On April 22, the Israeli regime killed another journalist. His name was Amal Khalil. She was a renowned Lebanese journalist, born during the early years of the last Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon, who spent years documenting the lives of people in the south of the country amid Israeli invasion and bombing.
Amal was well-known and beloved throughout Lebanon. As her brother Ali Khalil said at her funeral, she was present in every home.
For two years, Amal continued to receive direct threats from the Israeli regime. In an interview, he recalled a call from a Mossad agent who threatened to tear his head from his shoulders if he did not stop reporting from the south. They knew intimate details about her life – they wanted her to know that she was being monitored.
Nevertheless, she continued to report, knowing that the Israeli regime could follow through on its threats any day. Amal was the kind of person Israel fears most: someone who cannot be bullied into silence, someone who cannot be cowed into a corner, someone who openly opposes brutal Israeli power.
There is no doubt that the Israeli military targeted it directly. Al Akhbar, the outlet for which Amal worked, released Description Of his murder. According to him, Amal was on assignment near the strategic city of Bint Jbeil, on which she had frequently reported in the past.
Before the ceasefire, Bint Jbeil was the site of a significant battle between Israeli regime forces and Hezbollah fighters. It is a symbolic site of resistance for many Lebanese people – in the 2006 invasion, it successfully repelled several attempts by Israeli regime forces to conquer it.
Amal was traveling in a car with freelance photographer Zainab Faraz when a vehicle in front of them was hit by an Israeli drone. Both women sought shelter in a nearby building where they called relatives and colleagues for help. The building was bombed by Israeli forces shortly afterwards.
Lebanese Prime Minister put out a statement Call on the Red Cross to intervene. The organization sent a team that was able to rescue the injured Zeinab from the building. They came under fire, so were unable to save Amal. When they finally returned, they found him dead.
Amal’s murder is reminiscent of the murder of veteran Palestinian journalist and longtime Al Jazeera correspondent Shirin Abu Aqleh. Four years ago, she was also reporting from the Palestinian city of Jenin – a site of symbolic resistance against the invading Israeli regime forces. He was shot in the head while attempting to escape Israeli gunfire with a colleague.
Since his assassination, more than 250 Palestinian journalists and media workers have been killed – mainly during the massacre in Gaza. Many of them were targeted while on assignment, others were attacked when they were at home with their families. this was the situation Mohammad Abu Hatab Who was killed along with 11 members of his family in an Israeli airstrike on his home in November 2023.
The targeting of Palestinian and Lebanese journalists by the Israeli regime is well documented, and Amal’s killing is the latest entry in a record that, since October 2023, has become the deadliest for the press in any conflict in recorded history. What is astonishing about this record is not just its scale but the conditions that made it possible.
Impunity is not simply a failure of justice after the fact, but a permission structure that dictates what regimes believe they can do before the fact. The Israeli regime has learned from decades of experience that nothing can be done that would meaningfully cost it the support of its Western supporters, and it has drawn a clear conclusion.
It would be a mistake to characterize Israeli rule as uniquely violent in the history of settler colonial projects and imperial rule. But what sets it apart is not the nature of the violence, but the brazenness with which it is conducted, and this brazenness is itself a product of impunity.
This is a regime that no longer bothers to hide what it is doing. Journalists were not caught in the crossfire; They are hunted and targeted. The message being sent is not accidental, that is the point.
Amal understood the risk she was taking and took it anyway, as have local journalists in Lebanon and Palestine, because someone had to bear witness to what was happening to people there. The Israeli regime killed him for this.
The world that claims to value a free press will mourn for him for a short time – just as it did for Shirin – and then continue to provide cover that makes the next murder inevitable.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of Al Jazeera.
