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2 Al Jazeera staffers killed in Gaza bring journalist deaths to 113 since Israel-Hamas war started, group says
Al Jazeera reporter Ismail al-Ghoul and photographer Rami al-Refee were killed Wednesday in an Israeli strike in Gaza, becoming at least the 112th and 113th journalist or media worker — the vast majority of whom are Palestinian — to be killed since the war between Israel and Hamas began, according to data compiled by the Committee to Protect Journalists. The period since the start of the war has been the deadliest for journalists since the CPJ began gathering data in 1992.
“This is the second strike on an Al Jazeera journalist in a car,” CPJ CEO Jodie Ginsberg told CBS News. “That raises really disturbing questions about whether or not journalists are being deliberately targeted. … Whenever you see a case in which it appears that a particular building or a particular car has been targeted, and other cars or buildings in the area have been left alone, then that gives you reason to suspect that those places have been deliberately targeted, and of course, journalists are civilians and should never be targeted.”
The two journalists were reporting from near the Gaza home of Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas who was assassinated in Iran earlier Wednesday.
OMAR AL-QATTAA/AFP/Getty
Al Jazeera called the killing of its journalists a “cold blooded assassination.”
CBS News asked the Israel Defense Forces if the news team’s vehicle had been targeted and, if so, why, but had not received any response by the time of publication.
As of July 31, 108 Palestinian journalists, two Israeli journalists and three Lebanese journalists have been killed in Gaza, according to the CPJ. Dozens more have been reported injured or arrested.
“Journalists have been paying the highest price — their lives — for their reporting. Without protection, equipment, international presence, communications or food and water, they are still doing their crucial jobs to tell the world the truth,” CPJ Program Director Carlos Martinez de la Serna said.
Israel has rarely permitted any international journalists to enter Gaza since the war there began, so reporting on the conflict in the besieged enclave has fallen to local journalists, who’ve been both covering and living through the fighting and the humanitarian crisis caused by it for months.
“That places a huge burden on local journalists, because they’re not only having to do reporting in these extraordinarily difficult conditions, but then almost having to prove every every time to the outside world that they’re trustworthy in a way that, you know, we didn’t necessarily see when Ukrainians were reporting on the war in Ukraine,” Ginsberg told CBS News.
OMAR AL-QATTAA/AFP/Getty
In addition to the physical risks and hardships they face, journalists in Gaza face a myriad of other kinds of attacks that make their lives and work more dangerous, the CPJ says, citing numerous arrests, cyberattacks, threats, assaults, and censorship the group has documented.
“We see trolling campaigns, hate campaigns against individual journalists looking for anything that might be evidence that they’re not trustworthy,” Ginsberg said.
“It can put [journalists] in danger because they might then be considered targets within Gaza, but it also happens outside even in Israel where those journalists find themselves to be much more vulnerable and might be harassed online, or what we’ve seen done is physically harassed as well,” Ginsberg told CBS News.
“As every day goes by, and you have fewer and fewer journalists reporting [in Gaza], that means you have less and less information coming out about what’s happening, and that creates a situation in which the international community potentially loses interest, and that’s incredibly dangerous in any conflict,” Ginsberg said. “Being able to report what’s happening is intrinsically linked to being able to affect change.”
TRENTON, N.J. — Democratic Newark City Council President LaMonica McIver has defeated Republican small businessman Carmen Bucco in a contest in New Jersey’s 10th Congressional District that opened up because of the death of Rep. Donald Payne Jr. in April.
McIver will serve out the remainder of Payne’s term, which ends in January. She and Bucco will face a rematch on the November ballot for the full term.
McIver said in a statement Wednesday that she stands on the “shoulders of giants,” naming Payne as chief among them.
She cast ahead to the November election, saying the right to make reproductive health choices was on the ballot as well as whether the economy should benefit the wealthy or “hard working Americans.”
“I will fight because the purpose of politics and the purpose of our vote is to give the people of our communities and our nation a bold voice,” she said.
Bucco congratulated McIver on the victory in a statement but said he’s looking forward to the rematch in November.
“I am not going anywhere,” he said in an email. “We still have a second chance to make district 10 great again!”
Who are LaMonica McIver and Carmen Bucco?
McIver emerged as the Democratic candidate in a crowded field in the July special election. A member of the city council of New Jersey’s biggest city since 2018, she also worked for Montclair Public Schools as a personnel director and plans to focus on affordability, infrastructure, abortion rights and “protecting our democracy,” she told The Associated Press earlier this summer.
Bucco describes himself on his campaign website as a small-business owner influenced by his upbringing in the foster system. He lists support for law enforcement and ending corruption as top issues.
The 10th District lies in a heavily Democratic and majority-Black region of northern New Jersey. Republicans are outnumbered by more than 6 to 1.
It’s been a volatile year for Democrats in New Jersey, where the party dominates state government and the congressional delegation.
Among the developments were the conviction on federal bribery charges of U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez, who has denied the charges, and the demise of the so-called county party line — a system in which local political leaders give their preferred candidates favorable position on the primary ballot.
Democratic Rep. Andy Kim, who’s running for Menendez’s seat, and other Democrats brought a federal lawsuit challenging the practice as part of his campaign to oust Menendez, who has resigned since his conviction.
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Sean “Diddy” Combs at same Brooklyn detention center that held R. Kelly, Sam Bankman-Fried, other high-profile inmates
A second judge refused to grant bail to Sean “Diddy” Combs on Wednesday and he could remain in federal custody at a Brooklyn detention center until his trial for sex trafficking charges. Combs joins other high-profile inmates, such as singer R. Kelly, fallen cryptocurrency mogul Sam Bankman-Fried, rapper Ja Rule —even Al Sharpton served a brief stint— who were held at the same federal detention center.
Notorious for its horrible conditions —inmates won a $10 million class action settlement after enduring frigid conditions during an 8-day blackout in 2019— the waterfront industrial complex, MDC Brooklyn, houses 1,200 inmates.
JOHANNES EISELE/AFP via Getty Images
Violence and corruption have long plagued the facility; U.S. District Judge Gary R. Brown of the Eastern District of New York wrote the detention center had “dangerous, barbaric conditions” in a recent sentencing opinion. Two inmates were stabbed to death in recent months and several correction officers have been convicted for smuggling contraband and accepting bribes.
Combs joins a list of high-profile personalities that have landed at the MDC Brooklyn, partly because the city’s other federal detention center, MDC New York, closed in 2021, also due to horrible conditions. The disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein died by suicide in his cell there in 2019. “Numerous and serious” instances of misconduct among corrections staff gave Epstein the opportunity to kill himself, a subsequent federal watchdog investigation found.
Kelly sued the federal detention center in 2022 for wrongly putting him on suicide watch after his sentencing. Kelly sought $100 million because he said the detention center knew he wasn’t suicidal after he was convicted in 2021 for racketeering and violating the Mann Act, which bars transporting people across state lines for prostitution.
Yuki Iwamura/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Former crypto billionaire Bankman-Fried survived on bread, water and sometimes peanut butter when he was in the MDC Brooklyn, his attorney said, because the detention center continued to serve him a “flesh diet” despite requests for vegan dishes.
Ja Rule stayed at the MDC Brooklyn for a brief time before being released after serving most of his two-year sentence for illegal gun possession. Most of his prison time was spent in a state prison in New York.
Sharpton served a 90-day sentence in 2001 and went on a hunger strike for protesting the U.S. Navy bombing of the island of Vieques, in Puerto Rico.
Combs was taken into custody on Monday and according to an indictment unsealed Tuesday he was charged with sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy and transportation to engage in prostitution.
His attorney Marc Agnifilo told CBS News, “It’s impossible to prepare for a trial from where he is,” after a first federal judge denied Combs bail on Tuesday.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Robyn Tarnofsky agreed with prosecutors who argued the hip-hop mogul, who is accused of using his business empire as a criminal enterprise to conceal his alleged abuse of women, is a flight risk and poses an ongoing threat to the safety of the community.
Agnifilo said the part of the detention center where Combs is being held is “a very difficult place to be.”
contributed to this report.
