1mo ago

Held at gunpoint: BBC team detained by Israeli forces in southern Syria

www.bbc.com Held at gunpoint: BBC team detained by Israeli forces in southern Syria

BBC Arabic's Feras Kilani and his colleagues were held at gunpoint, bound and strip-searched while filming in the Golan Heights.

Excerpt:

The team's interrogation lasted more than two hours, during which all our phones and laptops were examined, and many photos - including personal ones - were deleted. The officer threatened us with worse consequences if we approached the frontier from the Syrian side again, and said that they know everything about us and would track us down if any hidden or un-deleted photo was ever published.

70 comments

It's tough work hiding your genocides

This is absolutely typical of this criminal regime – and these are far more than empty threats.
Israel deliberately kills journalists, as evidenced by the fact that more journalists have been killed in Gaza in the last two years than in the entire First an Second World War combined.
Source: Watson Institute for International & Public Affairs - News Graveyards: How Dangers to War Reporters Endanger the World (full paper here)
- the chart should do a better job emphasizing the length of these wars. or use averages per year.
  
  Yes, the chart is not ideal.
  However, my intention was simply to give an impression of how ruthlessly Israel prevents any reporting on what is actually happening in Gaza.
  I think this comparison is sufficient for that purpose, especially since it puts into perspective the enormously high number of media representatives who have been killed in Gaza. I think this makes also clear that the reason for this is most likely that Israel is deliberately targeting media representatives with all means at its disposal – including murder.
  But you are absolutely right: this would become even clearer if it were made more explicit that the enormous number of war killed Journalist in Gaza refers to less than two years while other wars were much longer and also more extensive.
- Why are the two world wars grouped together? I understand they might not be the most significant war for people in the US, but they are some of the most influencial wars in history and named World Wars for a good reason ...
  I can ask the same about the VIetnam, Cambodia and Laos wars, but they seem to be in the same timeframe at least.
  
  I'm afraid the paper doesn't give a concrete answer to that. The historical figures and the discussion of the Gaza War are used here more as background information or for comparison. The focus is mainly on the challenges of modern war reporting, with an emphasis on the wars waged by the US.
  I, on the other hand, only mentioned this study to give an impression of how ruthlessly Israel treats journalists. Or even more than that: that this state is obviously deliberately and by all means preventing objective reporting — the reason seems obvious: in my opinion, Israel is committing crimes against humanity and is doing everything in its power to cover it up, apparently not even shying away from deliberately murdering journalists.
  In my opinion, there is no other explanation for the absurdly high number of media representatives already killed in Gaza especially in comparison with other, much longer wars that also had significantly larger conflict zones.
- Disgusting.

And yet the BBC makes no mention in this article about Israel's "genocide", no mention of their "apartheid", and the only result my ctrl-f for "crime" (aiming to detect "war crimes") was one of the promotional links to a different article where they invited "both sides" to argue in a debate, as though it's two equal sides.

You know who else kidnapped journalists? ISIS.

Someone needs to start giving these journalists guns so they can defend themselves.
- No
  Journalists are not fighters, it's kind of the point. They are (or are supposed to be) neutral observers that can semi freely walk around on the lines without being shot so that they can give an honest account of the events as they unfold.
  Israel and states alike it aren't very interested in the truth as the truth is that they are committing genocide, hence them not just banning journalists, and outright murdering them whenever they can get away with it.
  I'm thinking that literally the only reason that these journalists are still alive is that they were more trouble dead than alive and that threat of murdering them or their families if they dare to publish anything of the deleted pictures is to be taken highly serious as Israeli security services have no problem at all (and usually gets away) with extrajudicial executions on foreign soil.
  The one thing that just outrages me right now is Europe's stance on this. The US I understand; they gave their own dictatorial regime and they have enough propaganda channels to keep the populace mostly unaware of any of this, or just feed them enough lies that they think the genocide is just normal warfare and a normal reaction to the evil Arabs or something.
  Europe, however, doesn't have this and should fucking know better. Fucking Germany should fucking know better than this, they should recognize a fascist state, yet somehow they are almost afraid of Israel, afraid of being painted as fascists again.
  Stop being cowards, stand up for what's right, stand at the right side of history, if just for once!
- How about someone needs to stop giving these bullies guns so that they can stop attacking others.

Ah yes, that's what an ally, who's doing nothing wrong, would do... totally.
- Well you know, new axis powers are forming, Isreal, China, Russia and the US.
  
  George Monbiot called it “The New Axis of Autocracy”
  he also added Belarus, Hungary, and North Korea to the list as “minor partners”.

Why stop at Gaza right? Israel has a lot of neighbors, might as well walk right into Iran or Lebanon and just start murdering people too!
The tell tale sign of how awful the zionists are is that they aren't picking a fight with Iran. Syria fell. Syria is starting to rebuild. Palestinians had barely any organized resistance. They only fight those who can't fight back. Almost exactly like another genocidal maniac in the 1920s-1940s.

Abduction

How most moral of them
- They keep saying that word. I think it does not mean what they think it means.

That had to be absolutely terrifying, which I’m sure was the goal. There is not one IOF soldier that is innocent. They need to be put down, the lot of them. I long for a day where there is a long wait at the gallows for each and every one of them. Hanging them would be too kind.
Fuck Israel.
Sincerely,
A now non-practicing Jew.

The officer threatened us with worse consequences if we approached the frontier from the Syrian side again, and said that they know everything about us and would track us down if any hidden or un-deleted photo was ever published.
Honestly surprised IDF didn't just shoot them as soon as they realized they were journalists...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_journalists_killed_in_the_Gaza_war
- They are Western. Harder to dismiss them as Hamas like the 220 Palestinian journalists they've murdered
  
  I could have sworn they've killed BBC journalists before, but there's none on that list so you may be right.

know everything about us and would track us down if any hidden or un-deleted photo was ever published.
"if you go back to your country and post anything we will murder you"
Personally I'd just use encrypted backups or data recovery and post literally everything I could, possibly with a taunt calling out the coward who can only threaten people when backed up by billions in military funding and personnel.
- And then you'd get assassinated.
  
  Cool.
  The more they focus on trying to kill me, the less resources they have to kill some Palestinian.

That's definitely not the behavior of someone trying to cover up war crimes.
- They don't care that what they're doing is illegal because they are going to get away with it.
- While I have little doubt that the IDF has intentionally targeted journalists in Gaza to cover up war crimes, in this specific case it does seem to be about militant authoritarian sentiment and base security in an age of fpv drone attacks.
  Publicly available footage of your base could put you and your friends lives at risk. We see the Ukrainians frequently taking great care to make sure the locations and layouts of their forward operating positions are not able to be geolocated from their media releases.
  If this were happening in Gaza or the West Bank, I think your take would be more likely. But happening in Syria makes it less so.
  
  The difference: Israel is in Syria for imperialist aggression. Ukraine is in Ukraine to protect their homeland from imperialist aggresssion. Combine that with Israel's pathological need to cover up and deny their extensive, seemingly neverending war crimes in Gaza... Yeah, I don't have any faith until Israel can prove this was opsec rather than covering up. Israel has destroyed their chance for benefit of the doubt.
  Even if it is opsec, they have no right being there, so fuck 'em. I hope their opsec isn't maintained and their soldiers do die in much the same way I'd hope for a Russian base in Donetsk.
  
  This comment caused a little fire storm, sorry for the time you wasted trying to explain logic arguments to people that have a set believe.
  
  Huh. Maybe the IDF should fuck off back to their side of the border then. Safest that way.
  
  Bizarre take. None of that explains stripping them down to their underwear blindfolding them and zip tying them.
  It's also not some top secret base. It was 200 metres out from a city in a demilitarised zone that Israeel has said it is "taking control of indefinitely" i.e a land grab. The locals were warning the journalists that the Israelis shoot people.
  
  This seems rather unlikely. Ukraine for example takes care to inform journalists and simply asks them not to compromise their locations, checking phones and cameras where necessary.
  They don't hold journalists at gunpoint, delete all images off of each device, then threaten the journalists if they dare come back.
  Israel has committed crimes in Syria too, which they seem keen to cover up. Intimidation of the press fits in that pattern. They wouldn't behave like this if it was jusy opsec.
- Come on, it's our best friends the Israeli government. At worst, maybe there were one or two war misdemeanors. Nothing to blow out of proportion.

I sure hope they had multiple cloud backups.

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