With the mainstream American and International Press desperately looking to find a moral equivalency between the U.S.-deemed terror organization Hamas and the State of Israel, media reports have been quick to point the finger at the Jewish State for Palestinian civilian causalities, especially the tragic deaths of children in Gaza.
But journalists who haves left the Hamas controlled territory – no longer fearing retaliation from the militant group – are confirming Israel’s claims that Hamas is operating out of hospitals and firing rockets from civilian neighborhoods – using their citizens as human shields – killing their fellow Palestinians when rocket attacks don’t reach Israel and detonate in Gaza.
Italian journalist Gabriele Barbati took to Twitter Tuesday and reported:
The Jerusalem Correspondent for Radio Popolare Milano, and former correspondent for Beijing’s Sky Italia, also backed up an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman claim that Hamas rockets, not IDF strikes, hit the United Nations run Shati refugee camp, killing nine children.
Cornell Law School professor William Jacobson asks on the website Legal Insurrection: “How many more of the civilian casualties have been caused by Hamas and Islamic rockets that fell short or misfired?”
Jacobson, who serves as Director of the Securities Law Clinic at Cornell, raises a question all responsible journalists need to be asking and stipulating when they report casualties from the Gaza Strip. But as more reports of journalist intimidation from Hamas are revealed, it’s clear honest and objective reporting is nowhere to be found in the Hamas-controlled territory.
A report by The Australian reveals Hamas’ “terror tactic: intimidating foreign journalists”:
“Reporter Peter Stefanovic, of the Nine Network’s news, stationed in Gaza, received a surge of abuse and threats when he tweeted that he had seen rockets fired into Israel from near his hotel, in a civilian area.
The Wall Street Journal’s reporter Nick Casey fell foul of Hamas by reporting that Shifa hospital was Hamas’s control center. On July 21, Casey posted a photo on Twitter of a chief Hamas spokesman being interviewed from a room in Shifa hospital in front of a makeshift backdrop of a photo of a destroyed house.
French-Palestinian journalist Radjaa Abu Dagga wrote that he was forcibly blocked from leaving Gaza and detained and interrogated by members of Hamas’s al-Qassam Brigade at a room in Shifa hospital… an account of his treatment, in the French newspaper Liberation, also has since been taken down from the paper’s website at Dagga’s request.“
As disturbing these intimidation tactics may be, media outlets failed to inform their reporters of Hamas’ history of journalist intimidation. Well documented by the Committee to Protect Journalists, Hamas is notorious for shutting down news bureaus, arresting reporters and cameramen, confiscating camera equipment and beating journalists.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.