Crisis: International
Israeli-Hezbollah conflict takes toll on media
An Israeli plane fired two missiles at Al-Manar TV, the satellite news channel affiliated with the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah, last July 13.
Two employees were injured by flying glass, and a civilian in a nearby house was also wounded. The top floors of the building were severely damaged, said Ali-Al-Haji, Al-Manar’s managing director.
However, the station continued to broadcast. Israeli forces separately struck two Al-Manar TV transmitters, one near Baalbek, northeast of Beirut, and another in Maroun al-Ras in southern Lebanon.
The strikes took place as part of an Israeli military offensive in Lebanon that began after Hezbollah guerrillas captured two Israeli soldiers and killed another eight near the Lebanese-Israeli border yesterday. As of July 15, at least 53 Lebanese civilians have been killed in Israeli air strikes, news agencies reported.
The Geneva Conventions prohibit attacks on civilian targets unless they are used for military purposes. While Al-Manar may serve a propaganda function for Hezbollah, it does not appear, based on a monitoring of its broadcasts on July 13, to be serving any discernible military function, according to Committee to Protect Journalists’ analysis.
In a separate incident, Reuters reported that cameraman Rami Amichai was wounded in the leg by shrapnel in a Hezbollah rocket attack.
Amichai had been filming in the Israeli coastal city of Nahariya when a rocket struck nearby, sending shrapnel flying into his lower leg, Reuters said.
On July 12, three journalists working for the Lebanese satellite television channel New TV were seriously wounded when their car was struck during Israel’s bombardment of the al-Mahmoudiyeh Bridge in southern Lebanon.
Reporter Bassel al-Aridi, cameraman Abed Khayat, and assistant cameraman Ziad Sawan were seriously injured. Their vehicle was destroyed. The journalists were recovering in the American University of Beirut hospital.
Al-Jazeera bureau chief arrested
Walid Al-Omari, Al-Jazeera’s bureau chief in Israel, was detained last July 17 in northern Israel, shortly after reporting live on the Qatar-based satellite TV news station about the cross-border clashes with Lebanon. It was the second time in two days that Omari had been arrested by the police.
According to Al-Jazeera, Omari was “interrogated for more than four hours in a rather violent manner.”
On July 17, Omari was taken to the police station in Akka after being arrested near the town. He had previously been arrested and questioned on a day earlier and had been freed after spending the night in a detention center.
Members of another Al-Jazeera crew were also detained while covering developments in Haifa. The station said Israeli authorities ordered reporter Elias Karram and his crew to keep away from an oil refinery located on the waterfront.
Awad Rajoub, a Palestinian journalist who works for Al-Jazeera’s website, was freed for lack of evidence on May 24 after being held for six months. He was arrested by Israeli soldiers Nov. 30 last year at his home in Doura, 10 km from the West Bank city of Hebron, and accused of “threatening state security.” The soldiers confiscated his mobile phone at the time of his arrest.
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