(TBA News)

By Dr. Fatima Ibrahim Al Menoufy

The assassination of journalists in a press tent in Gaza is a heinous act and is a part of the non-ending Israeli violations against journalists. Once again, Israel persists in its brutal path, killing civilians, innocent, and targeting journalists who have the courage to expose the Israeli crimes. For them, everything is Hamas, journalists are Hamas, doctors and medics are Hamas, schools are Hamas, the truth is Hamas, the UN is Hamas, objectivity is Hamas, being a human is Hamas.

In Arabic; it is said: من أمن العقاب أساء الأدب meaning; “For those who know no punishment, will misbehave”

Yes, killings will continue, slaughter will not stop, destruction will go on, everyday more innocents will be killed, journalists will be targeted to hide the truth as long as they are secure from punishment.

Israel has wiped out a big group of correspondents and cameramen in Gaza ahead of its impending military takeover of Gaza amid the world deafening silence, four of them are Al Jazeera team of correspondents and cameramen to pave the way for occupying Gaza. Over the past two years, 265 journalists have been killed in Gaza, the majority of whom are Al Jazeera journalists.

Killing journalists who are the voice of the truth is always the tool of cowards to hide the truth. In Syria, nearly 300 journalists were killed in cold blood to bury the truth, but they failed to bury it. In 2012 Marie Colvin and Remi Ochlik were killed by the former Syrian government to hide their crimes against humanity. In Iraq in 2003 Al Jazeera reporter Tareq Ayoub was killed by US fire in Baghdad. Two American air-to-surface missiles hit the Qatar satellite TV station at Al Jazeera’s office in Baghdad and killed Tareq Ayyoub, who was a Palestinian Jordanian reporter, and wounded Zouhair al-Iraqi, an Iraqi cameraman, while they were live broadcasting on the roof of the building. The US targeted Al Jazeera as it was exposing their crimes in Iraq, where they killed and injured near a million innocents, then they admitted that the war on Iraq was a mistake and the WMD was a mere lie. Also, the US bombed Al Jazeera Kabul bureau in 2001 during the US invasion of Afghanistan.

Here in Gaza, it is clear that the apparent aim is to conceal the war crimes that will likely result from the IDF’s impending operations in the area.

The assassinated media personnel were correspondents Anas al-Sharif and Mohammed Qreiqeh, cameramen Ibrahim Zaher and Moamen Aliwa, and their assistant Mohammed Noufal. Anas al-Sharif was a recipient of the Amnesty International Australia Human Rights Defender award last year.

Those brave journalists  tasted the loss of family members, endured displacement, homelessness, hunger, and thirst; felt the bitterness of cold and the scorching heat. They bore witness to thousands of crimes committed against humanity. Now they have ascended as martyrs, after a treacherous assassination tore them into pieces.

Murdered by the Western backed war criminals, by brothers’ silence and complicity, those brave journalists in a press-tent exposed the crimes of the killers of children against humanity. The killers don’t even call it a mistake, they admitted they wanted to target them and kill them.

No more faking human rights and justice after all these horrors and brutal crimes. The western media is complicit in the US, UK and EU backed apartheid state’s Holocaust against the Palestinians.

The world remains dead,inactive, disabled, silent, paralyzed, and freedom remains shackled by the chains of the United States’ agents everywhere.

Yet, the more the war criminals escalate their brutality, the clearer it becomes that victory is near, and their defeat is nearer than we could imagine, for they are so fragile, so weak that they can only target armless journalists.

How brutal and morally deprived is the West for backing this genocidal apartheid project?