America and Israel partners in denial of justice for journalists

 The decades-long struggle against impunity in the targeting and killing of media staff has made significant progress in recent years. High-flown rhetoric from political leaders has been converted into a United Nations Action Plan on the Safety of Journalists and the launch of an International Day To End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists (November 2).

But the world remains a hostile place for journalism. The latest UNESCO Report on the Safety of Journalists and the Danger of Impunity shows that reporters are still victims of a continuing spiral of targeted violence.

 According to the United Nations, of the 117 journalists killed for doing their job in 2020-2021, almost 80 per cent were killed while off duty in targeted attacks at home, in their vehicles or in the street. Some were killed in front of family members, including their children.

 That’s why justice for journalists who are the victim of violence is not just about creating a safe working environment, it is also about holding to account the powerful people and institutions who order these attacks and carry them out.

However, too often the strategic, political and commercial interests of governments – even the most democratic of them – still get in the way of delivering basic justice.

Over the past month, for example, the United States and Israel, have been at the centre of two diplomatic rows involving pivotal cases concerning the denial of justice in the killing of journalists.

On November 18 President Joe Biden ruled that Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman will be granted immunity in a US lawsuit over the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a distinguished Saudi dissident and writer for the Washington Post, who was brutally killed and dismembered in October 2018 by an assassination squad in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

At the time the US intelligence services suggested the operation was ordered by Prince Mohammed, and Joe Biden, then campaigning for election, publicly criticised him over the killing.

But times and political conditions change, to the extent that Washington is now willing to allow the Prince to dodge a court action brought by Khashoggi’s fiancé Cengiz and the rights group he founded, Democracy for the Arab World Now.

One reason, as set out by Justice Department attorneys in a document filed in US District Court for the District of Columbia, is that "the doctrine of head of state immunity is well established in customary international law."

Well up to a point. According to academic research in the 20 years since 1990 some 65 heads of state have been prosecuted, many of them for human rights abuse and breaches of international humanitarian law.[1]

In most cases the absence of robust international legal instruments means bringing government leaders to book is a challenge given the political climate and the overwhelming priority countries give to defence of their national self-interests

Although a US judge will ultimately rule on the question of immunity in the case of Prince Mohammed, journalism support groups and activists are rightly angry that the US has sacrificed justice for Khashoggi in order to maintain friendly relations with Saudi Arabia.

Biden had already indicated his political sympathies were shifting when he famously fist-bumped the Crown Prince in July on a visit to Saudi Arabia to discuss energy and security issues. It may have been inevitable, therefore, that his focus on maintaining America’s longstanding alliance with Saudi Arabia would take precedence over human rights and justice, even for a courageous and notable journalist based in the United States.

Meanwhile, a few days earlier another American ally, Israel, also trashed the notion of justice for journalism and press freedom when it dismissed plans for American investigators from the FBI to look into the controversial killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh who was shot dead by the Israeli army in May this year.

Shireen, one of the Arab world’s best-known journalists, who had covered the conflict for decades, was shot on May 11 while covering a military raid in the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank for Aljazeera.

She was wearing equipment and body armour that was clearly marked “press.” What followed were multiple investigations by leading media, rights groups and international organisations which concluded that the veteran reporter was killed by an Israel soldier. Eyewitness testimony suggested it was a targeted strike.

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[1] See: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/prosecuting-heads-of-state/appendix-list-of-prosecutions-of-heads-of-state-or-government-since-1990/A064791EACA38343214D6D1587125F74