The Committee to Support Journalists recorded, during the monthly report on the state of press freedoms in August 2021, several violations against media freedoms and journalists, including (60) Israeli violations and 10 violations by Palestinian internal parties, in addition to recording more than 3 violations. Violations by social media companies of the websites, pages and accounts of personal journalists and activists, in the context of combating Palestinian content and obliterating the crimes of the occupation against the people.
In its report, the committee said that the occupation forces continued to violate the freedom of journalistic work by attacking journalists and media outlets in the occupied Palestinian territories, with live bullets, rubber, poison gas bombs, and spraying with sewage water, confiscating their journalistic equipment, arresting and preventing coverage, in a dangerous denial of all laws. and international conventions that guarantee the protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression.
Israeli attacks in the occupied Palestinian territories increased during the month of August, when 14 journalists were arrested, detained, and summoned by the Israeli occupation forces, and they were later released.
The occupation court also issued a decision to renew an administrative detention for the fourth time against the poet Mahmoud Ayyad.
The report recorded that more than 15 journalists in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip were targeted and assaulted by the occupation forces with live and rubber bullets, poison gas and pepper bombs. foot, and journalist Tariq Youssef Al-Sarkji with a stun grenade in his face.
The occupation forces attacked journalists while they were performing their media duties in the eastern Gaza Strip and sprayed them with poison gas through Quad-Capter planes. One of them was journalist Assem Shehadeh, a photographer for the National Agency, who was shot in the face by an Israeli sniper, and journalist Taha Bakr, who was hit in the knee, except for Many of them suffocated, including Al-Jazeera correspondent Wael Al-Dahdouh, and photojournalist Mahmoud Al-Masry.
The occupation forces prevented journalists from practicing their professional work in covering the violations of the occupation against the Palestinians, as 21 cases of prevention from coverage were recorded.
As for the raids and incursions into the homes of journalists and media institutions, the report recorded 3 cases of storming and smashing the Bisan Center for Research and Development in the city of Ramallah, and the theft of private property from the place, in addition to closing the headquarters of the Palestinian Advertising Company.
Within the framework of the occupation´s harassment of the captured journalists, the report recorded one case against journalist Khaled Al-Zabad, who forced him to pay a fine before being released.
Regarding the fight against Palestinian content, the administrations of social media, in collusion with the Israeli occupation, have closed Palestinian websites and channels, blocking, deleting and restricting many accounts of journalists and media institutions. Mustafa Al-Sawaf, and the journalist Alaa Al-Rimawi.
