The killing of journalists in Gaza
'U squt, Anas (Shut up, Anas),' the Israeli agent would say in Arabic when he called the Palestinian journalist's mobile. He was not the only one. Other journalists in Gaza getting such calls had chosen silence or fled the strip. But Anas al-Sharif, a 28-year-old Pulitzer-prize winning correspondent in Gaza with a global following of hundreds of thousands on social media, was different. He spoke of the need to give Gaza a voice and ploughed on regardless. World War in the Middle East
This article appeared in the Middle East & Africa section of the print edition under the headline 'Snuffed out' → Race, power and money in South Africa
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Scotsman
3 minutes ago
- Scotsman
The first casualty of war is truth
Bruce Whitehead On Monday morning the news was sinking in of the killing of six journalists in Gaza as they reported on Israel's relentless war on a largely civilian territory occupied by starving families. Sign up to our daily newsletter Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to Edinburgh News, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... I am sick of writing about atrocities in Gaza. In 2009 I drove there with humanitarian aid collected by Scottish Muslim, Jewish and Christian faith groups, after up to 1400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis died when Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert – recently invited onto British TV news programmes as a 'moderate' – breached a six-month ceasefire by ordering the killing of seven Hamas fighters. With a dozen vehicles we travelled through eastern Europe to deliver first aid, food, toys and healthcare supplies to areas of Gaza City flattened by Israeli bombs. As a journalist I witnessed the effects of bombardment on innocent civilians which killed an estimated 300 children. Crushed concrete buildings, donkey carts picking their way through mounds of rubble. 16 years on, western journalists are barred from Gaza, so it's impossible to verify Israel's claims about the conflict on the ground. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad With the deaths of Al Jazeera's Anas al-Sharif, Mohammed Qreiqeh, Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal and Moamen Aliwa and freelancer Mohammad al-Khaldi – sheltering in a cloth tent near a hospital – Israel has almost snuffed out the last source of evidence of its genocidal campaign. The BBC still has its own freelancers sending footage of the slaughter of starving Palestinians in food queues, but surely they too are in mortal peril. I have called on my union, the National Union of Journalists, to demand that the Foreign Minister David Lammy summon the Israeli ambassador Tzipi Hotovely for a formal British diplomatic protest. Many of my former BBC and ITN colleagues work for Al Jazeera, and this is the latest in a long and shameful tale of targeted Israeli raids on journalists. In May I paid tribute on behalf of the NUJ to all journalists killed at work, at Workers' Memorial Day in Princes Street Gardens. My words then are appropriate today: 'The deaths of journalists remind us yet again that the first casualty of war is Truth.'
The Herald Scotland
26 minutes ago
- The Herald Scotland
How many US presidents has Putin met? The answer may surprise you.
Learn more: What Trump thinks could happen at summit Putin has met all five U.S. presidents who were in office since he came to power in 2000. In Trump's first term, he and Putin met face-to-face six times in five locations around the world. Here's where they have met. Can't see our graphics? Click here to reload page. The summit is a "listening exercise," and the goal for Trump "is to walk away with a better understanding of how we can end this war," White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a news briefing Aug. 12. Putin has visited the United States before, even spending time with President George W. Bush at the Bush family home in Kennebunkport, Maine, in 2007. But the Alaskan conference is the first visit by a Russian leader to the state, which the United States bought from Russia in 1867 for $7.2 million. That equals about $156.4 million today, according to What other U.S. presidents have Putin met? Putin has met five U.S. presidents: Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Donald Trump. How does Putin compare with other Russian leaders? Trump said he hopes the meeting with Putin will lead to a second meeting between himself, Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, where the two sides can reach a peace agreement, USA TODAY reported. CONTRIBUTING Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy, Tom Vanden Brook, Joey Garrison, Kathryn Palmer and Ben Adler SOURCE USA TODAY Network reporting and research; Reuters; State Department archive
The National
2 hours ago
- The National
Owen Jones: Genocidal Israel has its sights set on West Bank
Normally, states – like individuals – which commit terrible crimes go to great lengths to suppress their real motives: after all, doing otherwise represents a confession. But having rationally decided that its Western benefactors have granted it immunity, Israel's leaders and officials simply said, in public, over and over again, what their criminal and indeed genocidal intentions are. Which brings us to two Israeli ministers. One is Bezalel Smotrich, Israel's financial minister and the de facto governor of the illegally occupied and colonised West Bank. In a speech, he has declared: 'We will bury the Palestinian state, Europe will have nothing left to recognise.' READ MORE: Scotland's post-war pain and pride brought to life in powerful Fringe play debut Here, he is openly taunting the empty posturing of European states, like Britain. Keir Starmer has declared that his government will recognise Palestinian nationhood next month unless certain conditions, like Israel accepting a ceasefire, are met – using an inalienable right as a bargaining chip. But in doing so, Starmer had opted for the most symbolic option, rather than, say, ending all arms sales, imposing sanctions and ending trade. Smotrich knows this, which is why he is openly mocking the likes of Starmer. He knows Western leaders are not actually interested in putting pressure on Israel, that all this rhetoric is meant purely for domestic consumption, to try to dupe Western citizens into doing something. The 'two-state solution' exists, in practice, as a crutch for Western leaders to get through interviews without having to answer questions about meaningful action. What Smotrich is planning here are construction plans which cut the West Bank's north off from its south in order to – in his words – create a 'reality that buries the idea of a Palestinian state – because there's nothing to recognise and no one to recognise it'. Housing units for thousands of illegal Israeli settlers will be built. For those who believe that Smotrich is a fringe figure, despite all his genocidal aspirations in Gaza having been granted: he boasted in this speech of how Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu had 'supported and enabled me to carry out this revolution' in the West Bank. The West Bank has long been the site of Israel's murderous suffocation. There are hundreds of thousands of illegal settlers there, living with the privileges afforded to them under a system of apartheid. The indigenous Palestinians, on the other hand, are deprived of basic rights and are systematically driven from their homes. Hundreds were slaughtered in the years running up to October 7, and hundreds more since. Since January, more than 40,000 Palestinians have been displaced in the West Bank, the largest forced displacement since Israel's occupation began in 1967. This is a slow-motion Gaza. One of Smotrich's colleagues, Israel's national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, also underlined that Israel's genocidal intent is not simply confined to Gaza. A hideous video has been posted of him confronting Marwan Barghouti, who is frequently described as the Palestinian Nelson Mandela. Hailing from Ramallah in the West Bank, this unifying leader has been imprisoned for more than two decades, languishing in solitary confinement: looking shockingly frail, the video clearly intended to emphasise how much he'd suffered. 'You will not defeat us. Whoever harms the people of Israel, whoever kills children, whoever kills women … we will erase them,' says Ben-Gvir. This is nakedly genocidal. There is, as ever, no pretence. The Israeli state is telling the world that it intends to erase the Palestinian people, because it quite rationally understands there will be no consequences. Has it not wiped Gaza from the world map, exterminated tens of thousands of its people, deliberately starved its entire population, buried its hospitals in rubble, butchered medics and aid workers, presided over industrialised torture and rape – and only suffered Western handwringing as a result? READ MORE: I was cut off on air for saying BBC is complicit in genocide. Here's why I did it And that is why the Israeli state knows that it won't just eliminate Palestinian Gaza, but successfully annex the West Bank and remove its Palestinian population there, too. Indeed, the West Bank was always the jewel in its crown. But given the impunity, Israel has given notice about its real plans. This week, Netanyahu made his expansionist ambitions clear. He was asked by a TV interviewer if he felt connected to a vision of a 'Greater Israel', and replied: 'Very much.' This 'Greater Israel' includes parts of Jordan, Egypt and Syria. Imagine the leader of a state hostile to the West openly made clear their desire to annex the land of multiple neighbours, in order to expand an ethno state. It would lead news bulletins, be splashed on newspaper front pages, be denounced by Western leaders – all as damning evidence of naked, unhinged aggression. But not so here. Over and over again, Israel's leaders simply state their criminal intent, and yet the vast majority of Western media outlets act as though it's not really happening, or as though it's some parallel universe. But there's no subtlety, no secrecy. Here is a crime confessed to over and over again: no one can say they were not warned.
