Breathe
By Cristina Gutiérrez
"If you read this it is because they killed me," wrote Palestinian journalist Hossam Shabat shortly before he was killed in an Israeli attack in the northern Gaza Strip. Shabat, 23, who worked as a correspondent for the Qatar-based Al Jazeera in Gaza, was killed on March 24 by Israeli forces as he was driving around in his car documenting the previous night's shelling. The car, which bore his press sign and the channel's logo, was hit in the rear in a clearly deliberate attack aimed at Shabbat, who was one of Al Jazeera's best-known faces since Israel launched its offensive in Gaza.
The day after the attack, the Israeli Defense Forces confirmed in a statement that they had "eliminated Shabat" whom they described as a "terrorist". Hossam Shabat was one of the Palestinian journalists that the Israeli army has accused of having ties to Hamas, a recurring accusation that has also been used against other Al Jazeera journalists to justify their murder by Israel. Both Reporters Without Borders and the Committee to Protect Journalists stated that such accusations lack hard evidence and that the Israeli authorities constantly defame Palestinian journalists by labeling them as terrorists without any basis whatsoever.
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