We usually wake up in the morning, open any source of news and get updated about what happened when we were sleeping. We get extra concerned when we are aware of a war happening at any corner in this big world. Especially, the atrocious never ending battle between Israel and Palestine.
Inhumane
On 11th May 2022 I woke up to the devastating news of Israeli occupiers killing one of the best journalists and Palestinian reporter, Shireen Abuakle. As she arrived to cover a dawn raid in the West Bank city of Jenin, Shireen was the latest in a long list of Palestinian reporters killed by Israeli forces.
To introduce her properly, Shireen Abu Aqla, a 51-year-old Palestinian American, she wanted to be an architect but realized she didn’t have a future in the field. As a result, she went into journalism and became one of the most well-known Palestinian journalists. She was a veteran correspondent for Al Jazeera’s Arabic news channel and had reported on the Israel-Palestinian conflict for two decades.
I chose journalism to be close to the people.
Shireen Abu Aqla, The Guardian
The Guardian declares that in a 2017 interview with the Palestinian television channel An-Najah NBC, she was asked whether she was ever afraid of being shot.
Of course I get scared. In a specific moment you forget that fear. We don’t throw ourselves to death. We go and we try to find where we can stand and how to protect the team with me before I think about how I am going to go up on the screen and what I am going to say.
Shireen Abu Aqla, The Guardian
Tomb tormenting
Tom Bateman, a Middle East Correspondent, states that what happened next was extraordinary. Since he witnessed what happened, he said that “I was behind the packed crowd so I couldn’t see the front point of contact, but the Israeli police suddenly pushed back the crowd, including the coffin and its carriers”.
They fired stun grenades towards the mourners and the press and were storming into the compound.
Tom Bateman
Her death also illustrated the dangers Palestinian journalists face doing their jobs, whether in the occupied West Bank, in Gaza or inside Israel.
83 Palestinian reporters have reportedly been killed by Israeli forces since 1972.
Middle East Eye
Journalists are always seen ready-to-go to report what is happening but the thing is, no one is aware of what happens behind the scenes.
Life risking
According to Middle Eye East, Palestinian journalists were targeted while documenting Israeli attacks on West Bank communities in 2002. In the summer of 2014, Israeli soldiers killed 17 Palestinian journalists in Gaza. Israeli forces had killed more than 46 Palestinian journalists since the Second Intifada in 2000.
Journalists get on board to report what happens on a war scene realising that they might lose their lives at any moment. Yet, they do this with no hesitation or fear of death because their aim is so noble and and according to them, it is worth risking one’s life for.
Some of the journalists who left us after being shot on a war scene by Israeli forces:
Freedom of Press, says who?
Journalists around the world should really get more protection and respect. Being an enemy doesn’t give you the right to kill arbitrarily. This world is already cruel and humans are the reason why!
In recent years, reporting the news has become an ever more dangerous activity. Between 2002 and 2012, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists , five hundred and six journalists were killed worldwide, as opposed to three hundred and ninety in the previous decade. Even in the most violent war zones, such as Iraq and Syria, the cause of death is most often simple murder, rather than being killed while covering combat. One major shift in the years since September 11, 2001, has been the erosion of a commonly accepted idea of press neutrality.
Journalists are now seen by many combatants, especially jihadis, as legitimate targets and valuable propaganda tools, alive or dead.
The NewYorker
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