Al Jazeera’s Arabic correspondent Ismail al Ghoul was arrested and severely beaten by Israeli forces for 12 hours at Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City before being released.
Al Ghoul was in the area early Monday morning with his crew and other journalists to cover the fourth attack on the hospital by Israeli forces. Thousands of civilians, including medical staff, patients, and displaced families, are trapped in hospitals.
Witnesses said an Al Jazeera reporter was dragged away by Israeli forces, and the media’s broadcast vehicle at the medical facility was also destroyed. He was later released after 12 hours of Israeli detention.
Al Ghoul told Al Jazeera after his release that Israeli forces destroyed media equipment and arrested journalists who had gathered in a room used by the media team. He said the reporters were stripped, blindfolded, had their hands tied and forced to lie face down.
Israeli soldiers would fire to intimidate any movement, al-Ghoul said. He added that he had heard that some of his colleagues had also been released, but he did not have enough information about their whereabouts.
Al-Shifa Hospital, the largest in the Gaza Strip, has served as a base for journalists covering Israel’s more than five-month war against the Palestinian enclave.
Reporting from Rafah, Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud said al Ghul was “tortured, beaten and detained by Israeli forces on the ground along with his crew.”
Mahmoud, citing witnesses, said many Palestinians were beaten and verbally abused, with some blindfolded and their hands tied behind their backs. They were then loaded into Israeli military trucks and taken to an unknown location.
The Gaza Health Ministry said Israeli forces fired a missile and opened fire on one of the hospital buildings, killing and wounding Palestinians, and part of the hospital courtyard was bulldozed.
Mahmoud said Israeli forces had arrested more than 80 other Palestinians, “including female medical staff and women.” [other] journalist”.
“The Israeli military has drawn up a list of suspects searching for wanted persons within the facility, but so far there has been no substantive evidence to justify what is happening inside al-Shifa. We are not providing it,” Mahmood said.
Israel has repeatedly said that the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which rules the besieged Gaza Strip, has “regrouped” inside al-Shifa and is “using it to lead attacks against Israel.”
Mansour Shuman, a citizen journalist who reported from Al-Shifa and Nasser hospitals in southern Gaza, described the enclave’s hospitals as “small towns” where journalists are trying to “bring news to the world.”
Shoman told Al Jazeera that the hospital is one of the few areas equipped with the essential generators to provide internet services.
A series of “organized attacks”
Al-Jazeera Media Network said in a statement early Monday that it called for the immediate release of al-Ghoul and other journalists detained with him.
The Qatar-based network said the Israeli military bears “full responsibility for security.”
“The network emphasizes that this targeting serves as an intimidation tactic against journalists to deter them from reporting on the horrific crimes committed by occupation forces against innocent civilians in the Gaza Strip.” says the statement.
Al Ghoul’s “targets” were responsible for a series of “coordinated attacks against Al Jazeera,” including the killings of veteran Al Jazeera journalists Shireen Abu Akre, Samer Abu Dhaka, and Hamza Dahdou, as well as the bombing of Al Jazeera. The paper said that this was part of the plan. Gaza office.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and the International Press Institute (IPI) also condemned Al Ghoul’s arrest.
“Journalists play an important role in wars. They are the eyes and ears that we need to record what is happening, and every journalist is killed, every journalist is arrested. Our ability to understand what is happening in Gaza will be significantly diminished as the situation increases,” CPJ CEO Jody Ginsburg told Al. Jazeera.
“This is the worst conflict involving journalists ever recorded by the Committee to Protect Journalists, and the situation is only getting worse.”
Scott Griffen, deputy director of IPI, said the organization was “deeply alarmed” by Al Ghoul’s arrest and called for his “immediate release.”
He said Al Ghoul’s detention exposes the risks “all journalists” face in Gaza after Israel killed many journalists during the war with “little accountability.” said.
“This not only threatens the lives of journalists trying to tell stories on the ground, but it also prevents viewers around the world from accessing the truth,” Griffen said.
As of Monday, at least 95 journalists and media workers, the vast majority of them Palestinians, had been killed since the war began on October 7, according to CPJ.
