Groups Issue World Cup Travel Advisory Over ‘Deeply Troubling Human Rights Landscape’ in US

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Article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

US President Donald Trump receives the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize from FIFA President Gianni Infantino on December 5, 2025 in Washington, DC.(Photo by Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)

The coalition cited the Trump administration’s “racist immigration policies, mass detention and deportation, and attacks on freedom of expression and peaceful protest.”

A coalition of more than 120 US-based civil society groups on Thursday issued a travel advisory ahead of the upcoming FIFA Men’s World Cup over what the ACLU called the “deteriorating human rights situation” in the United States amid the Trump administration’s deadly anti-immigrant crackdown, suppression of free speech, and more.

Citing the “absence of meaningful action and concrete guarantees from FIFA”—world soccer’s governing body—“host cities, or the US government,” the coalition published a warning urging “fans, players, journalists, and other visitors traveling to and within the United States” for the tournament to “have an emergency contingency plan.”

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The US, Canada, and Mexico are jointly hosting the tournament, which is set to kick off with group stage matches in Mexico City and Guadalajara on June 11 and Los Angeles and Toronto the following day.

“World Cup games will be played in 11 different cities across the United States, which, like many localities, have already been the target of the Trump administration’s violent and abusive immigration crackdown,” the coalition wrote.

BREAKING: We're joining over 120 organizations issuing a travel advisory to warn anyone visiting the U.S. for the 2026 FIFA World Cup of possible civil and human rights violations.FIFA must pressure the Trump administration to protect the people traveling to and working at the games.

ACLU (@aclu.org) 2026-04-23T14:12:08.610Z

“While the Trump administration’s rising authoritarianism and increasing violence pose serious risks to all,” the advisory continues, “those from immigrant communities, racial and ethnic minority groups, and LGBTQ+ individuals have been and continue to be disproportionately targeted and affected by the administration’s policies and, as such, are most vulnerable to serious harm.”

According to the groups, those harms potentially include:

  • Arbitrary denial of entry and risk of arrest, detention, and/or deportation of non-US nationals—even those with prior authorization from the US government;
  • Expanded restrictions and limitations on travel and entry into the United States, given the Trump administration’s ban or severe restriction on entry of people from 19 Global South nations;
  • Invasive social media screening and searches of electronic devices as part of admission to the United States;
  • Violent and unconstitutional immigration enforcement, including racial profiling and other discrimination by law enforcement;
  • Suppression of speech and protest and increased surveillance; and
  • Serious risk of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, and in some cases, death, while in immigration detention facilities or custody.

The coalition—which includes groups like the ACLU, Amnesty International USA, Center for Constitutional Rights, Committee to Protect Journalists, Haitian Bridge Alliance, Human Rights First, Legal Defense Fund, Mijente Support Committee, NAACP, National Lawyers Guild, and Southern Poverty Law Center—is urging prospective World Cup attendees to take steps to protect themselves. These include knowing their rights, securing their electronic devices, and informing trusted people about travel plans.

Visitors are also advised to download Human Rights First’s ReadyNow! mobile app “to notify trusted contacts in case of possible detention.”

Journalists covering the tournament are urged to “consult resources from the Committee to Protect Journalists or Reporters Without Borders for information on how to keep themselves safe while entering the US and while reporting inside the country.

Daniel Noroña, Americas advocacy director at Amnesty International USA, said in a statement Thursday that “fans, journalists, and others traveling to the United States for the 2026 FIFA World Cup risk encountering a deeply troubling human rights landscape, shaped by the Trump administration’s racist immigration policies, mass detention and deportation, and attacks on freedom of expression and peaceful protest.”

ACLU human rights program director Jamil Dakwar said that “FIFA has been paying lip service to human rights while cozying up with the Trump administration, putting millions of people at risk of being harmed and their basic rights violated.”

“The Trump administration’s abusive actions continue to threaten our communities, tourists, and fans alike—and it’s past time that FIFA use its leverage to push for meaningful policy changes and binding assurances that will make people feel safe to travel and enjoy the games,” Dakwar added.

FIFA faced worldwide ridicule for awarding President Donald Trump its first-ever Peace Prize last December amid his administration’s illegal high-seas boat-bombing spree, and just ahead of his bombing of Nigeria, kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, launch of the US-Israeli war of choice against Iran, and threats to attack several other countries.

Despite US bombing that’s killed thousands of its people—including hundreds of children—and FIFA’s refusal to relocate its matches outside the United States, Iran, which easily qualified, is planning to take part in the tournament.

On Thursday, Iran’s embassy in Italy decried what it called a “morally bankrupt” effort by US Special Envoy for Global Partnerships Paolo Zampolli to ban it from the tournament and replace its bracket slot with Italy, which is reeling from missing its third consecutive World Cup final.

Article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

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Continue ReadingGroups Issue World Cup Travel Advisory Over ‘Deeply Troubling Human Rights Landscape’ in US

Israel’s Strike on Yemen Newspaper Offices Was ‘Deadliest Global Attack’ on Journalists in 16 Years: Press Freedom Group

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Original article by Stephen Prager republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Honor guards carry coffins during a funeral procession of 31 Yemeni journalists killed in Israeli airstrikes on September 16, 2025, in Sana’a, Yemen.
 (Photo by Mohammed Hamoud/Getty Images)

The Committee to Protect Journalists said Israel’s attack on a media complex in Sana’a last week killed 31 journalists.

Israel’s airstrikes on a media complex in Yemen last week resulted in the largest single attack on journalists the world has seen in 16 years, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

In a report released Friday, the group said that 31 journalists from two government-run newspapers based in Sana’a were killed in the strikes on September 10, along with four others, including one child.

Nasser Al-Khadri, editor-in-chief of the newspaper 26 September, called the attack on his newsroom an “unprecedented massacre of journalists.”

“It is a brutal and unjustified attack that targeted innocent people whose only crime was working in the media field, armed with nothing but their pens and words,” Al-Khadri told the CPJ.

According to CPJ, it was the second-largest attack on the press they’ve ever recorded, and the worst since 2009, when 32 journalists were massacred as part of a political ambush in the Philippines.

The Israeli government has often defended its attacks on civilian infrastructure by claiming that it houses militants. But in these strikes, the IDF’s media desk acknowledged that it was targeting what it referred to as the “Public Relations Department” for the Houthis, also known as Ansar-Allah.

Shortly after Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza began in 2023, the militant group, which controls large parts of Yemen, began to launch drone and missile strikes against shipping vessels in the Red Sea and directly against Israel in what they have described as an effort to support Palestinians under fire. They have said they will stop these attacks when Israel reaches an agreement with Hamas to end the war in Gaza.

Israel has repeatedly bombed Yemen in recent weeks, including launching a strike on its main airport and large amounts of civilian infrastructure. On the same day it bombed the media complex, it also hit residential areas in Sana’a as well as a medical facility.

In a post on X, the official account for the Israel Defense Forces justified striking the newspapers by saying that they are “responsible for distributing and disseminating propaganda messages in the media, including speeches by Houthi leader Abdul-Malik and statements from spokesman Yahya Saree.” For this reason, Israel described the journalists as “military targets.”

But the CPJ says that “as civilians, journalists are protected under international law, including those working for state-run or armed group-affiliated outlets, unless they take direct part in hostilities.”

Niku Jafarnia, a Bahrain and Yemen researcher for Human Rights Watch, explained in more detail on Monday:

Radio and television facilities are civilian objects and cannot be targeted. They are legitimate targets only if they are used in a way that makes an “effective contribution to military action.” However, civilian broadcasting facilities are not rendered legitimate military targets simply because they are pro-Houthi or anti-Israel, or report on the laws of war violations by one side or the other, as this does not directly contribute to military operations.

Al-Khadri said that Israel’s strikes hit his newsroom around 4:45 pm, right when staff were finishing up the publication of the weekly paper.

Mohammed al-Basha, a Yemen analyst, noted that “Since it is a weekly publication, not a daily one, staff were gathered at the publishing house to prepare for distribution, significantly increasing the number of people present in the compound.”

The CPJ classified the 31 journalists killed in the strike as having been “murdered” by Israel, meaning that they were deliberately targeted specifically for their work. Over the past decade, the group says, 1 in 6 of the world’s murdered journalists have been killed by Israel.

While estimates from different groups vary, Israel’s war in Gaza is considered by far the deadliest conflict in the world for journalists, with more killed than any other conflict in the world combined. In August, the CPJ reported that 192 journalists, nearly all Palestinians, have been killed since October 7, 2023, while other groups put the death toll even higher.

In attacks last month that drew similar worldwide condemnation, Israel conducted what was described as a “double tap” strike on Khan Younis’ Nasser Hospital aimed at killing first responders who arrived after the first strike. Twenty people were killed in total, including rescue workers and at least five journalists.

Not long before, Israel carried out the targeted assassination of Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif and five other journalists, claiming without evidence that they were part of “a Hamas terrorist cell.”

“Since October 7, 2023, Israel has emerged as a regional killer of journalists, with repeated incidents in Gaza, Lebanon, Iran, and now Yemen confirming Israel’s longstanding pattern of labeling journalists as terrorists or propagandists to justify their killings,” said CPJ regional program leaderSara Qudah.

“Israel’s September 10 strikes on two newspaper offices in Yemen marks an alarming escalation, extending Israel’s war on journalism far beyond the genocide in Gaza,” Qudah said. “This latest killing spree is not only a grave violation of international law, but also a terrifying warning to journalists across the region: no place is safe.”

Original article by Stephen Prager republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue ReadingIsrael’s Strike on Yemen Newspaper Offices Was ‘Deadliest Global Attack’ on Journalists in 16 Years: Press Freedom Group

Reporters Without Borders Urges UN Action After Israel Massacres Gaza Journalists

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Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

People honor the more than 200 journalists killed by Israeli forces in Gaza, including Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif and his team, outside the Dutch Foreign Ministry in The Hague on August 11, 2025.  (Photo: Mouneb Taim/Anadolu via Getty Images)

“This massacre and Israel’s media blackout strategy, designed to conceal the crimes committed by its army for more than 21 months in the besieged and starving Palestinian enclave, must be stopped immediately.”

The international advocacy group Reporters Without Borders on Monday called on the United Nations Security Council to convene an emergency meeting following the massacre of six Palestinian media professionals in an Israeli strike on the Gaza Strip.

Al Jazeera reporters Anas al-Sharif and Mohammed Qreiqeh, camera operators Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal, and Moamen Aliwa, and independent journalist Mohammed al-Khaldi were killed Sunday in a targeted Israel Defense Forces (IDF) strike on their tent outside al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.

The IDF claimed that al-Sharif—one of the most prominent Palestinian journalists—”was the head of a Hamas terrorist cell,” repeating an allegation first made last year. However, independent assessments by United Nations experts, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, and Reporters Without Borders (RSF) concluded that Israel’s allegations were unsubstantiated.

Investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill warned last year that the IDF’s portrayal of al-Sharif and other Palestinian journalists as Hamas members was “an assassination threat and an attempt to preemptively justify their murder” for showing the world the genocidal realities of Israel’s U.S.-backed war.

“Tonight Israel murdered the bravest journalistic hero in Gaza, Anas al-Sharif,” Scahill said Sunday on social media. “For nearly two straight years, he documented the genocide of his people with courage and principle. Israel put him on a hit list because of his voice. Shame on this world and all who were silent.”

Al Jazeera condemned Sunday’s massacre as “a desperate attempt to silence the voices exposing the impending seizure and occupation of Gaza.”

RSF issued a statement accusing the IDF of killing the six men “without providing solid evidence” of Hamas affiliation, a “disgraceful tactic” that is “repeatedly used against journalists to cover up war crimes.”

The Paris-based nonprofit noted that Israeli forces have “already killed more than 200 media professionals”—including at least 19 Al Jazeera workers and freelancers—since the IDF began its annihilation and siege of Gaza in retaliation for the October 7, 2023 attack led by Hamas.

These include Al Jazeera reporter Ismail al-Ghoul and photographer Rami al-Rifi, who were killed in a targeted strike on the al-Shati refugee camp in July 2024 following an IDF smear campaign alleging without proof that al-Ghoul took part in the October 7 attack. The IDF claimed that al-Ghoul received Hamas military training at a time when he would have been just 10 years old.

“RSF strongly condemns the killing of six media professionals by the Israeli army, once again carried out under the guise of terrorism charges against a journalist,” RSF director general Thibaut Bruttin said in a statement. “One of the most famous journalists in the Gaza Strip, Anas al-Sharif, was among those killed.”

“This massacre and Israel’s media blackout strategy, designed to conceal the crimes committed by its army for more than 21 months in the besieged and starving Palestinian enclave, must be stopped immediately,” Bruttin continued. “The international community can no longer turn a blind eye and must react and put an end to this impunity.”

“RSF calls on the U.N. Security Council to meet urgently on the basis of Resolution 2222 of 2015 on the protection of journalists in times of armed conflict in order to stop this carnage,” he added.

Israel’s latest killing of media professionals sparked international condemnation. On Monday, Stéphane Dujarric, a spokesperson for U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, called for an investigation into the massacre, saying that “journalists and media workers must be respected, they must be protected and they must be allowed to carry out their work freely, free from fear and free from harassment.”

Recognizing the possibility that he would become one of the more than 61,500 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in Gaza since October 2023, al-Sharif, like many Palestinian journalists, prepared a statement to be published in the event of his death.

“This is my will and my final message. If these words reach you, know that Israel has succeeded in killing me and silencing my voice,” he wrote. “I urge you not to let chains silence you, nor borders restrain you. Be bridges toward the liberation of the land and its people, until the sun of dignity and freedom rises over our stolen homeland.”

“Make my blood a light that illuminates the path of freedom for my people and my family,” al-Sharif added.

Since October 2023, RSF has filed four complaints with the International Criminal Court—which last year issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes—requesting investigations into IDF killings of journalists in Gaza and accusing Israel of a deliberate “eradication of the Palestinian media.”

The six journalists’ killings came as Israeli forces prepared to ramp up the Gaza invasion with the stated goal of occupying the entire coastal enclave and ethnically cleansing much of its Palestinian population.

The Gaza Health Ministry said Monday afternoon that at least 69 Palestinians, including at least 10 children and 29 aid-seekers, were killed in the past 24 hours. An IDF strike on Gaza City reportedly killed nine people, including six children. Five more Palestinians also reportedly died of starvation in a burgeoning famine that officials say has claimed at least 222 lives, including 101 children.

Continue ReadingReporters Without Borders Urges UN Action After Israel Massacres Gaza Journalists

Israel Calling Journalists Terrorists Decried as ‘An Attempt to Preemptively Justify Their Murder’

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Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Palestinian journalists stage a protest to draw attention to Palestinian press killed while covering the war in the Gaza Strip on February 26, 2024 in Rafah. 
(Photo: Ahmad Hasaballah/Getty Images)

“Israel has repeatedly made similar unproven claims without producing credible evidence,” said the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Seasoned observers of Israeli disinformation campaigns on Wednesday responded with pointed skepticism to a claim by the country’s military that half a dozen Al Jazeera journalists are linked to militant Palestinian resistance groups.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) claimed Wednesday that intelligence recovered during the ongoing invasion of Gaza revealed that Al Jazeera journalists Anas Al-Sharif, Alaa Salama, Hossam Shabat, Ashraf Saraj, Ismail Abu Amr, and Talal Aruki are affiliated with either Hamas—which governs Palestine’s coastal enclave and led the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel—or Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).

This, the IDF said, “unequivocally proves that they function as military terrorist operatives of the terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip.”

However, critics accused Israel of targeting the six journalists for exposing Israeli war crimes to the world.

“There’s a very clear reason why Israel has been killing journalists,” asserted U.S. investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill:

As the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Public Accuracy noted:

Shabat… wrote Tuesday: “I’m a reporter on the ground in North Gaza, and I’m here to tell you that no aid has entered the besieged area for the past 21 days. The Israeli and American governments are spreading inaccurate information.

Al-Sharif yesterday posted a video of children killed, one with their head literally blown off. He just posted a video of civil defense crews working five hours to rescue a child.

University of Edinburgh professor Nicola Perugini noted that some of the six journalists “are covering the new phase of the genocide, the complete depopulation of northern Gaza.”

“The aim is to transform the last witnesses into killable targets,” he said.

Al Jazeera —which is banned from operating in Israel but is the only major international media network on the ground in Gaza, as Israeli authorities prohibit foreign reporters from entering the besieged strip—denies the IDF’s claim.

Others noted that Israeli forces have killed numerous Al Jazeera workers as part of a war on journalists in which at least 128 media professionals have been killed, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The United Nations says more than 170 media workers have been killed by Israeli forces.

“This is an assassination threat and an attempt to preemptively justify their murder,” Scahill said of Israel’s claim against the six Al Jazeera journalists.

“Anyone claiming Israel has offered ‘irrefutable’ proof to back up these allegations is either ignorant of the systematic campaign of lies, propaganda, and fake news unleashed by Israel or is trying to aid and abet the murder of more journalists,” he added. “That is what is irrefutable.”

CPJ said on social media that it “is aware of accusations made by the Israel Defense Forces against several journalists in Gaza accusing them of being members of militant groups.”

“Israel has repeatedly made similar unproven claims without producing credible evidence,” the group noted. “After killing Al Jazeera correspondent Ismail Al Ghoul in July, the IDF previously produced a similar document, which contained contradictory information, showing that Al Ghoul, born in 1997, received a Hamas military ranking in 2007—when he would have been 10 years old.”

The Paris-based international press freedom group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has filed multiple complaints at the International Criminal Court alleging “war crimes against journalists in Gaza,” including the apparently intentional targeting of media professionals.

In one filing, RSF said it “has reasonable grounds for thinking that some of these journalists were deliberately killed and that the others were the victims of deliberate IDF attacks against civilians” and accused Israel of “an eradication of the Palestinian media.”

“You don’t shut down the media unless you have something to hide.”

In June, the Gaza Project—an investigative journalism initiative led by the Paris-based nonprofit Forbidden Stories—”analyzed nearly 100 cases of journalists and media workers killed in Gaza, as well as other cases in which members of the press have been allegedly targeted, threatened, or injured.”

The project found “a chilling pattern” of journalists who “may have been targeted even though they were identifiable as press.”

In one case that enraged journalists and others around the world, at least one IDF member sent 19-year-old Palestinian reporter Hassan Hamad text messages threatening him and his family if he did not stop documenting Israel’s assault on Gaza, which has left more than 152,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing, millions more starved or sickened, and much of the territory in ruins.

Hamad refused. Earlier this month, Israeli forces assassinated him in a drone strike on his home in the Jabalia refugee camp.

U.S. citizens working in media have also been harmed by Israeli forces while on the job in Gaza and Lebanon, where IDF bombardment and invasion have killed and wounded thousands of people.

On Tuesday, a dozen members of U.S. Congress led by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) urged the Biden administration—which supports Israeli with billions of dollars in military aid and diplomatic cover—to investigate Israeli attacks on journalists including Dylan Collins, who was with a group of six other reporters covering cross-border clashes between Israel and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon when an IDF tank opened fire on their position despite their clear identification as press. Collins and five others were injured, and Lebanese Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah was killed.

Israel’s targeting of American journalists predates the current war and includes the 2022 killing of renowned Palestinian American Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh. Multiple probes have concluded Abu Akleh was deliberately targeted by an IDF sniper as she was covering a raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the illegally occupied West Bank.

Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Zionist Keir Starmer is quoted "I support Zionism without qualification." He's asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.
Zionist Keir Starmer is quoted “I support Zionism without qualification.” He’s asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.
UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy says that UK is suspeding 30 of 350 arms licences to Israel. He also confirms the UK government's support for Israel's Gaza genocide.
UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy says that UK is suspeding 30 of 350 arms licences to Israel. He also confirms the UK government’s support for Israel’s Gaza genocide.
Vote For Genocide Vote Labour.
Vote For Genocide Vote Labour.
Continue ReadingIsrael Calling Journalists Terrorists Decried as ‘An Attempt to Preemptively Justify Their Murder’

‘We’ll Come for You Next’: Israel Threatened to Kill Teen Journalist in Gaza—Then Did

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Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Journalist Hassan Hamad holds a photo of Ismael al-Ghoul and Rami al-Rifi, Palestinian reporters also killed by Israel in Gaza. (Photo: Maha Hussaini/X)

“Western journalists and editors should hang their heads in shame for their outrageous silence in the face of these crimes,” said one professor.

Journalists around the world expressed outrage Monday over the Israeli military’s killing of a teenage Palestinian reporter who continued showing the world the destruction of Gaza despite threats to his life—and at the Western media’s silence on the story.

Hassan Hamad, 19, whose work appeared on Al Jazeera and other outlets, was killed Sunday in an Israeli drone strike on his home in the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza, The Palestine Chronicle reported. The bombing followed multiple text messages warning Hamad to stop recording images of Israel’s assault on Gaza, which has killed or injured nearly 150,000 Palestinians and for which the close U.S. ally is on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice.

Palestinian journalist Maha Hussaini posted a photo of one threatening WhatsApp message sent to Hamad. It read, “Listen, if you continue spreading lies about Israel, we’ll come for you next and turn your family into… This is your last warning.”

Hussaini said that Hamad also received “several calls from an Israeli officer ordering him to stop filming in Gaza.”

“He didn’t comply,” she wrote. “He was killed today.”

A colleague of Hamad’s wrote on the slain journalist’s X account:

With great sadness and pain, I mourn the journalist Hassan Hamad… Hamad, the journalist who is not yet 20 years old, resisted for a whole year in his own special way. He resisted when he was away from his family so that they would not be targeted. He resisted when he was suffering to find an internet signal and would sit for an hour or two on the roof of the house to send videos that reach you in seconds. Yesterday, since 10:00, he was moving between the bombed areas and returning to search for an internet signal, then returning to cover the places of the remains, suffering from an injury he sustained in his leg. Nevertheless, he completed filming. At 6:00 am, he called me to send me the last video. After a call that did not exceed a few seconds, he was saying, “Hey, hey, it’s done,” and he hung up. This is a feeling that no human being can bear. Hassan also resisted the occupation and left a mark and left a message that we will complete after him.

Journalists and others posted graphic video footage of pieces of Hamad’s remains being collected and placed in a shoebox.

“I will never forget the silence of the media industry about this,” Al Jazeera executive producer Laila Al-Arian wrote in a social media post containing the video.

Thomson Reuters Foundation deputy editor-in-chief Barry Malone responded to Hassan’s killing by asking, “If you’re a journalist and you’re not speaking out in solidarity… why?”

Anthropology professor Jason Hickel said that “we can never unsee the images of journalist Hassan Hamad’s remains, after he was assassinated by Israeli forces.”

“Western journalists and editors should hang their heads in shame for their outrageous silence in the face of these crimes,” he added.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists says that “at least 128 journalists and media workers, all but five of them Palestinian, have been killed—more journalists than have died in the course of any year since CPJ began documenting journalist killings in 1992.”

“All of the killings, except two Israeli journalists killed in the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas on Israel, were carried out by Israeli forces,” the group added. “CPJ has found that at least five journalists were specifically targeted by Israel for their work.”

Gaza’s Government Media Office (GMO) said Sunday that 175 media workers have been killed in the embattled enclave over the past year.

The press freedom group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has filed multiple complaints at the International Criminal Court—whose chief prosecutor is seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and Hamas leaders—alleging “war crimes against journalists in Gaza.”

Responding to Hamad’s killing, RSF said that Israel’s “impunity must end.”

Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue Reading‘We’ll Come for You Next’: Israel Threatened to Kill Teen Journalist in Gaza—Then Did