The Problem with Killing Journalists
BIG PRESS
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BIG PRESS !!!
Editorial
By Matt Annett
6 minute read
Big Press reporter Tom Buckingham spoke with an IDF soldier and counter-protester outside the Israeli Embassy in Canberra.
There are a variety of reports of IDF soldiers sexually assaulting Palestinian adults and children. Independent NGO, Save the Children, was reporting on children being strip-searched by Israeli soldiers in July 2023 - three months before October 7th. The succinctly-named United Nations International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel released a report in March of 2025 which detailed instances of men and boys being stripped naked, assaulted and humiliated. These acts were videoed and photographed by Israeli Security Forces members. The same report details a case of a 14-year-old girl being sexually assaulted and a pregnant woman and her three and four-year-old children being threatened with rape by Israeli soldiers. The Associated Press shared this report. Much of the coverage of this issue comes either straight from the United Nations or from established media outlets who draw on UN reports.
It is, of course, important to not take media reports at face value - we here in Australia know as well as any that every headline must be taken with a grain of Murdoch-flavoured salt. The UN, however, is not a media outlet. This is not to say that it does not also deserve the critical eye: grand as it may seem, the UN is, in one reporter’s opinion, a playground for destructive US foreign policy, but it cannot be considered unto a newspaper which might get away with the same kind of shameless dogmatism as the Herald Sun.
In the interview, Tom decided to pull up one of these reports of sexual violence by the IDF, googling the topic right there in front of the soldier. Upon a cursory glance at the extensive list of reports that such a search yields, the first of which being by the UN, the soldier added that the UN is ‘proven to have been infiltrated’ by Hamas. He’s likely referring to claims about UNRWA being ‘totally infiltrated by Hamas’ which are based solely on an Israeli Intelligence dossier which alleges that almost 200 UNRWA members were part of Hamas, and played a role in the October 7th attacks. This, like many other claims that the Israeli Government has made throughout this conflict, cannot be independently verified.
Independent verification would, as the name so intuitively suggests, involve organisations or journalists being able to verify these claims, independent of Hamas or the Israeli Government’s significantly partisan influences. This would have been made easier if Israel had released the aforementioned dossier which made these claims, but they didn’t. Claims of sexual assault on Palestinian children would be far more robust if there was more independent verification from a wider variety of news outlets (although, the amount of evidence for the latter of these two examples is far more extensive and compelling than that of the former.) This seems to be one of Netanyahu’s most powerful strategies in this conflict: without independent verification, claims cannot be confirmed, nor thoroughly debunked, thus giving the Israeli Government plausible deniability, however flimsy it may be.
Hamas is no friend to journalists either - the organisation has a history of intimidating both foreign and local journalists in Gaza, but importantly, there is no evidence to suggest that Hamas has killed or detained any journalists since October 7th, and thus does not deserve the same level of scrutiny on this issue.
Israel has made it effectively impossible for foreign journalists to enter Gaza. The restriction has been in place since October 7th, and was upheld in early 2024 by the Israeli Supreme Court, citing risks to journalists’ safety and the potential to compromise IDF military operations. BBC International editor Jeremy Bowen spoke earlier this year about being granted just half a day’s access to Gaza (under IDF supervision) within the previous 18 months. Ironically, it seems as though the greatest risk to the lives of journalists is the same group that claims to have their safety in mind - the IDF.
Since October 7th, there have been somewhere around 200 journalists killed in the bombardment of Gaza. This comes from UN and associated reports, and was independently verified by Reporters without Borders, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Associated Press and Al Jazeera, to name a few. It has become the deadliest conflict for media workers in history. According to a UN expert, “We have received disturbing reports that, despite being clearly identifiable in jackets and helmets marked “press” or travelling in well-marked press vehicles, journalists have come under attack, which would seem to indicate that the killings, injury, and detention are a deliberate strategy by Israeli forces to obstruct the media and silence critical reporting.”
That, of course, leaves only one group of Journalists in Gaza - the ones who already live there. Of the plethora of journalists killed, the Committee to Protect Journalists names 178 of the 186 confirmed killed journalists and media workers as Palestinian. The organisation is in the process of investigating more than 130 further cases of journalists who’ve been killed, arrested, injured or had their homes or offices damaged. In July, four major media outlets released a joint statement which expressed deep concern for their journalists in Gaza, who are, like the rest ofthe Gazan population, suffering from starvation due to Israel’s staunch restrictions on aid entering the region.
One such journalist was a man named Anas al-Sharif. Al-Sharif was a well-known reporter for Al Jazeera Arabic, and on August 10th, an Israeli strike on his tent killed him, fellow Al Jazeera reporter Mohammed Qreiqeh, cameramen Ibrahim Zaher and Mohammed Noufal and two freelance journalists, Momen Aliwa and Mohammed al-Khalidi. Israel has claimed that al-Sharif was a part of Hamas’ military wing, and in October 2024, named him ‘head of rocket launching’, a conclusion based on – you guessed it – unreleased documents. Al Jazeera has vehemently denied the claim, referring to the targeted attack as ‘a desperate attempt to silence the voices exposing the impending seizure and occupation of Gaza.’ Al-Sharif had written a pre-prepared statement to be released upon his death, in which he speaks of his four-year-old daughter, Sham, and his one-year-old son, Salah.
Hundreds gathered outside Parliament House in July to protest the Israeli Government’s genocide and implore the Australian Government to impose sanctions.
Barring, killing and detaining journalists seems to be a strategy by the Israeli government to allow supporters such as our interviewee to rock on the balls of their feet and, instead of outright admitting any support for genocidal behaviour, simply purport that there’s just not enough proof.
We should always be critical of the media. Anything that’s only been reported by a single outlet or especially by a government deserves the deepest and most dogged skepticism, but we’ve reached the point where debating the realities of the Israeli government’s genocidal activity, in all its forms, is akin to debating a child who never stops asking ‘why?’.
