MADA – or the Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms – is an independent, non-governmental and non-profit organization with its headquarters in Ramallah. The center operates everywhere and constantly works on the daily development of Palestinian media to clarify and defend media freedoms and freedom of expression.
I read MADA’s report published on July 6, 2024, according to which the number of media freedom violations in Palestine has increased compared to the previous month, usually by 150% (40->61). , according report Israeli individuals committed all documented violations, while Palestinian entities or social media did not document all violations. As usual, most of the violations caused a great danger to the lives of journalists, and four journalists were murdered in June.
The number one on the list of those who were murdered was indeed familiar from the background material of my previous article – Operation Arnon: The Heroic Release of Four Hamas Hostages – because the deceased Abdallah Aljamali in question also acted as host/prisonguard for three of the four kidnapped Israeli hostages, which were released from Nuseirat refugee camp in Gaza on 8th June.
Aljamal, along with his wife Fatima and father Ahmed, were killed when Israeli special forces stormed their apartment where the hostages were being held. The three hostages rescued from Aljamal are Shlomi Ziv, Almog Meir Jan and Andrey Kozlov.
In addition to that, Abdallah Aljamal helped the Hamas authorities in the capture of kidnapped civilians in Gaza, he worked as a spokesman for the Ministry of Labor in Gaza. He also worked as a journalist, writing for the US-based Palestine Chronicle newspaper and also for Al-Jazeera.
But Aljamal’s activities do not seem to have stopped there. According to MiddleEastForum Research Director Jontahan Spyer, the irony is that while Aljamal held (Israeli) prisoners, he was also a defender of the rights of Palestinians imprisoned for terrorist crimes.
As for the unfortunate Abdallah Aljamal, emerging evidence of the civilians he and his colleagues abducted shows that his apparent concern for the welfare did not extend to those he himself held captive.
Dr. Itai Pessahin of the Sheba Medical Center, who oversees the recovery of the four rescued Israeli hostages, says that the three Aljamal’s hostages were “beaten regularly” during their captivity, suffered “almost daily abuse” and showed signs of malnutrition. Shlomi Ziv, one of the Abujamal hostages, told Israel Channel 13 that the men were forced to read the Koran every day and participate in Islamic prayers.
MADA’s vision: “Towards free and professional media in Palestine.” I would assume that when Gaza’s health authorities and al-Jazeera report on Gaza’s casualty numbers, these dead kidnappers appear in the statistics as innocent civilians, including one woman.
Sources: MiddleEastForum , MADA