UPDATE (Jan. 11, 2024, 3:03 p.m. ET): This article has been updated to include Al Jazeera’s statement on the IDF’s claims about Hamza al-Dahdouh.
The Israeli government’s gruesome bombardment of Gaza has killed dozens of journalists reporting on the conflict — and it’s arguably killing Israel’s credibility on the global stage, too.
Reporters Without Borders, an international organization focused on press freedoms, received confirmation this week that the International Criminal Court, which prosecutes individuals, is looking into attacks on journalists as it investigates potential war crimes that have occurred amid the Israel-Hamas conflict. (Neither Israel nor the United States recognize the court’s jurisdiction.)
Calls for investigations into the deaths of journalists and their associates in Gaza have grown since last weekend, when the son of Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief, Wael al-Dahdouh, was killed by an airstrike. Dahdouh’s wife, two of his other children and one of his grandchildren were killed in an earlier bombing in October. The recent attack has led some observers, like the Committee to Protect Journalists and Al Jazeera, to call for probes into whether the attack — as well as other attacks on journalists and their associates — might have been targeted.
On Wednesday, Reporters Without Borders also called on the United Nations Security Council to hold an emergency meeting on Israel’s potential violations of a rule known as Resolution 2222, which was adopted in 2015 to protect journalists from harm as they report in combat zones.
Israel’s government, for the record, has told news outlets reporting in Gaza that it can’t guarantee their safety as it bombs the region repeatedly. The Israel Defense Forces allege that Dahdouh’s son, Hamza, was a member of Islamic Jihad “involved with the organization’s terrorist activities” — a claim that has not been verified by NBC News. Al Jazeera’s managing editor disputed the IDF’s claim in a statement released Thursday, saying, “Al Jazeera rejects all accusations made against our journalists and calls on the international community to ensure that the IDF is held fully accountable for its crimes.”
According to a tally compiled by the CPJ, 79 media workers have been killed to date in Gaza since Israel started its bombing campaign. And dozens more journalists have been injured or arrested amid the conflict.
But the international dismay over Israel’s harm of journalists could boil over soon.
Keep in mind that all of this pressure on Israel for killing journalists comes as South Africa is bringing a criminal genocide case against Israel in the U.N.’s International Court of Justice, which settles disputes between states. Israel claims the genocide allegations are “atrocious and preposterous,” and they’ve been staffing up their legal team in preparation for the court fight.
Thus far, beyond carefully crafted statements, U.S. officials have appeared unmoved by Israel’s harm of journalists — or the condemnation these attacks have received.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said this week that as a father he sympathized with Dahdouh, the Al-Jazeera bureau chief, who suffered the “worst possible loss.” But Blinken claimed Israel faces an “incredible challenge when you have an enemy — Hamas — that intentionally embeds itself with civilians.”
The secretary said the Biden administration has pressed Israel “to do everything possible to avoid civilian casualties,” although the repeated killing of journalists suggests that pressure doesn’t seem to be working. Which is why organizations like Reporters Without Borders are seeking help elsewhere — namely, with the U.N. and International Criminal Court.
Watch Blinken’s interview with Andrea Mitchell here:
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.