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Israeli Army Shoots and Wounds 30 Journalists During Intifada
JERUSALEM, July 26 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Thirty journalists, including 21 Palestinians, have been shot and wounded by the Israeli army since the start of the Palestinian uprising ten months ago, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) announced Thursday.
The report, which was published on the organizations' website, finds the Israeli army possibly responsible for wounding 30 journalists by gunfire, and urged authorities to adopt emergency measures to guarantee the safety of journalists.
Since September 29, Reporters sans frontières (RSF, Reporters without Borders) has recorded 30 cases of journalists being wounded by gunfire in the Palestinian occupied territories: 21 Palestinians, two Americans and seven French reporters.
Some of them have been hit several times; a total of 40 wounds have been recorded. This situation led the RSF to carry out an exhaustive investigation from May 22nd to June 3rd, to discover exactly what happened.
"The results of this investigation are available in a 37-page report that blames the Israeli army for almost all of these incidents," said the statement.
"In all cases except one, it can be seen that the shots fired at journalists came from Israeli positions," said Robert Ménard, secretary general of RSF. "While it is impossible to assert that all of these journalists were deliberately shot by Tsahal soldiers, there is no doubt that, in most cases, they could easily have been identified by Israeli forces," he added.
"While Israeli authorities have always claimed that journalists put themselves in danger by joining protesters during demonstrations, it is clear that many representatives of the press were shot while in areas away from such demonstrators," said RSF.
This was the case, for example, with Palestinian journalist Laïla Odeh, of Abu Dhabi TV, who was wounded on April 20th, in Rafah, in the Gaza Strip. At the time, there were no confrontations in the area. Bertrand Aguirre, correspondent with the French television channel TF1, was shot on May 15th in Ramallah by an Israeli border guard after confrontations had ended.
Live bullets have caused the most serious wounds. In at least five cases, according to RSF, journalists missed death by inches. But two victims will undoubtedly suffer consequences forever: Yola Monakhov of the Associated Press (AP), was severely wounded in the lower abdomen on November 11th, and Laurent Van der Stockt, of Gamma, was shot in the knee on February 9th, with his left leg still paralyzed five months after he was shot. He will not know whether he will be able to walk normally for another six to eight months.
"Israeli authorities claim to have initiated investigations, but no results have been made public. They seem especially reticent when the victims are Palestinian journalists. In the few cases where investigations were made of cases where Western journalists who were shot by Israeli gunfire, these investigations were only begun because of international pressure, results were not made public, and, to this day, there is no information as to whether sanctions were taken against the shooters and their superiors," says RSF.
"The lack of transparency of these investigations and the slowness of authorities to shed light on these incidents seems to be the rule, and can only encourage similar actions against the press in the future," concludes the RSF.
Reporters sans frontières proposed 12 measures to improve the protection of journalists working in conflict areas to Israeli authorities. These recommendations include emergency measures (initiating investigations, possible sanctions, publication of information about investigations), proactive measures (special training, supply of protective equipment, setting up of a special telephone number) and follow-up measures, especially concerning procedures for prosecuting shooters and post-traumatic follow-up for wounded journalists.
"If it is not possible to confirm these shootings were deliberate, in the majority of cases the journalists [who were wounded] were identifiable," Menard told a press conference while releasing a report on the shootings, the French news agency AFP reported.
"The arguments of the Israeli authorities that these journalists were wounded by errant shots or because of the risks of their jobs doesn't hold up," he argued. "Inquiries have been held extremely rarely, especially in the case of Palestinian journalists."
"The absence of investigations and punishments, in the case of an obvious mistake, could be interpreted as an allowance or an invitation for the authors of these shootings to do it again," he added.
Regarding professional equipment, RSF report said journalists working in the occupied territories should be equipped at least with class-A bulletproof vests, an appropriate helmet (made of kevlar) and even a gas mask.
The report also recommends the use of armored vehicles for moving about the occupied territories.
Reporters Without Borders was founded in 1985 with the aim of producing follow-up reports on catastrophes that the established press neglects after the first sensational front-page stories have been forgotten. The international secretariat of RSF is based in Paris with eight national branches in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, and representatives in Bangkok, Washington, Abidjan and Istanbul.
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