20 Feb 2025 | Israel, Middle East and North Africa, News and features
Following the grotesque scenes of Hamas celebrations in Gaza, we pay tribute to the journalist and human rights activist Oded Lifshitz, whose body has been identified by his family.
Although the grandfather was long retired, he was remembered by colleagues around the world as one of the first journalists to report on the notorious 1982 massacre of Palestinians at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon.
Lifshitz worked for many years on the left-wing Israeli daily paper Al HaMishmar, which closed in 1995. Its slogan was “For Zionism, Socialism and Brotherhood Amongst Nations” and was often criticised by the religious right in Israel for its liberal stance.
Lifshitz, aged 83 at the time of his capture, was known as a campaigner for Israel’s Bedouin Arab community and was reported to be responsible for a high court case that returned some of their land. In retirement he worked for the organisation Road to Recovery, which helped Palestinians cross the Erez border from Gaza into Israel to receive medical treatment. He and his wife Yocheved, who was also kidnapped by Hamas but released in October 2023, were lifelong peace activists.
Lifshitz was one of the founders of Kibbutz Nir Oz, a village less than seven kilometres from the Gaza border. The kibbutz was destroyed in the attacks of 7 October 2023 and it is thought that nearly half of its 400 residents were kidnapped, killed or injured.
The National Union of Journalists general secretary Laura Davidson today paid tribute: “Our sincere thoughts are with Oded Lifshitz’s family at this difficult time. Like many, we had hoped for the safe release of the journalist committed to peace. Journalists worldwide will no doubt share their deepest condolences with his loved ones today.”
In a statement, the Lifshitz family said: “We received with deep sorrow the official and bitter news confirming the identification of our beloved Oded’s body. 503 agonising days of uncertainty have come to an end.
“We had hoped and prayed so much for a different outcome. Now we can mourn the husband, father, grandfather, and great-grandfather who has been missing from us since October 7.
“Our family’s healing process will begin now and will not end until the last hostage is returned.”
At Index on Censorship, we join in offering our condolences to the family of this exemplary journalist and campaigner. Sadly, he never contributed to Index. Tragically, he never will.
17 Jan 2025 | Israel, Middle East and North Africa, News and features, Palestine
What do you do when your culture has been destroyed? When your studios, galleries, and universities all lie in rubble? How do you plan to rebuild when war continues? And how do you find hope amidst utter devastation?
These were some of the questions asked during Archiving Gaza in the Present, a two-day conference held at SOAS University by the Arab British Centre and the Centre for Palestinian Studies in December. The conference brought together artists, writers, journalists, architects and more to discuss the desperate situation facing those in Gaza today.
A ceasefire deal has now been agreed in principle between Israel and Hamas, which is due to come into effect this Sunday. The Israeli Cabinet still needs to vote on the deal, and if it passes, this could see an end to the current conflict.
But since the siege on Gaza began 15 months ago, more than 45,000 people have been killed and roughly 1.9 million people displaced. The impact of the war on Gaza’s institutions is also devastating. According to a report by Human Rights Watch, more than 93% of Gaza’s schools and all of their universities have been destroyed or significantly damaged. What’s more, 195 heritage sites, 227 mosques and three churches have also been damaged or destroyed.
It was amidst these horrifying figures that conversations unfolded, as artists, architects and cultural leaders from Gaza gathered to reflect on what has been lost and to consider the path forward.
A conversation between artists Hazem Harb and Malak Mattar put things into perspective. Harb, an artist from Gaza now based in Dubai, spoke about the destruction of Gaza’s Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) building where he first learnt art as a teenager. It was in that space that he also met some of the artists who he continues to work with today. Since then, the YMCA has been destroyed along with their art studios.
Malak Mattar, a painter and illustrator representing a younger generation of Gazan artists, is now based in the UK. Witnessing the war from abroad, including the destruction of her family home, has profoundly influenced her artistic practice. Once characterised by vibrant colours, her work now relies solely on black and white.
During the session, she discussed her piece No Words, inspired by real events in Gaza that she observed online. At its centre, a young boy sits on a horse-drawn cart with all his belongings strapped on to it. To his left, limbs protrude from the wreckage of destroyed buildings, birds pick at decaying flesh, and a mother clutches her baby in fear. To his right, a soldier takes aim with his rifle while men are lined up as prisoners. The painting evokes echoes of Iraqi artist Dia Al-Azzawi’s Sabra and Shatila Massacre mural, created in response to the massacre of civilians at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut, Lebanon in September 1982.
“This is not only my painting, it belongs to the people of Gaza, and I hope it really disturbs you, I hope it haunts you forever…” Mattar said in an interview with The Markaz Review.
Even before October 2023, Gaza was a challenging place to be an artist. Israel’s blockade on Gaza since 2006 has had a profound impact on all aspects of life including the economy, freedom of movement, and the arts. The blockade limited access to art materials and supplies and severely restricted travel, preventing many Gazan artists from engaging with the wider world. What’s more, artists faced censorship and self-censorship under the control of Hamas, including restrictions on free expression. Gaza’s Hamas-run Culture Ministry cracked down on work that did not conform to its edicts and all artists and performers were forced to get permits from the Hamas authorities in order to put on cultural events.
But as bad as things might have once been, they are certainly worse now.
Yet all is not lost. During the conference, cultural practitioners shared how they are already working to rebuild what has been destroyed.
One such example is artist Salman Nawati and the NAWAF collective, who have created the Sahab Museum project, an imaginative virtual museum. Their latest initiative, BARRA (Off-site), is a virtual reality experience where participants can explore, collect, and reflect on artworks that have been lost or damaged and symbolically return them to the Sahab Museum. The project aims to create “a space to rethink and imagine—a space for our dreams to take shape despite the weight of Gaza’s violent everyday life”.
Others, such as RIWAQ director Shatha Safi, are already planning the rebuilding of Gaza. RIWAQ is an organisation that works on preserving and restoring archeological sites across the West Bank and Gaza. Before October 2023, they had successfully restored a number of historic buildings in Gaza, transforming them into vibrant community spaces. Now, those same buildings are either partially or completely destroyed. However, they don’t plan to give up. Today, they are documenting information about the level of destruction on Gaza’s old city. With an end to the war now hopefully in sight, they plan to work with the local community in the future to rebuild once again.
It is hard to reflect on the conference without feeling despair and hopelessness. Yet, for people in Gaza, hopelessness is not an option. And with a ceasefire now on the horizon, there is a glimmer of hope for the opportunity to begin cultural reconstruction. As one speaker reminded us at the end of the day, the late Palestinian-American academic Edward Said famously said, “where cruelty and injustice are concerned, hopelessness is submission”.
11 Oct 2024 | Brazil, Israel, Mexico, News and features, Newsletters, Palestine, United States
Hello, readers. This is Sarah Dawood here, the new editor of Index on Censorship. Every week, we bring the most pertinent global free speech stories to your inbox.
This week, headlines have been dominated by the ongoing devastation of the war in the Middle East, where the death toll is now more than 42,000 in Gaza, and more than 2,100 in Lebanon. Monday also marked a painful milestone for Israelis and Jewish people everywhere, as the first anniversary of Hamas’s attacks, which killed 1,200 people. You can read Jerusalem correspondent Ben Lynfield’s forensic analysis on the region’s risks to journalists and press freedom below.
Attention has also been on the destructive Hurricane Milton in Florida, which has killed at least 16 people. The climate event has resulted in human tragedy, physical damage and the distortion of truth, with false information and AI-generated images accumulating millions of views on social media, including a fabricated flooding of Disney World in Orlando. Such imagery has been seized upon by hostile states, far-right groups, and even US politicians to advance their own aims: Russian state-owned news agency RIA Novosti reposted the fake Disney World photos to its Telegram channel, whilst Republican members of Congress have proclaimed conspiracy theories of government-led “storm manufacturing”. This emphasises how crises can be manipulated and monopolised to stir up division.
But while disinformation can undermine democracy, so too can information blockades. This brings us to some important stories coming out of Latin America. In Brazil, the social media platform X is now back online after a shutdown in September. The platform was banned by a top judge during the country’s presidential election campaign, in an attempt to prevent the spread of misinformation. But as Mateus Netzel, the executive director of Brazil-based digital news platform Poder360 told Reuters, social media bans not only restrict public access to information, but can undermine journalists’ ability to gather and report on news. Elon Musk himself was using X to post about the development of the ban, but this was inaccessible to Brazilian journalists. “In theory, there are journalists and outlets who do not have access to that right now and this is a very important restriction because they need to report on this issue and they will have to rely on indirect sources,” said Netzel.
We also heard frightening news from Mexico, where a local politician was murdered and beheaded just days after being sworn in as city mayor of Chilpancingo. Whilst we don’t yet know the reason that Alejandro Arcos Catalán was killed, his murder is yet another example of journalists, politicians, and other public figures being routinely targeted by criminal gangs. Bar active war zones, Mexico has consistently been the most dangerous country in the world for journalists, topping Reporters Without Borders’ list in 2022.
Meanwhile, in El Salvador, climate activists are being silenced through false imprisonment. Five protesters, who fronted a 13-year grassroots campaign to ban metal mining due to its devastating environmental impacts are now facing life in prison for the alleged killing of an army informant in 1989. The charge has been condemned by the UN and international lawyers as baseless and politically motivated, and echoes heavy-handed prison sentences being handed to climate protesters globally, including in democratic countries. As Index’s Mackenzie Argent reported last month, human rights lawyers have called out the UK’s hypocrisy in claiming egalitarianism whilst disproportionately punishing environmental activists, pointing specifically to the sentencing of Just Stop Oil’s Roger Hallam to five years in prison in July. These two stories, although taking place 5,000 miles away from each other, underline how climate defenders are currently on the front line of attempts to be silenced.
10 Oct 2024 | Israel, Middle East and North Africa, News and features, Palestine
Israel’s closure of Al Jazeera’s offices in the occupied West Bank is harming the Qatari network’s coverage in the territory and heightening fears for its journalists, says the news bureau’s chief Walid al-Omari.
The closure, which happened on 22 September, was labelled an essential security step by Israeli officials, against what they describe as a Hamas mouthpiece. It has widely been seen among Palestinians as a means of limiting information coming from the West Bank in advance of an expected escalation of military moves. The initial closure period is 45 days.
And in fact, following the closure of the news centre, the Israeli air force carried out the deadliest single attack in the occupied West Bank in more than two decades, killing at least 18 people in the bombing of a cafe in Tulkarm Refugee Camp, according to Palestinian security services.
“The main goal of this closure and of increasing the pressure on journalists is to prevent the transmission of the picture of what’s happening in the West Bank so that there won’t be knowledge of what Israel is doing and the crimes it is committing,” said political analyst Jehad Harb, a former researcher on Palestinian politics at the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) in Ramallah.
Israel has already blocked free access to Gaza for foreign journalists. This is suggested to be to limit international exposure of its year-long assault on Gaza, triggered by Hamas’s brutal incursion on 7 October 2023. Israel also faces allegations that it is actively targeting Palestinian media personnel.
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, as of 9 October 2024, 128 journalists and media personnel have been killed in Gaza since the war began. It has documented five cases in which journalists were directly targeted and killed. Israel denies targeting journalists and says most of those being counted were actually operatives of Hamas and other militant groups.
In a phone interview, Walid al-Omari told me that Al Jazeera staff feel displaced and worried. “We are refugees now,” he said. “We don’t have a place. Sometimes we meet in a cafe, a restaurant, our homes or in hotels.”
The closure has heightened concerns for the station’s journalists that they could become targets, he said, thus Al Jazeera employees are not venturing out to the flashpoints they usually cover. “It’s harder,” he said. “We can’t send our correspondents. The situation is not clear. If they appear as Al Jazeera correspondents, the army might arrest them.
“We continue covering everything, but it’s not the same as before. We cannot send footage from here so they take other sources.”
He said the West Bank coverage is now being directed out of Qatar, which relies on freelancers, guests and news agencies. Most of the 30 Ramallah employees, from both the Arabic and English outlets, are considered on vacation for now, he added.
Al-Omari dismissed Israeli allegations that the Ramallah offices were used for incitement and encouraging terrorism, and said such statements could spark attacks on staff. “We are not lying, inciting or provoking. We are trying to do our professional duty.”
In the view of Daoud Kuttab, a veteran Palestinian-American journalist based in Amman, Jordan, news from the West Bank can still get out, but clamping down on Al Jazeera is having an impact: “Now, Al Jazeera is more limited,” he said. “The facts will still come out but they won’t be able to synchronise and have multiple journalists and editors working on the equipment they own. The closure hobbles their work, but it doesn’t stop it.”
While the closure is reverberating in the West Bank, it should also be seen within the context of parallel steps being taken by Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right coalition inside Israel itself. These steps are also billed as anti-incitement steps needed during war but they could markedly limit freedom of expression, especially among Palestinian citizens of Israel, who are already being singled out often with no basis, according to human rights lawyers.
The coalition recently advanced a bill that would enable rapid dismissal of teachers and school budgets to be cut by the education ministry if they support terrorism. It is also trying to enable police to make what critics say would be “political arrests” on a large scale by broadening the definition of incitement and removing a requirement that state attorneys have to approve arrests for suspicion of incitement.
Such crackdowns as the Al Jazeera closure are popular with the coalition’s right-wing base. “The government of Israel does not allow a media outlet that broadcasts propaganda for a terrorist organisation and endangers IDF soldiers to operate, especially in times of war, based on principles of protecting the state and its citizens,” read a statement from the office of Shlomo Karhi, the communications minister.
Zvi Sukkot, a far-right legislator who chairs a Knesset subcommittee dealing with the West Bank, told Index: “There is a difference between media freedom and freedom to incite to murder Jews. Any station that incites to murder Jews should be closed.”
Al Jazeera could definitely be perceived to be a pro-Hamas station, even sometimes airing unedited videos of Hamas fighters released by the militant group’s media offices. But some Israeli specialists question if the office closure was warranted.
Israel could be more concerned about the network’s ability to cover scenes of people in Gaza lifting rubble to find the remains of their family members after airstrikes, rather than its ability to give a platform to Hamas supporters. Al-Omari also said that Al Jazeera live streams press conferences of Israeli leaders and the IDF’s spokesperson.
Matti Steinberg, an Israeli academic and author specialising in Palestinians and the former senior adviser to the Shin Bet security service, criticised the closure: “I follow Al Jazeera tirelessly for my work and I can’t understand this decision,” he said. “I haven’t seen any indication it poses a security threat.”
In practical terms, the 22 September raid marked the extension of a law that was passed in April in Israel, to the West Bank; this allows the government to close foreign outlets that are deemed to pose a substantive threat to state security. That law was first applied to Al Jazeera operations within Israel, forcing the network to move its Jerusalem office staff to Ramallah and closing its Israel-based cable and satellite transmissions.
Now, with international attention focused on Israel’s incursion into Lebanon and the Gaza death toll continuing to mount, Israel has also been intensifying its military activity in the West Bank, which it says is aimed at targeting terrorists or are planning attacks on Israel.
But the raids leave broad destruction and displace residents, scenes usually captured by Al Jazeera, as one of the region’s most resourced and largest news outlets. Harb sees Al Jazeera as a double threat to Israel’s effort to control the West Bank information flow, with its Arabic station, the most popular in the Middle East, and its English channel, which reaches the international community (and which also worked out of the Ramallah offices).
The English language station has a different editorial team than the Arabic one and, according to Kuttab, offers a “softer presentation of the same issue”. This is because the international audience that Al Jazeera English targets would switch channels if it is too bombastic and also because its presenters have worked in the Western media, he said.
Al Omari said that roughly 70 soldiers, some of them masked, participated in the action in and around Al Jazeera’s offices. He said troops tore down a banner of Shireen Abu Akleh, the Al Jazeera journalist killed by the Israeli army while she covered a raid in the West Bank in May 2022.
Al-Omari alleged the closure was an Israeli violation of self-rule agreements, since it took place in an area designated as being under full control of the Palestinian Authority. The heavy-handed raid may have been a deliberate effort to frighten other outlets, he added.
The Union of Journalists in Israel condemned the raid, saying the closure lacked transparency and that it could help pave the way for the closure of Israeli news outlets that the government dislikes. But the group’s announcement elicited a tide of criticism by journalists and others that it is taking Hamas’s side, and some threatened to stop paying dues. “Some of our journalists don’t understand that the moment is drawing near when the knock will come to their door also,” said Anat Saragusti, press freedom director for the union.
