Journalist-killers inspired by alleged policies of major power

Mathloom · Dec 23, 2012

"Rockets don't stop at a roof," Jordon said in response. "You've got the intelligence that journalists were all over that building. It's never going to be precise enough that you can't stop injuring people below the roof."

"As far as I know, no foreign journalists were hurt whatsoever," Regev said. "We were surgical, we took out the target that we wanted to take out."

"You can't sit there and say no journalists were injured," Jordon replied sharply. "One person had their leg blown off. That is a fact."

"Maybe we have a discussion about who is a journalist," Regev said. He called Al-Aqsa, one of the outlets targeted in the strikes, a "Hamas command and control facility," adding, "Just as in other totalitarian regimes, the media is used by the regime for command and control and also for security purposes. From our point of view, that's not a legitimate journalist."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/19/mark-regev-al-jazeera-gaza_n_2160511.html
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Four Israeli attacks on journalists and media facilities in Gaza during the November 2012 conflict violated the laws of war by targeting civilians and civilian objects, says a report by Human Rights Watch (HRW). It has made a detailed investigation into the incidents.

In the attacks, two Palestinian cameramen were killed, at least 10 media workers were wounded and four media offices were badly damaged. A two-year-old boy was killed in one shelling.

HRW says it found no evidence to support the contention buy the Israeli government that each of the four attacks was on a legitimate military target.

"Just because Israel says a journalist was a fighter or a TV station was a command centre does not make it so," said Sarah Leah Whitson, HRW's Middle East director.

"Journalists who praise Hamas and TV stations that applaud attacks on Israel may be propagandists, but that does not make them legitimate targets under the laws of war."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2012/dec/20/gaza-israel
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Alana Goodman defended Israel in Commentary by saying the reporters Carr mentioned were in fact terrorists not journalists, because Al Aqsa TV is affiliated with Hamas, and besides the U.S. does the same thing so why pick on Israel? Goodman wrote, "Apparently, Israel is the only country that’s expected to treat terrorists-posing-as-reporters the same way it treats actual reporters."

......

Carr responded to the critics in Buzzfeed:

"The three men who died in missile strikes in cars on Nov. 20 were identified by Reuters, AP, AFP, and Washington Post and many other news outlets as journalists," Carr told BuzzFeed in an email. "The Committee to Protect Journalists, which I treat as a reliable, primary source in these matters, identified them as journalists. (as did Reporters without Borders.)"

"I ran my column by reporters and editors at our shop familiar with current events in the region before I printed it," Carr said. "And I don't believe that an ID made by the IDF is dispostive or obviates what the others said. Doesn't mean that I could not have gotten it wrong, only that the evidence so far suggests that they were journalists, however partisan."

http://mondoweiss.net/2012/11/nyt-p...ting-israel-targeted-journalists-in-gaza.html
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This seems to be prominent all over the world, with virtually no exceptions. After all, the leader of the free world does it and supports people who do it:

The targeting of journalists and other media workers has long been a hallmark of authoritarian regimes attempting to stifle views which contradict their own official narratives. During the Arab Spring journalists have been deliberately targeted by regimes from Libya to Syria with dozens having been killed over the past two years of unrest as dictatorial governments employ whatever violent means are at their disposal to suppress the voices of those reporting events as they occur on the ground.

However recent history shows that such behaviour is not the sole providence of Middle Eastern autocracies and has been dutifully employed by the United States and its allies in their military operations throughout the region. During the Iraq War, dozens of journalists were killed and wounded in attacks by US forces while the American architects of the war publicly denounced and threatened the news organisations reporting on their activities in the country. Countless journalists were gunned down at checkpoints, while attempting to report on the activities of US troops, and while attempting to broadcast images deemed harmful to US interests in the country.

Reuters journalist Mazen Dana was shot to death while attempting to report a story from outside Abu Ghraib prison, while Al Arabiya correspondent Mazen al-Tumeizi was killed on-camera by US helicopter gunfire while reporting on a crowd of Iraqis who had gathered around a damaged US armoured vehicle in Baghdad. After being struck by the helicopter's bullets his blood splattered on the still-recording camera lens, and his last words to his cameraman were captured in the audio feed: "I'm going to die. I'm going to die. Seif. Seif. I'm going to die."

Despite the shocking regularity with which such incidents occurred they continued to be publicly condoned with tacit silence and equivocation by US authorities throughout the war. In al-Tumeizi's case, American officials not only refused to apologise but cravenly implied the journalist may have been a legitimate target, in statements which his colleague and fellow Al Arabiya correspondent Najwa Kasem afterwards called "really suprising and sad".

Among the most high-profile of these fatal attacks was the shelling of the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad, a well-known hub for foreign journalists located in the city's downtown core. In an incident for which no US service-members were found to have been criminally culpable, an American tank fired on the building, killing Reuters cameraman Taras Protsyuk and Spanish Telecinco correspondent José Cueso. They were later indicted in absentia by a Spanish court which found three US soldiers involved guilty of "crimes against the international community".

Throughout the war, US officials made little secret of their outrage at foreign media for reporting stories which deviated from the official government narrative. At the time of the US assault against Fallujah, former Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld denounced Al Jazeera for broadcasting pictures of the massive civilian casualties being inflicted by Americans in the city, calling its coverage "vicious, inaccurate and inexcusable", while prominent neoconservative Frank Gaffney argued the station was "enemy media" that needed to be "taken out". In 2003, a US missile slammed into Al Jazeera's Baghdad offices, killing 35-year old correspondent Tareq Ayoub and severely wounding another employee of the network.

Leaked memos later revealed that George Bush and Tony Blair had discussed bombing Al Jazeera in response to their coverage of the war, and in his 2006 memoirs former British Home Secretary David Blunkett revealed that he had indeed advised Blair to target the station and its journalists. In Blunkett’s words, "There wasn't a worry from me because I believed that this was a war and in a war you wouldn't allow the broadcast to continue taking place"

These chilling words publicly espoused by a high-ranking former official in the British government are illustrative of the extent to which the target-killing of journalists is indeed mainstream practice not just among authoritarian Middle Eastern regimes but among their Western counterparts as well. Israel's target-killing campaign against the journalists of Gaza represents merely the latest chapter in a shameful history of officially sanctioned murder committed against those whose job is to bring public attention to the stories of warzones from around the world.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/12/20121223143133144589.html
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Something to think about. Journalists have again become targets of terrorism.

Mathloom · Dec 23, 2012

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/wSSVfxHbuBE" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Honey Bear · Dec 24, 2012

You only see, what your eyes, want to see
How can life be what you want it to be
You're frozen, when you're eyes not open

You're so consumed with what the media says
You waste your time with hate and regret
You're broken
When your hearts not open

Now there's no point in placing the blame
And you should know they suffer the same
If you give up
Your heart will be open

Love is a bird, she needs to fly
Let's not pretend Muslims, don't want us to die
They're angry
Cuz their hearts not open

LosPollosHermanos · Dec 24, 2012

Regev is such a smug *******, I've never liked him.

Oh and,

IB4ATWMATHLOOMORALSEXX

AroundTheWorld · Dec 24, 2012

Is this guy a journalist (according to Mathloom) and should have been off-limits?

Mathloom · Dec 24, 2012

New York, December 14, 2012--Israeli soldiers assaulted four Palestinian journalists and forced them to strip naked at a checkpoint in the West Bank city of Hebron on Wednesday, according to news reports. Two of the journalists worked for Reuters, and two for local Palestinian news outlets, the reports said.

Soldiers stopped Reuters cameramen Yousri Al Jamal and Ma'amoun Wazwaz, freelance journalist Mohamed al-Sagheer, and Akram al-Natsha, a reporter for the Hamas-affiliated Al-Quds TV, as they were driving to cover a story of a Palestinian teenager shot dead by an Israeli border guard, according to Reuters and local press freedom group the Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedom, or MADA. Reuters said the journalists were in a vehicle marked "TV," and that the Reuters journalists were wearing "Press" jackets.

Wazwaz told MADA that about 10 soldiers ordered the journalists out of the car. He said the soldiers punched them, beat them with their guns, and forced all of them to strip down to their underwear and kneel on the road with their hands behind their heads. The soldiers confiscated two gas masks from the journalists' car, as a well as a video camera, fired tear gas at them, and left the scene in an Israel Defense Forces patrol car, the reports said. The journalists later found their video camera undamaged on the side of the road..... [More at link]

http://www.cpj.org/2012/12/four-palestinian-journalists-assaulted-by-israeli.php
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Fortunately we learn from Western democratic values that you don't have the right to not ever feel offended by speech, nor do you have the right to kill someone for their hatred of you. This has been documented exceptionally well by ATW on this board. On the targeting of journalists and includes explicit description of Al Aqsa TV's anti-Israel stance:

December 2, 2012

Dear Prime Minister Netanyahu,

The Committee to Protect Journalists is gravely concerned that Israeli airstrikes targeted individual journalists and media facilities in the Gaza Strip between November 18 and 20. Journalists and media outlets are protected under international law in military conflict.

A series of Israeli airstrikes struck two buildings that house news media, resulting in injuries to nine journalists, while separate missile attacks resulted in the deaths of three journalists, according to news reports and CPJ research. Israeli officials have broadly asserted that the individuals and facilities had connections to terrorist activity but have disclosed no substantiation for these very serious allegations. CPJ has repeatedly sought, by email and phone, supporting details or evidence from the Israel Defense Forces spokesperson's office. We have yet to receive information from the spokesperson's office to substantiate its allegations.

Our research shows the following....

http://www.cpj.org/2012/12/israel-must-explain-targeting-of-journalists-gaza.php
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The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is an independent nonprofit organisation based in New York City[1] that promotes press freedom and defends the rights of journalists. The American Journalism Review has called the organization "Journalism's Red Cross".[2]

........

The current executive director of CPJ is journalist Joel Simon, who assumed the position in July 2006 after having served as deputy director since 2000.[9] His predecessor was veteran foreign correspondent Ann Cooper, who served as executive director from 1998 to 2006.[10]

CPJ's board of directors has included prominent US journalists including Christiane Amanpour, Tom Brokaw, Anne Garrels, Charlayne Hunter-Gault, Gwen Ifill, Jane Kramer, Anthony Lewis, Dave Marsh, Kati Marton, Michael Massing, Victor Navasky, Andres Oppenheimer, Clarence Page, Norman Pearlstine, Dan Rather, John Seigenthaler, and Mark Whitaker.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_to_Protect_Journalists
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