By Palestine Chronicle Staff  

The Israeli occupation army hit in an airstrike on Wednesday evening an office of the Lebanese media network Al-Mayadeen in the Jnah area in Beirut.

Following the attack, the Lebanese channel announced that it had evacuated the premises at the start of Israel’s aggression on Lebanon, reiterating its “commitment to reporting the truth amid ongoing conflicts.”

The Lebanese National News Agency (NNA) revealed that the Israeli warplanes reportedly fired two missiles at the office.

The Lebanese Health Ministry announced that the Israeli airstrike in Jnah killed one person and injured five others, including a child, who was taken to hospital for medical attention while the four others sustained minor injuries.

Prior to the strike, the Israeli occupation army had issued a warning ordering residents of Beirut’s southern districts to evacuate the area for allegedly being “near facilities linked to Hezbollah, which the army planned to target in the near future,” Anadolu news agency reported.

The Al-Mayadeen airstrike coincided with an intensive night of attacks against the southern district of Beirut.

NNA reported that the Israeli occupation army conducted over 17 airstrikes, four of which targeted the Laylaki neighborhood destroying six buildings and causing fire that extended to a large area.

The Israeli occupation army also bombed various areas across Lebanon, namely in the south and in Bekaa.

This video footage shows the destruction caused by an Israeli airstrike on #AlMayadeen's office in #Beirut.

Despite it being evacuated since the beginning of the aggression on #Lebanon, the Israeli occupation targeted the office in the Bir Hassan area of Beirut without any prior… pic.twitter.com/RSKA6CYAof

— Al Mayadeen English (@MayadeenEnglish) October 23, 2024

Silencing Al-Mayadeen

The assault on the Al-Mayadeen office in Beirut follows a number of Israeli oppressive measures targeting the news network.

In August this year, the Israeli occupation government approved a proposal by Minister of Communications Shlomo Karhi to renew the ban on the Al Mayadeen.

The decision included the seizure of the media network’s equipment and the banning of its websites. In November of last year, the Israeli occupation security cabinet suspended Al-Mayadeen, alleging it was a “threat to Israel’s security.”

The Israeli punitive measures against the Al-Mayadeen also touched its journalists in an attempt to silence their reporting on the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

Additionally, some of the network’s journalists and their families were reportedly physically threatened and assaulted by the Israeli occupation forces and illegal Jewish settlers.

🔴 An Israeli aggression on Al-Mayadeen channel office in Beirut
The channel had evacuated its office since the beginning of the Israeli aggression on Lebanon
Al-Mayadeen holds the Israeli occupation responsible for the aggression on the office of a well-known TV media Network. pic.twitter.com/Iburrpo3ly

— Zeinab Al Saffar | زينب الصفّار (@ZeinabSaffar) October 23, 2024

Systematic Targeting

Israel has targeted journalists and journalism institutions in the occupied Palestinian territories since the onset of its genocide in Gaza over a year ago.

This included assassinations, suspension, and detention of Palestinian journalists.

Various international organizations and United Nations agencies have condemned Israel’s targeting of journalists and journalism institutions.

The Palestinian Prisoner Society announced on September 2 that the Israeli army has detained, since the start of the Israeli war on Gaza on October 7, over 98 Palestinian journalists, 52 of whom remain in Israeli prisons.

The non-governmental organization (NGO) revealed in a statement that 15 of the 52 imprisoned journalists are being held under administrative detention while six are women journalists and no less than 17 are from the besieged Gaza Strip.

The Palestinian Prisoner Society, which advocates for the rights of Palestinian prisoners, named Nidal Al-Wahidi and Haitham Abdelwahid as among the detained journalists from Gaza who were the subject of forcible disappearance with no information about their conditions.

The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate (PJS) along with the Al-Dammer Association for Human Rights in Gaza, and the Independent Commission for Human Rights, announced in a joint press briefing on August 13 that more than 94 Palestinian journalists had been arrested since October 7.

For its part, the Committee to Protect Journalists issued a statement on September 3, noting that “since October 7, Israel has been arresting Palestinian journalists in record numbers and using administrative detention to keep them behind bars, thus depriving the region not only of much-needed information, but also of Palestinian voices on the conflict”.

“If Israel wants to live up to its self-styled reputation of being the only democracy in the Middle East, it needs to release detained Palestinian journalists and stop using military courts to hold them without evidence,” CPJ Program Director Carlos Martínez de la Serna in New York commented

(PC, Al-Mayadeen)