Palestinians and media groups have condemned Israel’s raid on of 11 Palestinian telecom and production companies in the occupied West Bank on October 18, which have since been shut down.
The next day, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) called on authorities to stop their harassment of Palestinian media, as well as for Israeli forces to release the two journalists arrested in the raids in the West Bank.
“Israeli soldiers cannot simply allege incitement and raid broadcasters' offices,” CPJ Middle East and North Africa Program Coordinator Sherif Mansour said. “We call on the Israeli military to release Amr al-Jaabari and Ibrahim al-Jabaari, return all equipment seized from TransMedia, PalMedia, Ramsat, and any other outlets, and allow the media companies to resume their work without fear of reprisal.”
The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate said the attack was an “unprecedented, dangerous escalation” that reflects Israel’s “inability” to “challenge the reality about its crimes as it was broadcasted to the world by the Palestinian media”.
The Palestinian government also strongly condemned the raids, with government spokesPEOPLE Yousif al-Mahmoud describing the raids as a “blatant violation of all international resolutions.”
Israel has long been accused of stifling Palestinian media and journalism, which regularly report on the apartheid regime’s decades-long military occupation of Palestinian territories.
[Abridged from TeleSUR English.]