THERE has been worldwide condemnation by journalists of yet another decision by an Israeli military tribunal to clear Israel troops of killing journalists. The death in April of Reuters cameraman Fadel Shana while filming an Israeli tank during an incursion into Gaza roused media protests that Israeli soldiers were deliberately targeting members of news organizations sent to cover their activities.
Shana and his team were about a mile away from the tank that he was filming. He was wearing a fluorescent vest announcing that he was a journalist and the vehicle in which the Reuters party was traveling was also marked prominently “TV”. The tank crew told the military board of inquiry that they saw neither sign. What they thought they saw was a fighter wearing body armor with a tripod-mounted rocket he was about to fire. They, therefore, shot first, killing Shana instantly and destroying the Reuters TV vehicle. The tribunal bought this.
There seemed to be no question about what the tank crew could really see through their telescopic gunsights as they aimed at Shana. The truth is that these sights would have made it perfectly clear that it was a camera, not a weapon that Shana was holding. But then in the eyes of the Israeli occupation authorities, a camera is all too often a weapon, because it can show the outside world the level of force with which the Israelis oppress Palestinians. Thus the tank crew very probably opened fire because Shana was a journalist, not because they thought he was a fighter. Whether the soldiers had been under orders to fire at journalists or whether they acted independently, they knew there was little chance of them being found guilty, let alone punished for their cold-blooded act.
Reuters and the International Federation of Journalists are protesting this new Israeli targeting of reporters in the context of a rising tide of murder and aggression worldwide toward journalists. In last 12 years, 1,100 have been killed.
This is, however, to ignore the basic reality to what happened to Shana in Gaza this spring. He was not killed merely because he was a journalist. He was slain because of an effective free-fire policy operated by Israeli troops. The victims of this heinous, deplorable tactic are generally ordinary Palestinians, who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Sometimes, of course, the Israelis hit a fighter but that is a bonus in what is effectively an untrammeled killing spree. Machine-gun fire from inside a heavily armored tank has struck down a ten-year-old Palestinian boy, whose most deadly weapons were stones that he was hurling against it.
That wicked murder and the way in which a distraught father gathered up his son’s body and rushed him from the fighting was caught on camera. The world saw the naked truth of Israeli occupation. That may explain why journalists have also become targets. The reality is however that when Israelis mount land and air incursions, everything and everyone is a target and all restraint is abandoned.
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