Reported by the Washington Post, 8/7/24:
At least 108 journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza since the conflict started, according to a tally by the Committee to Protect Journalists. The group said Friday that the last 10 months was the deadliest period for journalists since it began gathering data in 1992.
Ghoul was one of Al Jazeera’s chief reporters in Gaza, and to many in the Arabic-speaking world, he was the face of coverage of the war. He broadcast daily from northern Gaza, which Israel’s military cut off from the rest of the territory, as rescue workers searched blast sites for survivors and as casualties flooded into local hospitals.
The Israeli strike on his vehicle came Wednesday afternoon, according to an eyewitness and the news network. According to freelance photographer Ayman al-Hissi, who said he was about 300 yards from the car, the team had just finished reporting on another attack near a home belonging to the family of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh — who was assassinated in Tehran earlier Wednesday — in the Shati refugee camp west of Gaza City.
Al Jazeera journalist Ismail al-Ghoul and cameraman Rami al-Rifi were killed in an attack on the Gaza Strip on July 31. (Video: Video obtained by Reuters)
A teenager on a bike, 17-year-old Khaled al-Shawa, was also killed, according to Mahmoud Bassal, a Gaza civil defense spokesman. A video from the scene showed Shawa’s body on the ground next to a pool of blood. He was still wearing a pink children’s backpack.
“No one knew who he was at first,” Shawa’s mother, Basma al-Shawa, said by phone Thursday. “But my son was not anonymous,” she said, adding that he had gone out to deliver food to an elderly man. “My son is not just a number.”
The joint Israeli statement said that al-Ghoul had “instructed other operatives on how to record operations and was actively involved in recording and publicizing attacks against IDF troops.” It was unclear how or when that conclusion had been reached. In March, al-Ghoul was detained for 12 hours during an Israeli military operation around al-Shifa Hospital, the network said. The IDF did not respond to questions about why he was cleared for release at that time.
Israel has blocked foreign media from entering the Gaza Strip since Oct. 7, save for occasional military embeds where access is tightly controlled. Egypt, which controlled one of Gaza’s border crossings until May, also did not permit reporters to enter. To understand the conflict, in which local authorities say that more than 39,000 people have been killed, the world has relied on Palestinian journalists to broadcast the news.
In May, Israel moved to shut down Al Jazeera’s operations in the country, alleging that its correspondents had harmed the security of the state.
Other Al Jazeera journalists have been killed in Gaza since the war began. Veteran cameraman Samer Abu Daqqa was killed in an Israeli strike in December, which also wounded Gaza bureau chief Wael al-Dahdouh. Weeks later, Dahdouh’s son, Hamza, was slain in an Israeli strike alongside drone operator Mustafa Thuraya and their driver, as the men fled an airstrike at the scene they had been documenting.
The IDF made similar accusations against Thuraya and Dahdouh, saying that they were terrorists who had operated an aircraft that threatened Israeli troops. A Post investigation found that they had been on assignment for the network, using a drone to document the aftermath of an Israeli airstrike south of Khan Younis, and that no military positions were visible in the footage.