Israel tries to hide its crimes by shooting journalists

By: Motasem A Dalloul

On Tuesday, doctors at Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem announced that they had successfully removed the remains of the left eye of Palestinian photojournalist Muath Amarneh, 32, who was shot by Israeli border police while covering their violent dispersal of protesters in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron. While his colleagues and eyewitnesses said that he was shot by an Israeli sniper intentionally, Israel’s occupation army claims that the shooting of Amarneh was an accident which happened as he was standing among the Palestinian protesters, who were referred to by the Israelis as “rioters”.

Muath Amarneh was not the first Palestinian journalist to be shot, wounded or even killed by the Israeli occupation forces, and nor will he be the last. On every such occasion, the so-called Israel Defence Forces claim that the shooting was an accident.

I was shot by an Israeli sniper in May last year while covering the Great March of Return protests in the Gaza Strip just one week after I was threatened on twitter. Someone describing himself as a “Canadian Jew” said that I should be hunted down. He made it clear that this was because I was publishing posts on social media exposing Israeli aggression against peaceful protesters in Gaza.

Israel’s attempts to suppress the truth about the violations against the Palestinians is not only aimed at Palestinian journalists, but also those from abroad who are aligned with the reality of the situation. In 2003, for example, James Miller, an award-winning [Welsh] filmmaker, was making a documentary about Palestinian children caught up in the Israel-Palestine conflict when he was hit in the neck by a single shot fired by an Israeli sniper. He was 34 years old when he was killed.

Israeli violations against journalists are too many to count. In the past year alone, however, the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate has recorded over 600 Israeli violations against Palestinian journalists and mass media.

“Israeli forces not only shoot Palestinian journalists, but also shoot everyone who is working to expose the violations of the Israeli occupation,” I was told by Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy. Indeed, such violations “are not limited to the attacks on journalists, but they also include attacks on paramedics, handicapped people and unarmed protesters like what is happening in Gaza.”

Although Israeli journalist Baruch Yedid, who is close to the right politically, told MEMO that there is no Israeli policy to target journalists, the Palestinian writer and specialist in Israeli affairs Dr Saleh Al-Naami insisted otherwise.

“There are no instructions and planned intentions to shoot journalists or innocent people,” Yedid claimed. He argued that a lot of the journalists’ activities are being “coordinated with the [Israeli] Civil Administration,” a reference to the Israeli army wing which supervises Israel’s civil service in the occupied Palestinian territories.

According to Al-Naami, though, because Palestinian journalists are the most likely to report on Israeli violations, they are an obvious target for the snipers. “A journalist is thus the ‘right’ person for Israel to target in order to silence his voice and switch his camera off.”

However, Levy pointed out that, “Shooting journalists does not hide anything Israeli forces do because today everyone is a journalist. Anyone can use his mobile and take pictures and videos and report the violations to the whole world.”

Describing the Israeli army’s claim that Muath Amarneh was among protesters when he was shot as a lie, Levy explained, “It is a lie because the Israeli forces shoot and kill even unarmed people. In any case [standing among protesters] is not a reason to shoot him. There is nothing that justifies shooting anyone who is unarmed.” The silence of the world, he added, encourages the Israeli forces to shoot Palestinian journalists and unarmed Palestinian protesters.

“The whole world watches whatever the Israeli forces do and does nothing to those who have killed over 300 protesters, including journalists, in Gaza [since March 2018.” And yet, he pointed out, the same world “was turned upside down when a single protester was killed during the protests in Hong Kong.”

Dead people can tell no tales, of course, and this is why Israel shoots journalists, especially Palestinians. It is just one way that the Zionist state tries to hide its crimes from the world.

Twitter may have been bought by Israel

Palestinian accounts get suspended on social media platforms all the time. Twitter suspensions and deletions are clearly noticeable.

Palestinian Voices is an upcoming news outlet run by young people, that gives children and other youngsters a free platform to publish their stories — factual, fictional or otherwise. It's a new venture with a thousand learning curves yet to be swerved and dunams of space to hone unchartered skills in the search for professionalism and leadership. It's exciting to see it unfold.

Recently, not one, not two, but three members of the team have had their accounts destroyed. Abdulraheem Alfarra, Bahaa Shammala, and Saif Eldden Bitar: Twitter's waste disposal unit has been busy recently. One by one, these young, ambitious journalists and reporters working to bring us the news from Palestine are being forcibly taken from us; metaphorically — erased in the night.

Twitter Policy claims that it respects the freedom of speech, but that is not true as it becomes clear that Twitter is completely biased to the Israeli side by silencing the Palestinian Voices.

And the outcry — is there one?

The act of silencing signifies terror: a fear of words, a fear of third person experience, a fear of the message and of its meaning. Dangerously, it undermines the fundamental vision that free speech, discussion and debate are tools to education and empowerment. Censorship undermines democracy.

Bahaa Shammala's Twitter account with its 50,000 followers was suspended two months ago. Shammala was tweeting about his country, defending his people and revealing Israel's crimes committed on daily in Palestine.

Shammala said that in the last Israeli attack against Gaza Strip, he published a lot; he risked himself going out to the streets to cover the Israeli attacks against the Strip that night. His tweets reached more than 250,000 people from all around the world in just one night and he was proud of that. But the next day when he got up, he was shocked that his account was permanently suspended by Twitter.

"I sent Twitter appeals asking them what's the matter, and to clarify their problem with me; they just respond:”you're breaking the rule and your account will never be restored," Shammala added.

Abdulraheem Alfarra, a Palestinian youth activist, has lost his Twitter account with 14,000 followers due to an arbitrary suspension by Twitter.

Alfarra said that because he is a Palestinian activist who published about the Palestinian cause, Twitter suspended his account.

In his speech, Alfarra wonders what the reasons behind the suspension of his account are. He said that may be because his tweets reached millions of people around the world. He believes that because of that, Twitter permanently suspended his account.

"I felt totally disappointed, but I will never give up; I will create my account and keep exposing the Israeli crimes committed against us," Alfarra added.

Alfarra is afraid that if his new account gets success, Twitter will suspend it once again.

Saif Eldden Bitar, a pro-Palestinian activist, tweets about the Palestinian cause and makes it clear to the world that Israel oppresses the Palestinian people on a daily basis; Twitter suspended his account.

If we come to the rules that Bitar has broken, we will discover that his only fault that he defends Palestine and Palestinian people.

Bitar became popular on the Twitter platform where thousands of people followed him and waited for his tweets. It was clear that his tweets reached hundreds of thousands of people.

Bitar said that he woke up to find that his account has been suspended for no reason. Then he sent an appeal to Twitter to know what the problem is. Twitter responded that his account will not be restored because it was found to be violating the Twitter terms of service.

It was clear that Bitar was not breaking the Twitter terms of service, but he just tweeted about Palestine and the crimes committed by the Israeli occupation forces against Palestinian on daily basis.

Solidarity with Bitar

Some of the pro-Palestinian activists launched a "Twitter Storm" under the hashtags #UnsuspendBitarDeen and #ReinstateBitarDeen, calling Twitter to unsuspended Bitar’s Twitter account.

This is what @TwitterSupport sent to Saif, I call BS.
"Your account has been suspended and will not be restored because it was found to be violating the Twitter Terms of Service, specifically the Twitter Rules against managing multiple Twitter accounts for abusive purposes." pic.twitter.com/tJAp4c6JIU

— Dianne Emerson (@Dianne_Emerson) April 30, 2019

"Telling the truth about Israeli crimes is not forbidden," one of the activists tweeted in the hashtag.

Censorship is sinister

Punishing students for their speech robs our public debate of needed voices, says Sonja West — professor in First Amendment Law at the University of Georgia; it teaches children that censorship is acceptable. It isn't.

Ironically, in the beginning, sites such as Twitter and Facebook were built to give everyone a fair crack and importantly, an equal voice. Their collusion with the Israeli government has led them into a dark alley, trying to extinguish young people's words, seize their opinions, and gag their reports — the freely written, freely read and freely shared is no longer free, unless of course, it sings for Israel.

But where does the silencing come from? Who would agreeably work at the behest of Israel to decide who can and who can't write. Other young people? Middle-aged lobbyists sitting round a glass table scratching out the tongues of their teenage enemies? Censorship is indeed sinister.

Despite many accounts already breaking Twitter's rules such as tweeting unethical and offensive stuff, Twitter blinds eye to it, and the smoking gun that there are many Israeli accounts which are tweeting propaganda against the Palestinians and were reported for million times, but Twitter didn't even draw attention to them.

Twitter is biased towards Israeli policy, and the clear evidence is the suspension of Palestinian activists' accounts as though Israel might buy or pay Twitter as it does with every aspect of its evil projects.

For now, these accounts are gone. But they will return — of course they do. In the face of adversity, Palestine and everything Palestinian, always returns.

Why wouldn’t the world welcome Hamas, if they organize the Marches of Return?

Why are the Great Return March protests?

What’s happening now in Gaza connects directly to the 2014 Israeli assault, in the sense of that on May 14^th in the last year when Israel massacred more than 60 Palestinians and injured more than a thousand others. All of the hospitals in the Gaza Strip said that May 14^th, 2018 was worse than any single day in the 2014 war when Israel was bombing with F-16s warplanes and missiles. That’s the scale of what’s happening in Gaza now.

Why are Palestinians going to the border?

The Palestinians people are going to protest near the Israeli separated fence because they are a medieval siege, where Israel’s basic deal is offering Palestinians to die quietly or we’ll shoot you.

In 2017, at least 54 Palestinians died in Gaza waiting for permits to be allowed out of this ghetto by Israel for medical treatment; they couldn’t get in Gaza, most of them were cancer patients and they died. The number of medical permits Israel issued hit the lowest level since statistics were recorded, so that’s the deal, you die quietly or if you protest will shoot you dead.

The Palestinians have decided that they don’t want to die quietly, but to protest near the Israeli separated fence to call of their rights stolen by the Israeli occupation forces.

On May 30, 2018, the commemoration of Land Day, which marks the events of March 30, 1976, when Israeli police shot and killed six Palestinian citizens of Israel as they protested against the Israeli government's expropriation of land, The High National Commission for Return and Breaking the Siege in Gaza called for Gazans to gather to call for the right of return to their lands occupied by Israeli occupation gangs in the 1948 war and to put pressure on the Israeli authorities to break the immortal siege imposed by them for more than 12 years.

Large Palestinian crowds gather alongside the eastern borders of the Gaza Strip to take part in the weekly march to break the ongoing Israeli siege every Friday.

Since the beginning of the Great March of Return protests, Israel killed more than 260 unarmed Palestinian civilians among them journalists, medics, civilians, and children, injured more than 28,000 others with different injuries.

Israel justified its crimes to the International community that it maintains the right to defend itself as most of the victims were members of Hamas movement. Thus, Israeli authorities gave the green light to its military troops to kill and target civilians who posed no imminent danger to them.

Israel’s claiming: we killed Hamas “terrorists”

In addition, to claim that it defends itself, the only justification that Israel claimed for killing the Palestinians people who took part in the Great March of Return protest was that they were members of Hamas movements.

The Israeli line about Hamas is about erasing Palestinian people’s agency. It’s about saying Palestinians are not autonomous, they can’t organize, they don’t have the same concerns, desires, and yearnings as other people.

Suppose is that true, what does Israel tell us?

Israel tells us that Hamas’s political strategies are changing.

Israel tells us that Hamas embraced mass civilian protest.

Why would that be a bad thing?

About a year ago in May, Hamas issued a new charter where they talked about their political transformation, which was an enunciation of its political positions they had held for a number of years ago, and they put it in one document.

Hamas refuses very clearly any notion that the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis is religious. They say; we are not against the Jewish religion or Jewish people; we just fight the Zionists, and we fight Israel because they’re colonizing and occupying us, so it shows clearly that Hamas adopts the anti-colonial nature of the Palestinian’s struggle.

Hamas says that we believe resistance is a right for any occupied people, but it’s up to Palestinians to decide how to exercise that resistance and they may choose different means, even while not renouncing the right of resistance.

This show clearly, that Hamas exactly takes the position of Nelson Mandela which is that may or may not choose armed resistance, but we have the right. So if Hamas embraces different strategies, why would that be a bad thing?

Meanwhile, many liberals such as Thomas Friedman calling for Palestinians to embrace the tactics of Gandhi, which introduced to the world the concepts of ahimsa (nonviolence) and satyagraha (peaceful civil disobedience).

So, why wouldn’t the world welcome if Hamas is the one who called for the peaceful Great March of return protests?!