The Legal Agenda is presenting a series of reports of war crimes committed by Israel in the context of its aggression against Lebanon. These reports are an attempt to document these crimes and pave the way for an independent and transparent investigation into them. They are based on preliminary information available at the time of their publication, and we hope that they can contribute to the necessary national efforts to document war crimes.

Facts: 

Hasbaya, Nabatieh Governorate, 25 October 2024

• At approximately 3:30 AM, the Israeli occupation army targeted a hotel in Hasbaya where 18 journalists from seven Lebanese and foreign media institutions were staying. The attack came while the journalists were resting and sleeping.
• The attack killed three people, namely camera operators Wissam Qassem (Al Manar) and Ghassan Najjar (Al Mayadeen) and broadcast engineer Mohamed Reda (Al Mayadeen). It wounded three more, including camera operators Hassan Hoteit and Zakaria Fadel (Al Qahera News).
• The media teams evacuated the site after the attack. They had informed UNIFIL of where they were staying and their movements before it occurred.
• No Israeli statement regarding this attack has been issued, and no legitimate military target has been observed. No advanced warning was issued for the targeted site.
• Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati, Minister of Information Ziad Makary, Minister of Defense Maurice Sleem, and several media syndicates and human rights organizations in Lebanon condemned the attack and described it as a war crime. Makary said that the attack came “after monitoring and tracking” and was “premeditated”.

Context

This attack is part of Israel’s strategy of targeting press and media workers in Gaza and Lebanon in order to silence them and prevent its war crimes from being reported. Such attacks also aim to strike terror into press workers and induce them to stop covering its war.

In Gaza, Israel has killed 771 journalists since the genocide began a year ago, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. The Committee to Protect Journalists has stated that Israel’s war on Gaza has claimed the lives of more journalists than any other conflict in the past 30 years. On October 23, the Israeli occupation army added six Al Jazeera journalists (including two who are covering Israel’s siege of Jabalia, northern Gaza) to the hit list, alleging that they are Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters.

In Lebanon, the minister of health has announced that a total of 11 journalists have been killed and eight wounded since the beginning of the Israeli aggression against Lebanon. On multiple occasions, the Israeli army has targeted press teams while they were on duty covering the Israeli aggression. These attacks have killed six – including Issam Abdallah (Reuters) and Farah Omar, Rabih Maamari, and their assistant Hussein Akil (Al Mayadeen) – and injured others. 

Five investigations by independent international organizations, namely Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Reporters Without Borders, Reuters, and Agence France-Presse – have concluded that the Israeli army intentionally targeted a gathering of journalists in Aalma El Chaeb (the attack that killed Issam Abdallah) in an incident that amounts to a war crime.

Five other journalists – including photographer Mohamed Bitar (Nabatieh municipality), journalist Hadi Sayyed Hassan (Al Mayadeen Online), and local reporter Hassan Roumieh (Wadi Press) – have been killed in indirect attacks.

On October 23, the Israeli army also targeted an Al Mayadeen office that had previously been evacuated in a residential building in Jnah, Beirut. That attack killed one person, wounded five, and completely destroyed the office.

These attacks have caused some foreign media outlets to hesitate to continue covering the aggression against Lebanon, especially along the border strip, out of fear for their reporters’ safety.

The Laws of War

• Directing attacks against the civilian population or attacking dwellings that are not military objectives is prohibited. Likewise, acts of violence the primary purpose of which is to spread terror among the civilian population are prohibited (Article 51 of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions).
• Journalists engaged in dangerous professional missions in areas of armed conflict are considered civilians and must be protected as such, provided that they take no action adversely affecting their status as civilians (Article 79 of Additional Protocol I).
• According to UNESCO, which documents the killing of journalists, the term “journalist” encompasses all media workers and social media producers engaged in journalistic activities.
• Civilians, including journalists, do not lose legal protection by supporting one of the parties to the conflict or even by contributing to the general war effort, and they must not be considered legitimate targets of hostilities (Interpretive Guidance on the Notion of Direct Participation in Hostilities Under International Humanitarian Law, International Committee of the Red Cross).
• The committee established by the prosecutor in the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia to review the NATO bombing campaign against Yugoslavia in 1999 deemed that targeting media installations just for contributing to the war effort by disseminating the propaganda of one of the parties, with the goal of “disrupting government propaganda” in order to “undermine the morale of the population and the armed forces”, is unlikely to meet the conditions that international law requires for such installations to be considered legitimate targets. This is because these installations do not make an effective contribution to military action and such an attack provides no definite military advantage. The committee deemed that this kind of attack constitutes a war crime because of the deliberate targeting of civilians.
• Media equipment and installations constitute civilian objects. In this respect, they must not be the object of attack or reprisals, unless they are military objectives (Security Council Resolution 1738 of 23 December 2006).
• United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression Irene Khan affirmed that deliberately killing a journalist is a war crime in her comment on the attack on the journalists in Hasbaya.

Previous Reports of Israeli War Crimes in Lebanon

• War Crime Alert No. 1: The Targeting of an Islamic Health Organization Center and Its Staff, Bachoura, Beirut, 2 October 2024
• War Crime Alert No. 2: The Targeting of Salah Ghandour Hospital, Bint Jbeil, Nabatieh, 4 October 2024
• War Crime Alert No. 3: Rescue Operations Blocked in Mreijeh, Dahieh, Beirut, 4 October 2024 Onwards
• War Crime Alert No. 4: The Targeting of the Bint Jbeil Fire Station and Brigade, Baraachit, 6 October 2024
• War Crime Alert No. 5: The Targeting of UN Peacekeepers, Southern Lebanon, 4-20 October 2024
• War Crime Alert No. 6: Attacks on al-Qard al-Hasan Association, Lebanon, 20 October 2024
• War Crime Alert No. 7: Massacre in the Vicinity of Rafik Hariri University Hospital, Beirut, 21 October 2024
• War Crimes Alert No. 8: Threatening Sahel Hospital, Haret Hreik, Dahieh, Beirut, 21 October 2024

This article is an edited translation from Arabic.