Headlines:
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
September 23, 2024
Massive Israeli Airstrikes in Lebanon Kill Over 180 People, Injure 700+
Sep 23, 2024
Al Jazeera is reporting Israel has killed more than 182 people in Lebanon so far today in a wave of extensive airstrikes hitting more than 300 targets. Lebanon’s Health Ministry reports the dead include children, women and paramedics. More than 700 people have been wounded.
Earlier today, Israel instructed residents of southern Lebanon to leave their homes if they live near any site used by Hezbollah. Israel sent text messages and made phone calls to tens of thousands of people in what Lebanese officials decried as a form of “psychological warfare.” Israel also hacked into Lebanese radio stations.
On Friday, Israel killed at least 45 people in a massive airstrike on a densely populated residential neighborhood of Beirut. The dead include 16 members of Hezbollah, including two senior commanders, Ibrahim Aqil and Ahmed Wahbi. Lebanon’s Transportation Minister Ali Hamieh condemned the Israeli attacks.
Ali Hamieh: “The Israeli enemy, with all its continued crimes, with the excuse of pursuing Hezbollah, has targeted a residential compound. It has committed a massacre to a residential building, against unarmed children, women at their homes. … The Israeli enemy is taking the region to war.”
Hezbollah responded to Friday’s attack by firing a barrage of rockets into Israel targeting an air base and weapons factories.
Ex-CIA Director: Israel’s Deadly Pager Attacks in Lebanon Was Act of “Terrorism”
Sep 23, 2024
Former CIA Director and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has accused Israel of committing an act of terrorism by rigging thousands of walkie-talkies and pagers that exploded in a coordinated attack last week that killed at least 37 people and injured thousands in Lebanon. Panetta spoke to CBS News.
Leon Panetta: “I don’t think there’s any question that it’s a form of terrorism. This has gone right into the supply chain. Right into the supply chain. And when you have terror going into the supply chain, it makes people ask the question: What the hell is next?”
Israeli Attacks Continue on Gaza’s Schools, Killing Displaced Palestinian Children Seeking Shelter
Sep 23, 2024
In Gaza, Israel is continuing to target schools and shelters housing displaced Palestinians. On Saturday, an Israeli attack on a school in Gaza City killed 22 people, including 13 children and six women. One of the victims was a 3-month-old baby. Survivors said there are no safe places to go in Gaza.
Umm Mahmoud: “We got displaced and came to this school. I left from my house after it was targeted and my husband and my two children were martyred, and we came to this school and thought it was safe. We thought this was a safe place. Then they target us. Where are we supposed to go if at a school we’re not safe? We got displaced seven or eight times, and I’m all alone with my two remaining children.”
An Israeli airstrike earlier today in Deir al-Balah killed a mother and four of her children. Meanwhile, heavy rain has flooded makeshift camps in al-Mawasi and other areas of Gaza.
Israel Raids and Shuts Down Al Jazeera Ramallah Office Amid Intensifying West Bank Attacks
Sep 23, 2024
Press freedom groups have condemned the Israeli military for raiding and shutting down Al Jazeera’s Ramallah office in the occupied West Bank. Heavily armed Israeli troops were seen on live TV entering the office and confiscating equipment while ordering the office closed for 45 days. Israeli troops also tore down a poster of Shireen Abu Akleh, the Al Jazeera journalist who was fatally shot by Israeli forces while covering a raid on Jenin two years ago. This is Al Jazeera’s West Bank bureau chief Walid al-Omari.
Walid al-Omari: “This is a blatant attack on the Al Jazeera channel and Al Jazeera network and those who are working with them, as well as on the freedom of speech and the task of delivering the truth. This is an attack that aims to obscure the truth.”
The raid comes months after Israel banned Al Jazeera from broadcasting inside Israel.
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Israel Bombs Lebanon After Blowing Up Pagers in “Act of Mass Mutilation.” Is Ground Invasion Next?
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
September 23, 2024
Israel attacked more than 300 sites in Lebanon Monday, killing at least 182 people and injuring more than 700 others as fears grow of an all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah. The Israeli military also ordered residents of southern Lebanon to leave their homes if they live near any site used by the militant group. “At the heart of this is an attempt to manufacture consent and try to portray most southern Lebanese as Hezbolloh operatives,” says Sintia Issa, editor-at-large at the Beirut-based media organization The Public Source. We also speak with Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah, a British Palestinian reconstructive surgeon volunteering at the American University of Beirut Medical Center, where he has been treating victims of last week’s device explosions that injured thousands of people. He describes the disfiguring injuries from Israel’s booby-trapping of pagers and walkie-talkies, calling it “an act of mass mutilation.”
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show in Lebanon, where Israel has attacked more than 300 sites today and fears of a broader regional war are growing. Al Jazeera and other media outlets report 100 people were killed in the wave of strikes today, 400 more wounded, as the Israeli army steps up pressure on Hezbollah. United Nations chief António Guterres told CNN he feared, quote, “the possibility of transforming Lebanon into another Gaza.”
Earlier today, Israel instructed residents of southern Lebanon to leave their homes if they live near by any site used by Hezbollah. Israel sent text messages, made phone calls to tens of thousands of people in what Lebanese officials decried as a form of “psychological warfare.” This is a Lebanese shopkeeper in Beirut.
LEBANESE SHOPKEEPER: [translated] I say this is the beginning of the war, definitely the beginning of a war.
AMY GOODMAN: This comes after Israel killed at least 45 people Friday in a massive airstrike on a densely populated residential neighborhood of Beirut. The dead include 16 members of Hezbollah, including two senior commanders, Ibrahim Aqil and Ahmed Wahbi. Lebanon’s Transportation Minister Ali Hamieh condemned the Israeli attacks.
ALI HAMIEH: [translated] The Israeli enemy, with all its continued crimes, with the excuse of pursuing Hezbollah, has targeted a residential compound. It has committed a massacre to a residential building, against unarmed children, women at their homes. … The Israeli enemy is taking the region to war.
AMY GOODMAN: Hezbollah responded by firing a barrage of rockets into Israel targeting an air base and weapons factories.
Meanwhile, former CIA director, former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has accused Israel of terrorism for rigging thousands of walkie-talkies and pagers to explode in a coordinated attack last week that killed at least 37 people, injuring thousands more in Lebanon. Panetta spoke to CBS News.
LEON PANETTA: I don’t think there’s any question that it’s a form of terrorism. This has gone right into the supply chain. Right into the supply chain. And when you have terror going into the supply chain, it makes people ask the question: What the hell is next?
AMY GOODMAN: For more, we go to Beirut, Lebanon, where we’re joined by two guests. Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah is a British Palestinian reconstructive surgeon who arrived in Beirut last week to treat some of the thousands of people injured when pagers and walkie-talkies exploded. He’s also worked in Gaza with Doctors Without Borders. Also with us in Beirut is Sintia Issa, editor-at-large at The Public Source, a Beirut-based independent media organization.
We’re going to go to Sintia first. Can you describe the latest in Lebanon, this morning’s attacks that we hear killed, what, 100 people, injuring hundreds more, and then make your way back through the weekend?
SINTIA ISSA: Thank you for having me, Amy.
This morning, between 6 and 7 a.m., as most people were still sleeping, Israel began its largest bombardment campaign of the year in South Lebanon and then gradually it made its way to the Beqaa, reaching all the way north of the Beqaa to the Hermel. That’s about 200 kilometers far from the border. These are locations that were not targeted up until this point in the war. And in fact, this is very reminiscent of 2006. We’re talking about a hundred locations or so, 50 or a hundred locations or so, between villages, towns and various parts of the landscape. Jbeil district, which is not really involved at all in this war, was also targeted, Laqlouq. This is also part of the psychological warfare that we are seeing.
And the bombing itself, you know, we saw plumes that were not necessarily the most familiar, so we’re talking about bombs that may have been added to the arsenal for the first time here in Lebanon, or at least used in Lebanon for the first time. The scale is incomparable so far.
Later, in the afternoon, at around noon, we had maybe another hundred or 200 strikes in different locations. As you did mention, it seems like there’s a hundred people who were killed already and several hundred more definitely wounded and injured. Sites near hospitals were targeted, in a clear indication that what has happened in Gaza may be coming to Lebanon, as well.
In relation to this, as well, southerners, but also different people, reaching Beirut, but mostly in the south, received text messages telling them to leave their homes if their homes contains a missile or a rocket. Israel also infiltrated the landline network in Sour, in the south, and called people and told them to leave if their house contains rockets or if they’re close to any weapons. There’s also a series of videos that Israel has been circulating on social media platforms for propagandistic purposes. These are animations where you can clearly see homes, and inside these homes there are rockets lying there. And the same message is basically telling residents of Lebanon to leave if their homes contains rockets.
So, what we’re seeing here is an attempt to manufacture consent for a carpet-bombing campaign that will no doubt, perhaps — let’s see how far it goes, but it promises at least to resemble a little bit what we’re seeing in Gaza.
AMY GOODMAN: So, how do people know if they’re near some kind of Hezbollah site?
SINTIA ISSA: There is a conflation that’s essentially happening with southerners in Lebanon. There’s a conflation between all civilians and Hezbollah happening at the same time. There is a — if the question is, “Where is Israel attacking right now?” it’s been fairly indiscriminate. We’ve seen that, you know, cities and towns, including the heart of Nabatieh, was bombed. So, the Ghazieh, next to Saida, also the square was bombed. So we’re talking about attacks that are happening in the thick of the towns, densely populated areas, not just in disparate places. And, you know, at the heart of this is an attempt to manufacture consent and kind of try to portray most southernese as Hezbollah operatives, their homes as essentially depots and caches.
AMY GOODMAN: Hezbollah’s deputy leader Naim Qassem spoke at the funeral of Ibrahim Aqil, killed in Friday’s Israeli airstrike on a residential building in Beirut.
NAIM QASSEM: [translated] The Lebanese support front for Gaza will continue, no matter how long it takes, until the war on Gaza ends. Secondly, the people of the north won’t return. Rather, displacement will increase, and support will expand. The Israeli military solution only deepens Israel’s dilemma and that of the northern population without solving their problems. So, go to Gaza and stop the war.
AMY GOODMAN: So, if you could comment on what he was saying? And also, I wanted to go to White House national security spokesperson John Kirby, who told ABC’s This Week the U.S. has been engaged in, quote, “extensive and quite assertive diplomacy.”
JOHN KIRBY: We don’t believe that a military conflict — and we’re saying this directly to our Israeli counterparts, George — we don’t believe that escalating this military conflict is in their best interest. … We want to make sure that we can continue to do everything we can to try to prevent this from becoming an all-out war there with Hezbollah across that Lebanese border.
AMY GOODMAN: Sintia Issa, if you could comment?
SINTIA ISSA: Well, to be very clear, Hezbollah never intended to have a full-on war on Lebanon. That was not a part of their calculation or strategy at all, actually. They were very much interested in and intent on being a front of support and military solidarity to Gaza in the context of a genocide and ethnic cleansing. But Hezbollah never really wanted to have a full-fledged war. This is something that they stated themselves. And if we actually follow the facts on the ground, the actions, we will notice that they tried to work within the rules of engagement, target only military infrastructures and never civilian infrastructures. And that was always the intent. It was always Israel that wants to escalate this into a broader war with Lebanon. And for an entire year, Hezbollah has been trying to deescalate.
Now with what happened on Tuesday and Wednesday with about 3,000 people maimed in Dahieh in the span of seconds and then another assassination on Friday that took the lives of 54 people, injuring many more, it seems like war is forced upon Hezbollah. And if war is forced upon Hezbollah, then they will do it, and it will be a fierce battle, and it will be a costly battle for both sides.
Now, when it comes to the United States and John Kirby saying that, you know, the U.S. is very much trying to work for a ceasefire, again, if we actually try to compare the statements with actions on the ground, there’s large inconsistencies there. And the Lebanese people and the Palestinians and everyone in the region very much recognizes that the U.S. is not in fact trying to work on a ceasefire in real terms. In fact, the U.S. is quite complicit in what is happening in Gaza and now in this coming war on Lebanon. It supplies Israel with 60% of the weapons it’s using in Lebanon and Palestine, but also in Syria. It’s giving it diplomatic immunity in various U.N. Security Councils. And at the ICC, it’s basically stopping any incrimination of Yoav Gallant and Benjamin Netanyahu of war crimes and plausible genocide. So the U.S. has been playing a very important role in this war from the very get-go.
And, of course, this question of peace process, you know, one remembers the — this question of ceasefire process, sorry, one remembers the peace process and the question of peace process. This question of process is really a ploy to extend the possibilities of capitulation, the possibilities of, in this case here, genocide in Palestine and increase the war on Lebanon. But the reality is just a ploy that’s presented to give more time to Israel to do more. Unfortunately, that’s the situation.
Of course, the war is maybe a fait accompli or not. I think the war can come to an end, and there are — there is a way out of this war. There is a roadmap. First, if the U.S. is indeed, you know, interested in reaching a ceasefire, it would halt all arms supply to Israel right now, the 60% it supplies. And, you know, since the U.S. does sanction about 30% of the countries in the world, then, in that case, it should be able to sanction Israel for committing war crimes against humanity and a genocide. And then, finally, it would lift all diplomatic and legal impunity for Israel at the ICC, for example. So, there is a road forward to end the war, and that’s to be sure.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to bring Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah into the conversation. You came to Lebanon last week. Interesting to hear the former CIA director, former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta talking about the explosions of the pagers and the walkie-talkies as being a terrorist act. Can you talk about the effects on the ground and the kind of injuries you’re seeing, with, I think at last count, 37 dead, thousands injured?
DR. GHASSAN ABU-SITTAH: This is the largest act of mass mutilation we’ve seen, even more than in the civil war in Sierra Leone, where warring parties were chopping each other’s hands off. This is — the explosive put in the pagers was sufficient to maim and not to kill. And so, what you have is over 3,000, with around 90% who have penetrating injuries to the eyes, some of whom both eyes, and a blast injury to the hand, with what we refer to in hand surgery as a mangled hand, because what happened is the pager went off, the victims picked up the pager and then looked at it, and it exploded in their hand facing their faces, and so there are also facial injuries.
Now, the act of booby-trapping these pagers meant that they went off when the people were in their cars with families, when they were in their homes, with kids picking up these pagers when they went off. And so, truly, the aim of this was to mutilate. And I tell my colleagues here that it’s reminiscent of the Marches of Return between 2018 and 2020, when Israel intentionally shot over 8,000 Palestinians in the lower limb with the aim of disablement and mutilation. And so, this is an act that was designed at inflicting disablement, at mutilation of the victims.
AMY GOODMAN: You know, it’s interesting you talk about the seconds’ delay, that it’s most like a double-tap bomb on a much smaller level — right? — when a country bombs another country, and then, as the rescue workers come running to help the people on the ground, they’re bombed again. In this case, it was a pager. And so, first it vibrates, forcing people — well, people instinctively then pick up or go over across the room to where it might not have hurt them, and then, as they pick it up, they are injured or killed.
DR. GHASSAN ABU-SITTAH: And also, what happened the following day is that the walkie-talkies that had also been booby-trapped went off. And these walkie-talkies were being used by paramedics, by ambulance staff, by civil defense staff. And so, there was a kind of second wave of similarly, but with bigger explosive quantities in, with the same aim of inducing that terrible injury, paralyzing the health system and leaving these people with permanent disability.
AMY GOODMAN: On Friday, you were operating on victims of the pager and walkie-talkie attacks, when Israel bombed the residential building in Beirut?
DR. GHASSAN ABU-SITTAH: Yes. And, I mean, that was our biggest worry, is that it highlighted the fact that as a result of around 3,000 wounded in the hospitals, there wasn’t any capacity left in the health system to take any of the wounded. And that’s what forced a lot of the hospitals to push for early discharge of the wounded over the weekend, because we felt that the health system was very exposed with all of these injured people in the beds, and we felt that there’s going to be another wave. And unfortunately, this came true this morning, that we needed to discharge a lot of the wounded early.
What you need to realize, this comes at the end of a four-year economic crisis that has really disabled the Lebanese health system and disabled the Lebanese government in terms of its ability to support the Ministry of Health. So, you have around a third of the doctors and nurses emigrated as a result of the collapse of the Lebanese currency. And you have a health system that’s mainly made up of small and medium-sized private institutions that, you know, just don’t have the purchasing capacity to buy the kind medications, consumables that they need. And those who did, it was used up on Tuesday treating and, since then, treating the 3,000 wounded.
AMY GOODMAN: You worked for weeks in Gaza treating the wounded, the injured there. How does what you’re seeing here in Beirut compare? You told The New York Times, “The Lebanese health system is in no way able to treat war wounded if it were to escalate into a full-blown war. the Lebanese health system is in no way able to treat war wounded if you were to escalate into a full-blown war. We are stuck in this loop. You just operate and operate. You feel like you are playing catch up all the time.” Dr. Abu-Sittah?
DR. GHASSAN ABU-SITTAH: So, when we have these 3,000 wounded all within a couple of hours of each other, they flooded the health system, which then meant that they were being taken to the operating room. Really, I mean, this is the biggest hospital in Lebanon, the American University of Beirut Medical Center. And we had 10 rooms going all the time. We were doing around 50 to 60 cases per day. And it took us from Tuesday night, Wednesday morning ’til Saturday to finish the majority of the initial surgeries.
I mean, these patients, especially for their hand reconstruction, will need between five and 12 surgeries over the next five years to regain some hand function, to try to limit the disability that’s left. The eyes, that’s the even more devastating thing, the eyes, the loss of vision as a result of these injuries. That’s going to leave permanent disability. This is an act of kind of almost mythical mutilation. It’s an act of mutilation, not an — it was not an assassination attempt, but an act of mass mutilation.
AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah, we want to thank you for being with us. My final question is — you moved to Beirut in 2011, joined the faculty of the American University of Beirut Hospital. Your mother was born in Lebanon. Why did you choose to go back?
DR. GHASSAN ABU-SITTAH: On Tuesday, I realized, when I was in London — I had been in Glasgow as director, speaking at the opening ceremony of the academic year and then went back to London. And as the news came about on Tuesday morning, Tuesday morning and Tuesday afternoon, I realized the sheer number and the type of injuries which would require reconstructive surgery. And so, that was the decision. I took an overnight flight from London on Tuesday night and got here at 8:00 on Wednesday morning and came straight to the hospital. And we have literally been operating since then.
We’re now trying to clear the hospital, with the news of over 500 now wounded in the south. And we’re expecting these wounded, some of whom to come here, the most critically wounded. The Israelis have been targeting cars on the roads full of fleeing families. And so, we need — you know, I think the most important thing is that the humanitarian sector needs to realize that the Lebanese health system now needs help, before the Israelis bomb the airport. It needs trauma teams to be brought in. It needs them to be fully equipped and fully funded in terms of consumables and medication, because the system is not going to be able to deal with this.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you for being with us, Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah, British Palestinian surgeon, speaking to us from Beirut, and Sintia Issa, editor-at-large at The Public Source, also in Beirut, Lebanon.
When we come back, press freedom groups are condemning the Israeli military for raiding and shutting down Al Jazeera’s main West Bank office in Ramallah. The raid was broadcast live on television. We’ll speak with Al Jazeera’s managing editor.
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“Israel Has No Right”: Al Jazeera Managing Editor Slams Israel’s Raid & Closing of West Bank Bureau
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
September 23, 2024
Israel stepped up its censorship of Al Jazeera on Sunday as soldiers raided the Qatar-based news network’s Ramallah offices in the occupied West Bank and ordered a 45-day closure of the bureau. This comes after the Netanyahu government banned the network inside of Israel in May under a new media law giving authorities broad power to censor foreign outlets deemed to be security threats. “It was a show of force, a show of intimidation to show journalists around the globe that what’s happening in Gaza and the West Bank isn’t allowed to be reported,” Al Jazeera managing editor Mohamed Moawad tells Democracy Now! Israeli forces have killed as many as 160 journalists in Gaza over the last year, including several who work for Al Jazeera. In 2022, an Israeli sniper killed the network’s acclaimed Palestinian American correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh in the West Bank.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.
Press freedom groups are condemning the Israeli military for raiding and shutting down Al Jazeera’s Ramallah office in the occupied West Bank. The raid was broadcast live on TV Sunday morning. Heavily armed Israeli troops were seen entering the office and confiscating equipment while ordering the office closed for at least 45 days. This is an Israeli soldier confronting Al Jazeera’s West Bank bureau chief Walid al-Omari.
ISRAEL SOLDIER: [translated] Good evening. There’s an order from the court to shut down Al Jazeera for 45 days. I ask you to take all the cameras and leave the office now.
WALID AL-OMARI: [translated] Should we all leave?
ISRAEL SOLDIER: [translated] This is an order.
WALID AL-OMARI: [translated] Can I see it, please? This is the order which was brought to us by this office and in his military forces. The order says that it is an order to shut down the office of Al Jazeera channel for 45 days. And this is a military decision from the commander of the central area and the Israeli military. It asks us to leave this office immediately and to take our personal belongings and our cameras.
AMY GOODMAN: During the raid, Israeli troops also tore down a poster of Shireen Abu Akleh, the Al Jazeera journalist, the Palestinian American, who was fatally shot by Israeli troops May 11th, 2022, when she was outside the Jenin refugee camp.
Reporters Without Borders responded to this weekend’s raid with a statement denouncing, quote, “Israel’s relentless assault,” unquote, and repeating its call for the repeal of the Israeli law that allows the government to shut down foreign media. U.N. secretary-general spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said Sunday the U.N. is deeply concerned about Israel’s closure of Al Jazeera’s offices in the occupied West Bank.
STÉPHANE DUJARRIC: We’re very concerned any time, anywhere in the world, media offices get closed, especially in conflict areas, where journalists are the eyes and ears of the world, and they need to be able to do their job free from harassment or any other type of impediment.
AMY GOODMAN: For more, we go to Doha, where we’re joined by Mohamed Moawad, managing editor of Al Jazeera.
Welcome back to Democracy Now! Can you lay out exactly what happened on Sunday morning, Mohamed?
MOHAMED MOAWAD: Thanks, Amy, for having me. Glad to be back with you.
When we spoke, when we last spoke in May, when the Israeli government took the decision of shutting down our offices in Jerusalem and the Palestinian — and Tel Aviv, I told you that the situation is ambiguous and that the law itself upon which the Israeli government took the decision is ambiguous, as well. It could be weaponized against us anytime. When the Israeli government feel that the intimidation — as type of intimidation isn’t enough, they can go farther, escalate the intimidation process. So, that’s exactly what happened.
Our bureau chief, Walid al-Omari, was live, was live on air, reporting on the exchange of strikes in Lebanon between Hezbollah and the Israeli forces. Suddenly, the Israeli soldiers — these were not ordinary officers, but, rather, you know, fully equipped and ready-for-combat-zone officers and soldiers, and they invade — I say “invade,” not “stormed.” They invaded the office, and they spoke to Walid al-Omari, who stood very strong against them, defending his right for freedom of the press. And he told them, “Why you are here? This is not a combat zone. This is a space for journalism.” They said that there is an order to shut down the office. And that’s when that the whole situation was chilling for us, because, you know, this is a dedicated space for journalism. This is an office for reporters, for journalists. This is not a combat zone.
They then went on to move from corner to corner in the office as if it’s a combat zone. And then they tore down our late colleague Shireen Abu Akleh’s picture from the wall. They stole all equipments from inside the office, despite the fact that the order itself that was handed to Walid al-Omari did not mention anything about equipments. And then they went farther, to follow our colleagues downstairs, where they continued reporting about the incident, and they took the mic from Walid al-Omari and said, “You’re not allowed to work here. Go home.”
But, you know, the whole situation here is not shutting down an office, it’s not a decision by the Israeli government that was executed by the army, a fully equipped army, but, rather, an invasion to the very principle of the press freedom around the world.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you explain how the Israeli military has jurisdiction here? Your Ramallah bureau, which is in charge of the whole West Bank coverage of Al Jazeera, is in Area A, an area marked as being under Palestinian control in the Oslo Accords. So what legal jurisdiction did Israel have to come in with their heavily armed soldiers?
MOHAMED MOAWAD: That’s why, Amy, it’s very difficult for us to find a way to challenge this legally, because, really, the whole situation is ambiguous. They say this is emergency law. This is according to the defense minister of Israel, an order by him to the army to enter the West Bank and shut down an office which does not — you know, does not include the power of the Israeli army in this area because it’s an area that is under the jurisdiction A, which is mainly for the Palestinian Authority to decide about.
But, you know, the whole — Israel has no right to kill over 160 journalists in Gaza, I mean, and they’ve done it, and they continue to do it. They’ve killed three colleagues at Al Jazeera. They continue to commit atrocities against journalists. So, it wasn’t surprising. By the way, it was the least decision, the least action they have taken against us, because we’ve lost colleagues.
But at the same time, it was a show of force, a show of intimidation to show journalists around the globe that what’s happening in Gaza and the West Bank isn’t allowed to be reported about and that the coverage of Al Jazeera is an enemy for the Israeli government, despite the fact that we haven’t and we’re not weaponizing at all, and we’re not going to do that. We’re not weaponizing our platform, despite the fact that we are being intimidated, we have lost colleagues.
Just before I came on air, we’ve been airing the Israeli forces press conference. And we continue to do that, despite the fact that the Israeli government shut down our offices in Israel and the Palestinian territories to try to delegitimize our coverage and say that Al Jazeera is a one-sided coverage, don’t operate there. But we continue to cover. We continue to make sure that we give voice to the voiceless and at the same time make sure that both narratives are kind of covered.
AMY GOODMAN: One of the things you do on Al Jazeera when reporters are reporting on Israel, since you’re banned from Israel, is repeatedly say that. That’s unlike U.S. networks that don’t say, when they’re reporting on Gaza, that the Israeli military prevents them from going into Gaza. Talk about that editorial decision that you’ve made, as you have reporters in Amman and other places saying, “We are not allowed to be in Israel as we report this right now,” and what these images mean that you’re broadcasting that others don’t.
MOHAMED MOAWAD: This is exactly what we should be talking about, Amy. Shutting down Al Jazeera’s office is the headline, but the name of the game is preventing journalists from doing their job, either in Gaza, in the West Bank. They want us to report remotely. They don’t want us to be in the frontlines. And that’s crystal clear.
I mean, the whole international journalistic community should be talking about one topic when they see a journalist killed in Gaza. They should be talking about one topic when they see an office shut down in Gaza or in West Bank or in Israel. The one topic is: No international journalist was allowed to enter Gaza to cover the war there, to give voice to the voiceless, which is at the core of this and the principle, the main principle, of this profession. No international journalists.
Even the international journalistic community is not placing pressure on Israel to allow their colleagues to get into Gaza to cover. Remember the Arab Spring, when so many American and Western journalists challenged the bureaucracy of the authoritarian regimes to go cover from Tahrir Square or from Tunisia or from Syria or from Libya. Right now no one is placing that pressure. And it’s really, really annoying, because we should be defending the freedom of the press. We should be defending the right to know what’s happening there. We should not be — we should not shy from what’s happening in Gaza and be part of this concealing that the Israeli government is trying to do to conceal what’s happening in Gaza and the West Bank and the atrocities being committed. They just want us to report remotely.
And we will continue to remind the world and the journalistic community that this is happening and that you should unite to place pressure on the Israeli government to give the right for journalists to enter Gaza. Even after a possible ceasefire, this should be the case to uncover what’s really happened there. I remind you that we still have six correspondents reporting from Gaza. And that’s something that we are committed to. We are committed to give voice to the voiceless. An office is nothing for us. We will continue the coverage. We asked our colleagues to stay safe in the West Bank right now until we figure out the legal procedure, because, as I told you, Amy, the situation is ambiguous. We can’t really know on what basis that decision was taken, but we expected it.
AMY GOODMAN: Mohamed Moawad, I want to thank you for being with us, managing editor of Al Jazeera, speaking to us from Al Jazeera’s headquarters in Doha, Qatar.