occupation in the Palestinian territories, where the daily killing and field execution of women, the elderly, youth and children without these posing any danger to the occupation forces.

This policy extends to include different societal sectors and some areas and activities affecting the paths of the Palestinian cause, such as direct targeting of participants in local and international solidarity movements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

We can refer here to the killing of 9 Turkish activists during the storming of the Mavi Marmara ship by the Israeli forces, which tried to break the siege on Gaza, in May 2010. Prior to this incident, the American activist, Rachel Corrie, was subjected to an extrajudicial execution after she ran over her An Israeli occupation bulldozer, in March 2003, while trying to prevent the demolition of citizens' homes in the city of Rafah in the Gaza Strip.

“Intimidation” is the second pillar in the trilogy of the Israeli perspective and its dealings with the media.

It is also trying by various means to create a general psychological state among the journalistic community of fear, panic and panic, in an attempt to create a fragile and hesitant psychological state that disrupts the journalist's abilities to adapt to his reality and perform his professional activity.

There are many ways that the Israeli policy adopts in creating and creating this psychological state, whether through prosecution, investigation, detention, arrest, storming the homes of journalists, confiscating and destroying journalists’ property and equipment, or threatening to shoot and kill…etc.

The occupation bases its perspective and policy on “terrorism” and “intimidation” of the media and journalists working in it with the third and basic pillar, which is deterrence, in which it combines the strategies of terrorism and intimidation through procedures and mechanisms that are almost a feature and mark of the Israeli occupation that we may not find in the history and record of the foreign occupation.

Perhaps the most prominent features of the deterrence policy were revealed by the Israeli war on Gaza in May 2021, when the occupation forces bombed the towers that housed the headquarters of media institutions and offices of satellite channels and international networks.

It is a policy that, as we mentioned, combines the two components of terrorism and intimidation in a clear step to push media organizations to retreat and surrender, as was the case in the bombing of the Galaa Tower, which collapsed in front of the lenses of the international press.

This bombing is considered the most prominent targeting of media headquarters, as the tower housed 8 media institutions, including the offices and studios of Al-Jazeera channel and the headquarters of the American press agency "Associated Press".

Attempts to execute Al Jazeera's media discourse

The case of the field execution of the journalist Shireen Abu Aqleh by the Israeli occupation forces refers to the Israeli perspective of Al-Jazeera, which has been considered by him as a channel that supports the Palestinian cause, whose media discourse opposes and incites the Israeli presence in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Rather, he believes that the channel broadcasts hate speech against the occupation forces.

Israel has long protested Al Jazeera's coverage of the Israeli wars on Gaza, considering it "biased" and "sympathetic" with the resistance movements, and trying to obscure the "lies of Hamas" and its use of children as human shields.

The space here may not allow us to monitor all the Israeli criticism of Al-Jazeera and its work in the occupied Palestinian territories, but what is clear from the Israeli policy - as we noted above - is the institutional / systematic work in managing the occupation for its relationship and dealing with the media, and journalists working in international media institutions and networks, through the perspective mentioned trio.

Therefore, the war effort and the Israeli policy against the media are not based on obscuring the media discourse and revealing facts about the violations and violations of the occupation in the Palestinian territories, and “filtering” media messages and what should or should not reach the recipient. Rather, this policy seeks to kill the witnesses themselves. (Terrorism) then created a state of intimidation and deterrence in the journalistic body to reach its political and psychological goals that allow it to support the Israeli narrative and execute everything else, and to make the media field pure for that narrative.

The Israeli occupation forces have tried, constantly and in various events, to prevent Al Jazeera's crew from working freely in covering the Palestinian issue, because it is more anticipating its media discourse than other actors.

It is aware of the impact of that discourse in mobilizing Arab and international public opinion, especially since the content of Al-Jazeera has on many occasions been a document to trace the crimes and violations of the occupation against Palestinian citizens.

This explains why the occupation resorted to various methods to limit the impact of the channel by obstructing the activities of Al-Jazeera journalists and restricting their professional work, withdrawing press accreditation cards, preventing its correspondents from attending conferences and government activities, cutting off the channel’s means of satellite communication, and spying on journalists’ phones and personal computers. To find out information about them and to obstruct their media activity, the "What is Hidden is Greater" program, which was broadcast by Al Jazeera, in December 2020, revealed part of these practices.

Protecting journalists in conflict and crisis areas

The occupation army suppressed earlier a march attended by the International Federation of Journalists (social networking sites)

Despite international efforts and initiatives undertaken by media institutions and networks to protect journalists working in areas of conflict, crises and wars, the reality of professional practice still indicates the great risks that surround media work conditions in those areas.

The case of the field execution of the journalist Shireen Abu Akleh once again raises a problematic question in the newsrooms of international channels and satellite channels and media institutions about how to protect the journalist to practice his media activity freely in war and crisis areas in order to secure credible news coverage of what is happening in the fields of conflict.

The problem here is not in international conventions and declarations - how many more! - which urge states to abide by the rights and freedoms of journalists and to guarantee the right to life, and recognize the responsibility of states to protect journalists from violations and to grant them aid, and states' obligation to guarantee freedom of expression and media and to promote a safe environment for journalists and not subject them to unjust restrictions legal, and bringing perpetrators of violations against them to justice…etc.

But the problem is that these international charters and declarations lack the procedural force that allows for accountability for those who violate their provisions, as is the case in the case of field and direct executions committed by the Israeli occupation forces against journalists.

The victims of Israeli policy in its dealings with the media exceeded 50 Palestinian journalists - as mentioned previously - and we did not hear a single trial of a soldier from its forces or one of its snipers. Rather, Israel always found flimsy justifications for the killings and field executions, and even defended them.

a summary

The case of the field execution of Al-Jazeera journalist, Sherine Abu Aqleh, confirms that the policy of the Israeli occupation forces in its dealings with the media and journalists working in media institutions and international networks is inseparable from public policies in terror, intimidation and deterrence of Palestinian citizens, which is the three-dimensional perspective that attempts to dominate the The Land, Man and the Palestinian Narrative and the Substitution of His Narrative Only.

Therefore, the occupation forces persist in practicing all violations and violations against journalists in an attempt to deter and create a permanent psychological state that loses the journalist's ability to adapt to his reality and convey the revealing facts of the occupation.

The Israeli occupation forces find nothing to prevent Al Jazeera journalists from being an example of deterrence, but the channel's career and identity make this impossible.

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This report is from Al Jazeera Center for Studies.