The Committee To Protect Journalists Is Trying To Erase The Genocide Of The Palestinian Press.

The CPJ continues to sell out to Israel.

Written By: Justin K.P.

The NGO Committee To Protect Journalists, at the behest of pressure from Zionist lobby groups, is attempting to erase the documentation of Israel’s massacre of Palestinian journalists.

The group removed eight Palestinian journalists from its list of slaughtered Palestinian journalists by falsely claiming that they “participated in combat”.

This, according to a press release from the group, was because “they were later established to have been Hamas or PIJ combatants”, “after militant groups Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) published obituaries identifying as combatants individuals previously listed by CPJ as journalists.”

In reality, the majority of journalists removed from the list were not identified as armed combatants, but as having at one time worked in media relations for the armed groups.

For example, the Times of Israel noted that three of the journalists removed were all listed as having once worked for the media department of Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Mohammed Nasser Abu Huwaidi once worked for the “military media unit” of Palestinian Islamic Jihad; Yaqoub Anan al-Bursh was listed as a military media commentator for Hamas, and Maysara Salah also once worked for the military media for Hamas.

But the fact that these reporters once worked in media departments for armed groups does not prove that they “participated in combat” as CPJ claimed, nor does it prove that they were doing anything other than reporting on the Israeli genocide in Gaza when they were killed by Israel.

At the behest of the Israel lobby, the CPJ now says it is “conducting a full review of its database of journalists killed during the Israel-Gaza War”.

Whistleblowers from within the organization say that this review may include taking killed reporters off the database if they ever worked for state affiliated media outlets.

Sources in the organization told journalist Mohammed El-Kurd that “The Board of Directors at the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) will formally change its definition of who qualifies as a journalist, to broadly exclude slain Palestinian and Lebanese journalists who worked for government-funded media outlets.”

He also reported that , “ Sources say that CPJ has put together a ‘special task force’ to ‘reexamine the question of ‘Who is a Journalist?’ (direct language). The main objective of the task force is to explore excluding journalists working for ‘state-backed propaganda outlets and terror-affiliated organizations’ from their database, as well as journalists who exhibit actions and behaviors that the organization finds to be discrediting.”

This decision, according to the whistleblowers, was done at the behest of The Free Beacon, a Neo-con outlet and the mouthpiece of Zionist mega donor Paul Singer .

CPJ similarly fired one of its board members, Drop Site News’ Dr. Nika Soon-Shiong, for questioning this decision.

In an email to the board, Soon-Shiong wrote:

I request that the Board vote on whether to proceed with this effort, given the absence of a clear objective, defined scope of work, or assessment of the potential institutional risks. The proposal to exclude journalists who exhibit certain “behaviors and activities” or who work for “state-backed propaganda outlets, militant- and designated terror-affiliated organizations” emerged from our discussion of Adam Kredo’s Free Beacon article alleging I am too vocal against genocide and apartheid.

Kredo placed me on the cover and accused me of terrorism by virtue of my role as publisher for an “extremist” outlet. Similar accusations have been made against Drop Site by the Trump administration, Pakistan’s military dictatorship, and ideological activists tied to the Israeli government—all in an effort to suppress and silence our critical reporting. I raise this not because my case is unique, but because it illustrates how accusations of terrorism are widespread and politically motivated to discredit journalists and political opponents.

She added, “Reopening the question of ‘who is a journalist’ carries profound implications for the individuals CPJ protects and for the organizations with which they are affiliated. It’s a betrayal of our colleagues in Gaza who have faced the deadliest conflict for journalists ever recorded.”

She also pointed out the double standard, where any journalist who at any time was affiliated with armed Palestinian groups will now not be considered a journalist, but the many journalists affiliated with the IDF will be.

She wrote, “What should happen to NYT or CNN reporters who have children serving in the IDF, or mentor journalists to help Israel win an ‘information war ‘? What should happen to outlets like The Atlantic, LA Times, or BBC where editors served in the IDF directly?”

For asking these questions, she was “ informed that I’m no longer a member of the Committee to Protect Journalists board.”

It is clear what the Committee to Protect Journalists is doing with this review: to take any Palestinian journalist that the Zionist lobby can connect in any way to armed groups in order to hide the real number of journalists killed in Gaza by Israel.

This is not the first time the CPJ has covered for Israel at the behest of Zionist donors.

Whistleblowers have previously said that CPJ CEO Jodie Ginsberg has “shut down a research piece that was going to prove that Israel deliberately targets journalists”, “refused to classify journalist killings as targeted murders” and “decided to cancel [CPJ’s] Impunity Index simply because the math showed Israel is number one” at the behest of pro-Israel donors.

In a recent statement, Jodie Ginsberg said, “CPJ condemns in no uncertain terms the misrepresentation of combatants as journalists or media workers — or the misuse of ‘Press’ insignia”, referring to eight Palestinian journalists removed from the list, despite the fact that there is no evidence there was “misrepresentation of combatants as journalists or media workers” only that the journalists at one point worked in media departments of armed groups.

This gives credence to Israel’s main deception used to kill journalists in Gaza.

Israel has previously made provably false claims that well-known journalists working in Gaza, such as Anas Al Sharif and Hossam Shabat, were combatants to justify murdering them for their reporting.

The Israeli magazine 972 reported that after the Gaza genocide began, the Mossad created a Legitimization Cell 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”.

One source inside the cell admitted that “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” and another 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”.

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