Justin Salhani (3:38)
Yeah, this exists on a sliding scale. Obviously, since 2023. The first week post October 7, there was a Lebanese journalist by the name of Aam Abdullah who was killed. He was a Reuters photographer. And that was a strike that wounded other journalists, including journalists from AFP and Al Jazeera. So, I mean, it's been over two and a half years now that there has been a danger. And that first strike that killed Isam changed the way that media assesses risk in this country. Since then, a number of other journalists have also been killed. So in that sense, there still is a fear that targeting, you know, much like in Gaza, is the thing that happens. Of course, in Gaza, it was way worse. There was a way higher threat level. And I think part of that is because there were no foreign journalists in Gaza during that period, so it was killing of Palestinians. Until now, there has been at least one foreign journalist who was wounded in that initial attack. Since then, most of the attacks have targeted Lebanese journalists and particularly Lebanese journalists working with outlets who have some sort of, we can call it, line that supports or is differential to Hezbollah. I mean, of course, this is not an excuse. Right? They're still journalists. They're still working in the. Regardless of what their political affiliation is, these are people who are there to assess information. Recently, in this latest intensification, there have been more killings of journalists, of course, and these are typically journalists who are working on the front lines and in the south. You know, we can't know what's in the minds of the Israeli military. But based on my conversations with media professionals and media watchdogs in the recent years, I wrote a piece for Al Jazeera back in 2024, I believe it was about the killing of journalists in Gaza. And, you know, people at outlets like Reporters Without Borders were telling me that at that point, we're talking, you know, a year and A half ago it was already systematic. There was a systematic means of trying to control the narrative through the killing of journalists. And this is a big thing for these groups that are, you know, work really hard to share only things that they've backed up with data. They're not bombastic spokespeople who have some sort of political lean. You can say these, these are people who really have to. And organizations that really have to be careful with the language that they pick and choose. So I thought that was like a really interesting framing. So what they had told me at the time, and I think this is inevitably still true if you subscribe to this idea, is that the goal was to prevent the information from getting out from the front lines, to stop people from knowing what was happening. And this has been clear as lately we've seen journalists targeted. And you know, this isn't a case whereby journalists were killed. And I'm speaking specifically in Lebanon. This also happened in Gaza, but specifically in Lebanon. In the last few weeks we've seen cases where there were double tap strikes on journalists that had targeted journalists. And then the Israeli military came out, particularly with an incident that happened, I think just a little over a month ago now. They came out and photoshopped journalists from the TV station Al Manar in Hezbollah fatigues and claimed that he was part of this elite fighting force, the Raw Adwan forces. They offered no proof for this. The Israeli military, a spokesperson, I believe it was later admitted that this was a doctored or an AI created photo that they released. But these are the conditions that journalists are working with. Unfortunately, Lebanon is not signatory to the ICC or the icj. And so these cases, though there's been pressure by media watchdogs and other bodies to get Lebanon to sign up to join the ICC and the ICJ so that they can put forward cases against Israel and for specifically the targeting of journalists, as well as many other actions Israelis have taken in Lebanon, particularly south Lebanon over the last two and a half years. These are essentially the conditions that Lebanese journalists are working under where their lives are at risk. I might point out one other incident where a journalist from RT was reporting on a bridge in south Lebanon. It was one of the last bridges to not yet have been bombed that would connect south Lebanon to the rest of the country. He was reporting when it was caught on video that a strike had happened. I think there are legitimate criticisms about this journalist's conduct in terms of placing himself. He wasn't wearing a helmet at the time. Those are legitimate criticisms for kind of here's how you can do better sort of thing. That still does not excuse the fact that the attack happened while the journalist was there covering. And again, regardless of the outlets lean, regardless of what their agenda is, etc. Etc. These are still media professionals working. I believe that a warning had happened at that time. So again, questions over maybe decisions that were made. Still that does not excuse the Israeli military action. And I've heard people say, you know, that if you work through this logic, if we go back to the logic of what happened in Gaza, for example, with the first attack on a hospital, and you know, this was in the first few weeks after October 7th, you may remember at the time there was this whole kind of debate between analysts and pundits and talking heads and what have you. And you know, Israel would never do that. They would never attack a hospital. And then months later, here we are and every hospital in Gaza, you know, at one point multiple hospitals in Gaza were completely unoperational attacks that happened around hospitals, at hospitals, claiming hospitals were militant centers or centers that were hosting militants and all these other sort of things. Forensic architecture has done fantastic work on the Gaza example of how the Israelis had structurally gone in and dismantled Gazan health care, Palestinian healthcare in Gaza. And I think it might be fair to say that there's a similar logic that is working here in Lebanon, is that, you know, because after the murder of Ay Sam Abdullah, essentially there was a period where journalists were not killed for at least, you know, a short period of time. Then two journalists from the outlet Al Mayadeen were killed. And then since then we've had others from Mayadin, from Manar, et cetera, that have been killed by the Israelis. So you see kind of a pattern that, okay, we can get away with killing these journalists that are ostensibly working with outlets who have some sort of affiliation or lean towards the Hezbollah narrative. That's also the case for Al Akhbar with the newspaper that Ahmad Khalil worked with. She was killed in a really horrific targeted strike just a few days ago where her and a colleague were in the south. An attack happened. They fled into a building, then the Israelis attacked that building. She was stuck under the rubble. And the Israelis prevented Red Cross medics and first responders from getting to her for a series of hours, I think it was around seven hours, the official reporting says, and she died. There's no way to frame this other than that Israel attacked her and then prevented her from receiving the treatment that she needed to be able to continue to live. And Amad was somebody Who I didn't know personally, so I can't speak to her character in my sense. But from the reports, people reported her as a person that was incredibly generous with her time, was incredibly helpful, was very kind to animals. She was somebody who was in the south for years and years, was often in the south, was constantly in the south, was always on the front lines, felt it was her duty to report from the front lines as much as possible. You know, these are the people that the Israelis have targeted until now. Without maybe going too much into, you know, an attempt to draw some sort of pattern, I think that what seems clear is that those people are targets. But we have to ask, are the Israelis maybe trying to expand that a bit? Because this is the first journalist they've killed from Al Akhbar. Right. If they've killed Manar before, they've gone on to Mayadeen, or they've killed Mayadin and Manar and Mayadeen in one way, gone on to Akbar, are they widening the scope? Are they challenging more people? Are more people at risk? And so I think what this does is inevitably now journalists will think twice about going south. They'll think twice about going to the front lines. Security advisors will put more caution into allowing their journalists to go south. People will take less risks, obviously. People who will see themselves, who work as targets, maybe with. With outlets that the Israelis are openly in opposition to, might take different decisions. You know, So I think this is where we end up at basically after such killings and such actions.