Documenting Gaza to #EndImpunity
2024-11-01. Israel’s war on Gaza – and now, Lebanon -– has resulted in the highest recorded number of journalists killed in the line of duty in any given year or war. On the eve of the 10th International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists, Israel appears on the annual Global Impunity Index for the first time since its 2008 inception – with zero official investigations underway, and no accountability for even documented, apparently targeted killings.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has been documenting the killing of journalists since 1992: overall, 1 625 names have been recorded. Within that total, there are 974 confirmed murders – yet, over the past 30 years, less than 20% have been accounted for.
As we approach 2 November, the 10th United Nations designated International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists, Haiti and Israel are ranked as the world’s worst offenders in terms of letting journalists’ murderers go unpunished.
This is according to CPJ’s 2024 Global Impunity Index, which measures unsolved murders in proportion to a country’s population.
This year is the first that Israel appears in CPJ’s index: the targeted killing of five journalists in Gaza and Lebanon since the outbreak of war in October 2023 enough to put the country second in the rankings.
Over 130 journalists and media workers have been killed amongst the thousands of casualties in Gaza, but CPJ is investigating the possible targeted murders of at least 10 additional journalists.
As the Index notes, “given the challenges of documenting the war, the number may be far higher.”
In an address to the General Assembly last month, UN Secretary-General António Guterres described the global level of impunity as “politically indefensible and morally intolerable”. “We see this age of impunity everywhere — in the Middle East, in the heart of Europe, in the Horn of Africa.”
This week, to mark #EndImpunity Day, he reaffirmed the UN’s commitment to press freedom and the safety of journalists worldwide, and called on governments to “bring these commitments to life by taking urgent steps to protect journalists, investigate crimes against them and prosecute perpetrators – everywhere.”
Under international law, deliberately targeting journalists, who are civilians in any conflict, is a war crime.
The tools are certainly available for governments to take meaningful action to reverse the alarming trend. This week, South Africa filed its Memorial to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), containing evidence of the Israeli government committing genocidal acts against Palestinians in Gaza.
While the Memorial is sealed, at least some of the evidence submitted is detailed in a report published earlier this month: A Spatial Analysis of the Israeli Military’s Conduct in Gaza since October 2023 by Forensic Architecture, an interdisciplinary research agency based at Goldsmiths, University of London.
The scope of the research provides the context in which thorough investigations of journalists’ murders could take place.
The agency’s mandate is to “develop, employ, and disseminate new techniques, methods, and concepts for investigating state and corporate violence,” and to provide legal evidence and expert testimony in cases of potential human rights violations, war crimes, violations of International Humanitarian Law (IHL), and other potential crimes.
The report comprises 827 pages of detailed evidence and analysis of Israel’s military conduct in Gaza, with findings indicating that “Israel’s military campaign in Gaza is organised, systematic, and intended to destroy conditions of life and life-sustaining infrastructure.”
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OSINT: Chronicles of crimes with hi-tech tools
The comprehensive, compelling evidence outlined in each chapter of the Spatial Analysis report is just one example of a detailed documentation of Israel’s military conduct and humanitarian abuses in Gaza.
Newsrooms are also collaborating with agencies using open source information to tell the story of those who have been killed.
The Killings They Tweeted: An Airwars investigation, is an OSINT investigation, purportedly the largest public analysis of Israeli military strike footage, and the result of a collaboration between the UK’s Sky News and transparency watchdog Airwars.
The investigation is an exhaustive review of strike footage posted by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) on social media during the month of October 2023. The footage, ostensibly posted to reflect a positive perception of Israel’s “precise, targeted strikes” against Hamas militants or infrastructure, reveals a different picture.
“Ultimately, we geolocated more than 70 strikes that the Israeli military published footage of. In 17 of these incidents, Airwars was able to match the footage to the exact geolocation of a documented civilian harm incident. In these 17 strikes alone, more than 400 civilians were reportedly killed,” the report reveals.
The investigation is documented in detail in video – see below – which outlines just three strikes to show “no public evidence of a military target,” while an interactive map features all strike footage geolocated as well as those cases matched to the Airwars civilian harm archive.
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Bull’s eye: Targeting journalists
The fear that journalists are being deliberately targeted by the IDF to prevent accurate reporting of its military conduct in Gaza – and elsewhere – is not a new phenomenon.
In May 2022, Al-Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was killed while on assignment in the West Bank. Israel rejected calls to establish a criminal inquiry into the incident, despite a detailed joint investigation by the teams at Forensic Architecture and Ramallah-based human rights organisation, Al-Haq.
Reuters video journalist Issam Abdallah was killed and six other journalists were injured in southern Lebanon within a week of the start of the current conflict, when missiles fired from the direction of Israel struck them despite being clearly marked as press.
And just last week, WAN-IFRA condemned the killing of three journalists in a compound known to be housing journalists and called for an independent investigation to determine whether they were deliberately targeted.
This week, to mark #EndImpunity Day, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) also publicly condemned Israel for “the bloodiest period in the history of journalism,” calling on it to uplift the ban on international journalists in Gaza, and accusing Israel of violating UN Security Council Resolutions protecting journalists and media workers during armed conflict.
So far, the impunity surrounding Israel’s actions against journalists, despite intensifying public pressure, sees no sign of diminishing.
As the Global Impunity Index suggests, the political will required to reverse the trend of impunity appears lacking in many jurisdictions.
The need to document and do the work in spite of the inaction of the authorities legally bound to do so – in Israel, and elsewhere – therefore becomes increasingly vital.
In a week in which commitments to the idea that “Democracy dies in darkness” have been somewhat shaken, the task is also to ensure that the light of investigation remains on those who kill journalists so that they, too, do not disappear into the shadows.
Andrew Heslop contributed to this article.
