Al Jazeera vehemently rejects Israel’s ‘false and misleading’ justification for the targeted killing of journalists Hamza Wael al-Dahdouh and Mustafa Thuria.

Al Jazeera has vehemently dismissed the Israeli army’s justification for the killing of its Palestinian journalists, Hamza Wael al-Dahdouh and Mustafa Thuria, labelling the allegations as “false and misleading”.

On 7 January 2024, Al Jazeera journalist Hamza Wael al-Dahdouh and his colleague Mustafa Thuria were killed by an Israeli strike which struck their car in Rafah.

The Qatar-based network said that the journalists were targeted “simply for doing their job” and described the killing as “targeted”.

The Israeli army claimed that the two reporters were associated with “Gaza-based terrorist organisations”.

However, it failed to provide any photographic or video evidence to substantiate these claims.

The families of the deceased journalists have categorically rejected the claims, saying they were “fabricated” and “false”.

Al Jazeera also strongly condemned and wholly rejected these accusations.

The network stressed that Al-Dahdouh and Thuria were covering the Israeli army’s bombing which had killed ten Palestinians.

“He, like so many journalists before him, was killed simply for doing his job and for shining a light on events that the Israeli army would rather stay in the dark and hidden from scrutiny,” Al Jazeera stated to Middle East Eye.

Witnesses relayed to AFP that the journalists’ car was struck by two rockets; one impacting the front of the vehicle and the other fatally hitting Dahdouh, who was seated next to the driver.

Al Jazeera also highlighted Israel’s notorious record of making false allegations and fabricating evidence, particularly against journalists.

In 2022, Israel murdered Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh by an Israeli soldier in 2022, a fact initially denied but later admitted by the Israeli army.

Wael al-Dahdouh, Hamza’s father and Al Jazeera Arabic’s Gaza bureau chief, lost several family members in an Israeli air strike in October 2023.

Last month, Wael himself was injured in a strike that killed his Al Jazeera colleague, Samer Abudaqa.

“Hamza was everything to me, the eldest boy, he was the soul of my soul… these are the tears of parting and loss, the tears of humanity,” Dahdouh said after burying his son.

The bereaved journalist returned on air in the evening after burying his son to continue his reporting of the ongoing Israeli atrocities in Gaza. 

The Euro-Med Monitor estimated that as of 13 January 2024, a total of 31,497 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip.

Of these, 92% (28,951) were civilians, including 12,345 children, 6,471 women, 295 health personnel, 41 civil defence personnel, and 113 journalists.

Injuries have been sustained by 61,079 individuals, many in critical condition.