ABA photographer Yousef Shaheen said he and his colleagues were covering a protest march when a group of Israeli soldiers approached and began beating them with sticks.
(MADA/IFEX) – The Israeli occupation forces have continued their attacks on journalists covering peaceful marches in the West Bank. On 20 June 2010, they attacked six journalists: Pal Media cameraman Yousef Shaheen, ABA photographer Najeh Hashlamoun, European Pressphoto Agency (EPA) photographer Abdel-Hafiz Hashlamoun, APA photographer Ma’moun Wazwaz, AP photographer Nasser Al-Shuokhi and Agence France-Presse photographer Mousa Al-Shaér. The incident took place when they were covering a weekly march against the Israeli separation wall in the town of Biet Jala, in the West Bank.
Shaheen said he was standing with a group of journalists covering the weekly protest march in Biet Jala when a group of Israeli soldiers approached and began cursing and beating them with sticks, inflicting bruises on both his and his colleagues’ legs. Al-Shuokhi said, “The Israeli soldiers used a new method to attack us today. They tried to stop us from filming by beating us with sticks.”
“The journalists were directly targeted. The soldiers left the demonstrators and began to curse and beat us brutally with sticks, injuring most of journalists who were there,” Abdel-Hafiz Hashlamoun said.
The Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms (MADA) condemns the attack on the Palestinian journalists and calls on the international community to pressure the Israeli government to stop these types of aggressive actions.
