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Call me radical, but journalists should be able to pledge support for Palestinian journalists: Neil Macdonald

MacDonald, Neil
http://www.cbc.ca/news/opinion/cfje-statement-1.4620246

Publisher:  CBC News
Date Written:  15/04/2018
Year Published:  2018  
Resource Type:  Article

Journalist Neil MacDonald defends journalistic freedom and safety following a statement issued by the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE), an organization that faltered in carrying out its mandate.

Abstract: 
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Excerpt:

If Israel says a shooting is an accident, its allies abroad accept the explanation immediately. If Israel says it was defending itself against violent attackers and terrorists, as it did after the Gaza shootings, they repeat the message loyally, and attack anyone who reports otherwise. Sometimes they remind news organizations of the IDF's Purity of Arms code, held up by Israel's supporters as proof that Israel maintains the most moral army in the world.

What they ignore is the fact that Israeli troops are very good at hitting what they aim at, and sometimes their targets are unarmed civilians, as the vast majority of the Gaza protesters were, or unarmed journalists. This is not a "fog of war" issue. As the IDF put it in a now-deleted tweet about the Gaza shootings: "Everything was accurate and measured; we know where every bullet landed."

In other words, whoever shot Yasser Murtaja did so deliberately. Purity of arms was evidently not a concern. In fact, footage recorded by an Israeli soldier and published in an Israeli newspaper showed other troops laughing and cheering as a sniper dispatched an unarmed protester during an earlier incident at the Gaza fence.

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