Jerusalem24 – Yesterday evening, Tuesday, media outlets condemned the Israeli military forces’ arrest of Palestinian photojournalist, Musab Shawar, while he was covering an anti-settlement event in Masafer Yatta, South of Hebron. Shawar, works for the Al-Hadath newspaper in Hebron.
The Committee to Support Journalists called on the International Federation of Journalists and all international institutions concerned with freedom of opinion and expression to take a serious and responsible stance towards the ongoing Israeli violations of the freedom of the press and not to remain silent about Israel’s repeated attacks.
The committee also strongly renewed its condemnation of the continued suppression of media freedoms practiced by the Israeli authorities, as it has been detaining journalists and media professionals without a specific charge, noting that Israel has arrested, summoned and detained more than 118 journalists and media professionals, according to the committee’s statistics since the beginning of 2021.
The Geneva-based Committee to Support Journalists stressed that Israel’s continued detention of journalists and the suppression of freedoms calls for a serious pause in order to hold it accountable for its policy against Palestinian journalists and the need not to escape punishment for the crimes it committed against Palestinian journalists.
The committee called on the concerned human rights bodies to take action to stop Israel’s attacks against Palestinian media professionals and to intervene effectively in order to release 24 journalists currently being detained inside Israel’s prisons.
For its part, the Palestinian Media Forum expressed its solidarity with Shawar, stressing that the continued violation of media freedoms and the series of repression of journalists reflect the state of Israel’s disregard for international laws and conventions that affirm the protection of journalists and ensure freedom of journalistic work. The Forum pointed out that Shawar joins more than 20 journalists languishing in the prisons of the Israeli occupation, without the international institutions defending the freedom of journalists paying attention to them.
They renewed their call for the necessity of releasing journalists imprisoned in the Israeli prisons, calling on the International Federation of Journalists and institutions concerned with media freedom to pressure the Israeli authorities and oblige them to respect the freedom of journalistic work and not arrest Palestinian journalists.
