“Where International Law Goes to Die”: Mechanisms Blocking Justice for Journalists and Civil Society

On December 15, 2023, cameraman Samer Abu Daqqa was filming the destruction of Khan Yunis, in southern Gaza, when he was hit by an Israeli drone. Critically wounded, Abu Daqqa was refused medical aid for over five hours as ambulances were blocked from reaching him. Rescuers later found his body torn to pieces, his press vest leaning against a wall.

On May 11, 2022, Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh arrived at Balat Al Shuhada’ Street in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin to cover an Israeli army raid on a nearby refugee camp. Despite her protective gear and a vest clearly marked “PRESS,” she was shot in the head by an Israeli sniper and declared dead soon after.

On April 6, 2018, Yasser Murtaja, a 30-year-old photographer from Gaza and co-founder of Ain Media Production Company, was covering a protest near the border while wearing a vest marked “PRESS”, when, shortly after noon, he too was shot by an Israeli sniper. He was pronounced dead 12 hours later.

In life, Yasser, Shireen, and Samer shared a homeland and a press vest. In death, they share a void of accountability. Their cases were handed to the Israeli army's legal unit, but no one was ever held responsible. Israeli officials first blamed Palestinian gunmen for Abu Akleh’s death, before admitting an Israeli soldier likely fired the shot. Yet no criminal nor disciplinary action was taken. (The Israeli army and the Military Advocate General did not comment on the status of the inquiries into the deaths of Murtaja and Abu Daqqa.)

Since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza, following Hamas’s October 7 terror attacks, over 170 journalists have been killed, making it the deadliest conflict for the press since the Committee to Protect Journalists began tracking data in 1992. Prior to this war, and dating back to 2001, Israeli fire claimed the lives of at least 18 Palestinian journalists and two foreign reporters. According to CPJ, no one has ever been charged or held accountable.

After drawing international attention, the deaths of Murtaja, Abu Akleh, and Abu Daqqa were handed to the army’s General Staff Mechanism for Fact-Finding Assessment (FFAM) – only to vanish into opacity. Established in 2014, the FFAM conducts preliminary inquiries into suspected war crimes and advises the Military Advocate General on whether to open criminal investigations. In May 2024, the Israeli military reported that it was reviewing hundreds of incidents that occurred during the Gaza war.

(The Israeli army and the Military Advocate General did not comment on the status of the inquiries into the deaths of Murtaja and Abu Daqqa.)

“Set to fail”

Expectations of accountability remain low. “It takes years, and even if there’s a decision to open an investigation, the information that was used in the assessment is off limits and secret,” Yahav Erez, International Advocacy Coordinator at Israeli NGO Yesh Din, says. “It’s set to fail.”

In 2024, Yesh Din, an organization dedicated to protecting the rights of Palestinians living under occupation, published a report revealing that out of the 664 complaints addressed to the FFAM over the past decade, 81.6% were closed without investigation, and only 0.17% resulted in prosecution. 

“One should not expect a high number of indictments relating to operational conduct,” Dr. Eran Shamir-Borer, Director of the Center for Security and Democracy at the Israel Democracy Institute, and former Head of IDF International Law Department at the Military Advocate General's Corps, told Forbidden Stories. “Look at any military around the world – the UK, Australia, the USA... Indictments are extremely rare.” The existence of such a legal department in of itself, Shamir-Borer said, “is an indication of the importance that the IDF ascribes to international law.”

Experts and international organizations suggest that the FFAM is, rather than a tool for accountability, a way to shield Israel from international scrutiny and prosecution. 

Specifically, by tying up investigations in drawn out domestic procedures, Israel can forestall the efforts of the International Criminal Court, which prosecutes individuals for war crimes,and which operates under a principle known as complementarity, meaning that a case is not admissible if there is a genuine attempt to prosecute the same crimes before a domestic court. 

The International Criminal Court (ICC)

An internal memo from the Israeli State Attorney's Office, which Forbidden Stories was able to review, acknowledges that while investigation mechanisms are vital for the rule of law, they also serve as a “protective layer for the state and those who act on its behalf against the exercise of authority by international tribunals and foreign courts.” In other words, in the view of the Israeli government, its justice system insulates the army from global instruments of accountability.

Experts told Forbidden Stories that, with respect to the deaths of these journalists, Israel has not fulfilled its responsibilities under international law, making it appropriate for the ICC to step into the void they’ve created. On the rare occasions where there are convictions, “the penalties are utterly insignificant in relation to the seriousness of the offences,” François Dubuisson, a professor of International Law at the Université libre de Bruxelles, added. 

In response to an inquiry by the consortium, the Israeli Ministry of Justice replied that, should “credible allegations raise concerns that a violation of international humanitarian law may have been committed, the Israeli legal system is willing and able to examine these allegations,” it added that it is “better equipped to do so than foreign or international courts.” 

Crackdown on civil society 

Exploiting the principle of complementarity isn’t the only tactic by which Israel protects itself from scrutiny. In our investigation, the consortium found that the Israeli Ministry of Justice coordinated not only with its colleagues in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs but also with sympathetic corners of civil society to try to cut funding to organizations leading legal procedures both in Israeli and international courts. Among the key players in this effort was NGO Monitor, a right-wing Israeli advocacy group that campaigns against international organizations critical of Israel.

According to information obtained by Itamar Benzaquen, a reporter for The Seventh Eye and member of the consortium, NGO Monitor is part of a network of organizations with close ties to the former Ministry of Strategic Affairs, as revealed by internal documents from 2020. 

Leaked emails from the Israeli Ministry of Justice, obtained by the non-profit Distributed Denial of Secrets and shared with Forbidden Stories, also show regular exchanges between NGO Monitor and senior ministry officials. These discussions focused on undermining legal efforts by various civil society groups, notably the Norwegian Refugee Council, a European NGO providing legal and humanitarian aid to displaced communities around the world, notably in Palestine.

(In response to an inquiry from Forbidden Stories, NGO Monitor stated its research and analysis is “available for use by all stakeholders,” and that it encourages “governments around the world to adopt more responsible, transparent, and accountable policies as pertains to NGO activity and funding.” The Ministry of Justice did not respond to our questions regarding the Norwegian Refugee Council.)

In 2021, Israel designated six Palestinian NGOs as terrorist organizations, leading the European Union and some of its countries to suspend the organization’s previous’ funding for a year. “Neither in our internal nor external auditing exercises did we find any evidence of violation of the contractual and financial obligations of the NGOs that had signed grant agreements with the EU,” Sven Kühn von Burgsdorff, then Head of the EU Delegation to the West Bank, Gaza Strip and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, said.  

The same conclusion was reached by the Foreign Ministries of Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden, according to whom “no substantial information was received from Israel that would justify reviewing our policy towards the six Palestinian NGOs,” a joint statement reads.

“Palestinian organizations probably have the highest scrutiny, due diligence and compliance checks compared to any other civil society in the world,” said Brad Parker, Associate Director of Policy at the US advocacy group Center for Constitutional Rights, who previously served as a legal advisor with Defense for Children International-Palestine, one of the six Palestinian civil society organizations cleared by the EU proceedings.

“In the context of EU funding for projects in Palestine, we were very closely watched by the Israeli government and its intelligence services, as well pro-Israel advocacy groups,” von Burgsdorff added.

“No innocent civilians”

Accusations of terror links have also been widely leveled against journalists killed in Gaza. Among them, Al Jazeera correspondent Ismail Al Ghoul was killed in an Israeli drone strike on July 31, 2024. To justify the attack, the Israeli army released an edited screenshot of a file they claimed was retrieved from a Hamas computer. The document showed that Al Ghoul, born in 1997, had attained a Hamas engineering military rank in 2007 – when he would have been just 10 years old.

Yasser Murtaja filming with a drone, via Facebook

At the time of his death in 2018, Murtaja was labeled by then-Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman as "a member of the military arm of Hamas.” Liberman, who never provided evidence to support his allegations, also stated that “there were no innocent civilians” at the Great March of Return, during which more than 6,000 unarmed demonstrators were injured by military snipers, according to a UN report. But the Washington Post reported that Murtaja had previously been vetted by the U.S. government to receive a U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) grant to support Ain Media, suggesting that the strict US vetting process had cleared him of militant ties.

“Attempts to smear, delegitimize, and criminalize journalists who are doing their job are outrageous and irresponsible, as they put journalists at further risk,” CPJ told the consortium.

To gain further insight, the consortium spoke with three former Israeli soldiers, including an ex-officer, who were deployed in Gaza or its immediate surroundings last year. All three stated that the Israeli army does not precisely distinguish between civilians and militants – a situation that they said also affects journalists.

The portrayal of Palestinians as terrorists is also taking a toll on organizations advocating for accountability. The Gisha Legal Center for Freedom of Movement, an Israeli NGO working to secure medical evacuations for civilians in Gaza, said Supreme Court hearings have been repeatedly disrupted by far-right convoys. “Physically, they [the institutions] are still open to us,” said Executive Director Tania Hary. “We're able to submit petitions to the courts. But I would say that there’s certainly a hostility that we experience by the state representatives, by judges sometimes themselves, making disparaging comments, as if we’re representing the enemy, so to speak.” 

In February, the Israeli parliament approved an amendment to the law of associations, seeking to block any cooperation with the ICC and to criminalize individuals who assist the court, with penalties including prison time. “The activity of the International Criminal Court in The Hague ... poses a real danger to the rule of law in the State of Israel,” the bill’s explanatory note reads.

“If you claim to be a democracy, then you should be more willing to engage with being called to account,” Dr. Wouter Werner, a professor of international law at the Centre for the Politics of Transnational Law, said. “If you invoke the rule of law to avoid accountability, what kind of concept of democracy do you have?” 

Efforts to undermine international jurisdiction also targeted the ICC itself. According to the State Attorney’s Office memo, authorities successfully closed “dozens of criminal and civil cases worldwide against the state and its high officials, thus it delayed and prevented an ICC investigation into Israel for over a decade.”

In May, a joint investigation by The Guardian and +972 Magazine, a member of the consortium, revealed that top Israeli government officials and former Head of Mossad Yossi Cohen led a nine-year surveillance operation targeting the ICC and Palestinian rights groups to try and derail war crimes prosecution, a tactic international law experts qualify as “completely unlawful and illegitimate.”

Israel’s growing hostility towards the court goes deep into the army’s legal branches meant to uphold international law. “Well, here you're talking about the leading monkey court in the world,” Lt-Colonel Maurice Hirsch, former Chief Military Prosecutor who served in the Military Advocate General’s Corps, said of the ICC. “I think people have high expectations that criminal law would be the answer to the tragedies of war. But even in democratic countries with strong commitment to the rule of law it's never the answer,” former head of the Military Advocate General Shamir-Borer added.

Shireen Abu Akleh (Source: Al Jazeera Network)

Meanwhile, the families of the slain journalists find no solace. Three years on, Abu Akleh’s niece describes the increasing attacks on journalists as “very triggering.” “Had someone been held accountable for killing a journalist even far before Shireen was targeted and killed, we would still have Shireen now,” Lina Abu Akleh said. “But unfortunately, there's a cycle of impunity that continues to be repeated.”

“The international order is collapsing, because it has been unable to put an end to this war, and to 75 years of conflict and occupation, despite having all the necessary mechanisms to do so,” Dr Insaf Rezagui, researcher in International Law at the Institut Français du Proche-Orient, told Forbidden Stories. “Palestine is where international law goes to die.”

This investigation was completed with support from ARIJ