In September 2022, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) published the results of an internal investigation into the killing of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in Jenin four months earlier. “There is a high possibility that Ms Abu Akleh was accidentally hit by IDF gunfire that was fired toward suspects identified as armed Palestinian gunmen,” read the summary of the investigation. The IDF expressed “its deep condolences” over her death. “The freedom of the press and maintaining the safety of journalists are part of the primary components of Israeli democracy, which the IDF is committed to upholding,” it added.
This statement had little to do with the facts. Not only did numerous independent investigations indicate that Abu Akleh was killed by Israeli soldiers (a claim which the Israeli army initially denied, saying “there is a possibility, now being looked into, that reporters were hit – possibly by shots fired by Palestinian gunmen)”, but the New York Times also reported after reviewing the scene that “there were no armed Palestianians near her when she was shot”. A report by the Committee to Protect Journalists, published a year later, found that no Israeli soldier was charged in the killing of 20 journalists – 18 of them Palestinian – in the West Bank and Gaza between 2001 and 2023, making the IDF’s purported commitment to the freedom of the press look deprived of any real meaning.
Yet now we can only long for these kinds of half-truths, lies and empty words from the Israeli army. In early August, the Israeli army proudly announced that its missiles had killed Al Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif in Gaza City. It did not even try to pretend that it was a mistake. He was the target. Gone was the commitment to the freedom of the press. The army claimed that Sharif was a Hamas militant but shared scant evidence that he was involved in military operations during the war. The Israeli army did not bother to “express its deep condolences” for the killing of five other journalists who happened to be sleeping in the tent near Sharif and against whom no claim of Hamas affiliation was mentioned. They were collateral damage.
But even this shady justification seems rock-solid compared with the recent attack on Nasser hospital in Khan Younis which killed at least 20 Palestinians, among them five journalists – bringing the number of journalists killed in Gaza to at least 248 since the beginning of the war, according to the UN. This time around the target was not a supposed “Hamas operative”, as in the case of Sharif, but a camera. For the Israeli army, a camera, whose position was well known – journalists have used this spot for a live feed from Khan Younis for a long time – was worthy of firing two or four tank shells. If, three years ago, the army was allegedly embarrassed by the killing of a journalist, now it has become routine.
This lack of shame is now one of the main features of Israel’s war on Gaza. Israel’s commitment to international law has always been problematic, to say the least. But as Abu Akleh’s killing shows, it used to try to keep some semblance of respecting it. Whether cynically or not, the IDF still tried to convince the international community, and itself to some extent, that it was “the most moral army in the world”.
Since then, much less so. There are various reasons for this change. Hamas’s brutal attack on 7 October 2023 was believed in Israel as justifying any type of reaction, regardless of its morality or legality. According to polls, a majority of Israelis agree with the claim that “there are no innocent people in Gaza”. This applies also to Palestinian journalists, who are widely seen as Hamas propagandists, if not worse.
The weight carried by extreme rightwing parties and politicians – Bezalel Smotrich, Itamar Ben-Gvir and others within Benjamin Netanyahu’s government – also played an important role. We have seen it with the judicial overhaul pushed by this government even before the war, with the clear aim of destabilising and weakening Israel’s already weak democratic institutions. The war just accelerated these moves.
But there is another important element. When Israeli soldiers killed Abu Akleh in 2022, Joe Biden sat in the White House, Abu Akleh was a US citizen and Israel felt compelled to show it respected international law. With Donald Trump now in the White House, not only is Israel under no pressure to comply with international law, it seems that it feels the urge to demonstrate that it can trample on it. With disrespect – towards international rules and institutions – the keyword in Washington, Netanyahu and his government are eager to show that they could do even better, that Israel can set the example for a new world order built on force, force and more force. As if Israel’s role is to implement Trump’s worldview on the ground, with aircraft, tanks and bulldozers. The attack on a camera in Khan Younis is just a manifestation of this new world order.
Meron Rapoport is an Israeli journalist who writes for +972 magazine and is an editor at Local Call
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