Rabat – Al-Araby Al-Jadeed’s Gaza correspondent Diaa Al-Kahlout, who was one of the Palestinian men detained on Thursday, has been transferred to an Israeli military base, according to one of his colleagues.
Lamis Andoni from The New Arab told Al Jazeera that the news of Al-Kahlout’s transfer has made the team “really concerned about him.”
She added that detaining and interrogating the reporter based on suspected links to Hamas is “obnoxious.”
“As a journalist, of course, you would have interviewed many Hamas members all the time, like all correspondents,” she asserted. “So this is just an excuse to detain him and terrorize him and his family because he’s just another witness who has to be silenced.”
She added that Israel acts “with impunity” due to not being held accountable for their treatment and murder of journalists.
Al-Araby Al-Jadeed said it lost contact with the correspondent on Thursday, before being informed by his family that he was arrested along with his brothers and other relatives.
The outlet strongly condemned the arrest in a statement, urging humanitarian organizations and journalist rights watchdogs to exert efforts and denounce Israeli violence against journalists.
The editor-in-chief of Al-Araby Al-Jadeed Hossam Kanafani accused Israel of deliberately arresting journalists to stop them from documenting the ongoing assault on Gaza.
The International Federation of Journalists expressed deep concern on Friday over the number of journalists killed in various conflicts worldwide, pointing out that Israel’s war in Gaza has claimed more reporters than any conflict in over 30 years.
The group said that 68 journalists have been killed while covering the ongoing Israeli aggression, marking 72% of all media deaths worldwide. The number also points to a death rate of one a day.
“The war in Gaza has been more deadly for journalists than any single conflict since the IFJ began recording journalists killed in the line of duty in 1990,” the group said.
