London, 17 Dec. 2023 (Anadolu)

Expressing solidarity with the Anadolu journalist who was attacked by Israeli forces recently, Palestinian Ambassador to the UK Husam Zomlot said targeting journalists is a  ‘long-held Israeli policy’.

;Israel’s biggest enemy is the truth’,  Zomlot said of the Israeli attack on an Anadolu photojournalist on Friday.

Israeli forces violently attacked Mustafa Alkharouf, a photojournalist for Türkiye’s premier news agency Anadolu, who was on assignment in occupied East Jerusalem.

“I would like to say that this has been a long-held Israeli policy of targeting journalists,” the Palestinian ambassador said, adding that Israel has been doing so for decades.

Recalling the killing of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, he said told Anadolu over the phone: ‘This is a time when doctors come here to reject the targeting of hospitals when journalists should come together to reject the targeting of journalists’.

‘I think Israel has come out this time clear that it is after every one of us not only in Palestine but worldwide it is after the truth it wants to commit its atrocities in the darkness’, Zomlot noted.

However, he added, now everybody is saying, ‘You commit your war crimes and crimes against humanity, but not in darkness, we will expose it’.

Friday’s incident occurred as a group of Palestinians gathered to pray in the Wadi al-Joz neighbourhood near the flashpoint Al-Aqsa Mosque owing to Israeli army restrictions on weekly Friday prayers at the mosque, which was in their 10th week.

Israeli police, who had set up barricades in the area, first pulled their weapons on Alkharouf, who was covering the news, and then threw him to the ground, beating and kicking him.

Alkharouf suffered severe blows to the face and body and was taken by ambulance to the Makassed Hospital in occupied East Jerusalem.

Israeli police also attacked cameraman Faiz Abu Ramila, who was with Alkharouf.

The incident came amid the over two-month Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip, killing at least 18,800 Palestinians, mostly children and women, and dozens of journalists, along with hundreds of killings and arrests in the occupied West Bank.

Israeli authorities announced that police officers seen in the video attacking journalist Alkharouf had been suspended.

Aljazeera News reported that Israel’s war on Gaza is the deadliest for media workers ever recorded, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

At least 90 journalists and staff have been killed since the conflict began on October 7.

They have mainly been Palestinians covering the story as international news outlets have been prevented from entering the Gaza Strip by the Israeli military.

The latest to die is Al Jazeera’s Samer Abudaqa, who was reporting from a United Nations-run school in the southern city of Khan Younis when it was targeted by a drone attack.

There is mounting evidence that the Israeli military is deliberately putting the media directly in the firing line.

International calls for accountability for the unprecedented killing of journalists since October 7 are growing.