Written By: Justin K.P.
Israel has targeted and killed yet another Palestinian journalist in Gaza, this time Ahmed Wishah, a photojournalist for Al Jazeera who was killed in “an Israeli air attack on central Gaza’s Bureij refugee camp,” making him the “12th Al Jazeera journalist killed by Israel in Gaza”.
His murder came “weeks after his brother Mohammed, who also worked for the Doha-based network, was killed in deliberate Israeli shelling of his car”.
Israel took credit for his murder,claiming without evidence that he was a resistance fighter.
Journalist Sharif Abdel Kouddous reported , “Ahmed (Wishah) was killed on Saturday as he was still mourning the death of his brother, of Mohammed, who was assassinated by Israel in an airstrike on his car west of Gaza City in April. The Israeli military openly bragged about killing Mohammed at the time, claiming, as they always do, without evidence, that he was a Hamas militant. They did the same, actually, with Ahmed. The Israeli military confirmed to AFP that they killed him, and they said that he was, quote, ‘a Hamas terrorist.’ After Mohammed’s death, it was Ahmed who was taking care of his late brother’s children. He was taking on additional responsibilities in their family. And now he’s been killed, as well.”
In response, Al Jazeera said , “Al Jazeera Media Network condemns the Israeli occupation army’s baseless accusations, which seek to justify its crimes against Al Jazeera journalists and cameramen in Gaza, most recently the killing of cameraman Ahmed Wishah”, adding, “Since October 2023, the Israeli campaign of incitement has relentlessly spread false allegations and baseless accusations against Al Jazeera staff. The Network considers this smear campaign a transparent and futile attempt to justify the deliberate targeting of journalists and cameramen whose only ‘crime’ has been their courageous determination to document and expose the genocide being perpetrated by Israeli occupation forces in the Gaza Strip.”
A Repeated Playbook.
Indeed, Israel has a long history of falsely claiming that Palestinian journalists working for Al Jazeera were resistance fighters to justify murdering them.
Israel falsely claimed that freelance journalist Hossam Shabat was a member of Hamas after murdering him, but journalist Jeremy Scahill confirmed that Hamas “conducted an internal audit—reviewing brigade records and interviewing members—which found Hossam Shabat was not a sniper, not in Qassam, and not affiliated with Hamas at all.”.
He added that, “Hamas typically claims its fighters publicly when they are killed—but in this case, they made clear: Shabat was not one of them.”
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) documented that Israel repeatedly created fake documents that falsely claimed Palestinian journalists were combatants to justify their murder.
The organization noted that, “Al Jazeera correspondent Ismail Al Ghoul, killed along with freelance camera operator Rami Al Refee near Gaza City by an Israeli drone strike on July 31, 2024” was accused by the Israeli occupation of being a “engineer in the Hamas Gaza Brigade” but the fake documents put out by Israel “contained contradictory information showing that Al Ghoul, born in 1997, received a Hamas military ranking in 2007—when he would have been 10 years old. The document also indicated that Al Ghoul joined Hamas’ military wing in 2014, at the age of 17” and that “the IDF released Al Ghoul after detaining him during the army’s March 18, 2024, raid on Al-Shifa hospital, which Al Jazeera said disproved the IDF’s ‘false claim of his affiliation with any organization.’”
Similarly, CPJ documented the cases of:
Al Jazeera journalist Hamza Al Dahdouh and freelancer Mustafa Thuraya, killed in an Israeli strike on January 7, 2024. Israel alleged that they were terrorists operating a drone “posing a threat” to IDF soldiers. A Washington Post analysis of their drone footage from that day found “no indications that either man was operating as anything other than a journalist that day.” The available footage shows that the journalists did not film any IDF troops, aircraft, or military equipment, nor were there any indications of IDF troops in the vicinity of the area they filmed.
The Washington Post investigation also noted that both journalists passed through Israeli checkpoints on their way to the south early in the war and that Dahdouh had been approved to leave Gaza—“a rare privilege unlikely to have been granted to a known militant.”
Israel ran a similar smear campaign before murdering one of Al Jazeera’s most well-known reporters, Anas Al Sharif, releasing fake documents that all contradicted each other.
As journalist Muhammad Shehada documented :
In the case of Al-Sharif, Israel released three documents that contradict each other. One, dated 2023, lists him as a “combatant” with his status described as “suspended” and “unassigned.” It highlights that he suffered incapacitating injuries in a training explosion that left him with “extremely weak hearing in the left ear, weak eyesight” and constant migraines and headaches.
Another from 2019 describes Al-Sharif as a “group leader” but lists his 17th birthday as the day he joined Hamas, despite the minimum age for membership being 18. And a third undated document suggests Al-Sharif was a member of Hamas’ Nukhba unit, the most elite combat division of the Al-Qassam brigades. But it is nearly impossible that someone with incapacitating injuries could join this unit, or would have previously been a member and then demoted to a foot soldier.
Furthermore, even the Likud-connected journalist Amit Segal admitted that Anas Al Sharif “was also detained by the IDF during the takeover of Shifa Hospital, but was later released,” debunking claims that he was a combatant or associated with Hamas.
The ‘Legitimization Cell’.
All of these smears used by Israel to murder Palestinian journalists come from an Israeli intelligence cutout called the Legitimization Cell, which the Israeli Magazine 972 reported was tasked to “identify Gaza-based journalists it could portray as undercover Hamas operatives, in an effort to blunt growing global outrage over Israel’s killing of reporters”.
Israeli intelligence sources admitted that “the Legitimization Cell’s motivation was not security, but public relations. Driven by anger that Gaza-based reporters were ‘smearing [Israel’s] name in front of the world,’ its members were eager to find a journalist they could link to Hamas and mark as a target”.
One member of the Legitimization cell admitted: “The team regularly collected intelligence that could be used for hasbara … The idea was to [allow the military to] operate without pressure, so countries like America wouldn’t stop supplying weapons”.
One source even admitted that “the Legitimization Cell misrepresented intelligence in a way that allowed for the false portrayal of a journalist as a member of Hamas’s military wing”.
Yet again, Israel runs the same lies and smear campaign from the Legitimization Cell against two more Al Jazeera reporters to justify slaughtering them for exposing Israel’s crimes.
Note to readers: The Dissident is a reader-supported outlet. If you liked this article, consider becoming a paid subscriber.
🤬 Israel!! Free Palestine 🇵🇸
But it isn’t false, is it? Hamas already claimed this guy, faggot