Haaretz newspaper on Friday said that the Israeli soldiers had been ordered to assault Palestinian journalists to disrupt their coverage of the Israeli violations committed against Palestinian protesters.
Acting on their commanders’ orders Israeli soldiers beat five Palestinian journalists with batons broke their cameras and arrested them during a demonstration in Kafr Qaddum village east of Qalqilya in August 2012.
The journalists were threatened not to come to Kafr Qaddum anymore. Part of the assault was filmed by a photographer for B’Tselem organization.
The Foreign Press Association demanded an investigation of the incident. An Israeli soldier admitted under questioning that the five journalists did not throw stones were not armed did not interfere with the soldiers and did not photograph classified military operations.
He said that orders were to arrest anyone who violated the military closure order including journalists and to beat anyone who resisted arrest.
In November 2016 the convicted soldiers were only reprimanded and the battalion’s commander was promoted to colonel.
According to statistics by the Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms (MADA) 27 Israeli violations of media freedom were documented in the Palestinian territories in February 2018.
