Israel dreads world public enlightenment, abhors members of press: Iranian Foreign Minister

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian has condemned an Israeli air strike on a car near Rafah in southern Gaza that killed two Palestinian journalists while they were reporting, stressing that Israel dreads public enlightenment and abhors members of the press for that reason.

“The Zionists are terrified of the enlightenment and judgment of the world public opinion. This is the main reason for the hatred and malice of this criminal regime towards the media,” Amir-Abdollahian wrote in a post published on X, formerly known as Twitter, late on Monday.

He noted that 111 journalists and cameramen have lost their lives in more than three months of the brutal Israeli war against resilient Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, describing the figure as unprecedented in history.

The Iranian foreign minister also paid homage to fallen Palestinian members of the press and offered his sincere condolences to “heroic” Palestinian reporter Wael al-Dahdouh.

Hamza al-Dahdouh, the son of Al Jazeera Gaza bureau chief Wael al-Dahdouh, and his colleague Mustafa Thuraya, a video stringer for AFP news agency, were killed on Sunday when an Israeli missile hit their vehicle in Khan Younis. They were both freelancers. A third freelancer, Hazem Rajab, was wounded.

Al Jazeera Media Network condemned the killing of the two and said it had been a deliberate attack.

UN says ‘very concerned’ about high number of journalists killed in Gaza

The United Nations sounds the alarm about the high number of journalists killed by Israeli forces in Gaza.

“The assassination of Mustafa and Hamza... whilst they were on their way to carry out their duty in the Gaza Strip, reaffirms the need to take immediate necessary legal measures against the occupation forces to ensure that there is no impunity,” the Qatar-based television news network said.

“Al Jazeera condemns, in the strongest terms, the ongoing crimes committed by Israeli occupation forces against journalists and media professionals in Gaza,” it added.

We urge the International Criminal Court, the governments and human rights organizations, and the United Nations to hold Israel accountable for its heinous crimes and demand an end to the targeting and killing of journalists, the network said in the statement.

Al Jazeera noted that it would take all legal measures to prosecute the perpetrators, and reaffirmed its commitment to “achieving justice for more than 100 journalists killed, and to continuing to cover these grave violations.”

Israel waged the war on the strip on October 7 after the Gaza-based Palestinian resistance groups of Hamas and Islamic Jihad carried out the surprise Operation Al-Aqsa Storm into the occupied territories in response to the occupying regime’s intensified crimes against the Palestinian people.

According to the Gaza-based health ministry, at least 23,084 Palestinians, most of them women and children, have been killed in the strikes, and another 58,926 individuals injured.

Tel Aviv has also imposed a “complete siege” on Gaza, cutting off fuel, electricity, food, and water to the more than two million Palestinians living there.

More than three months into the offensive, the usurping Israeli regime has failed to achieve its objectives of “destroying Hamas” and finding Israeli captives.

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