Turkey condemns Israeli attack on journalist

Anadolu Agency cameraman Faiz Abu Rmeleh who was covering the case of Hisham Abu Hawwash, a Palestinian who staged a hunger strike for over 141 days to protest his arrest without trial under Israel’s policy of administrative detention, receives medical treatment after he was attacked by far-right Israelis in Tel Aviv, Israel on 5 January 2021. [Aljarmaqnet - Anadolu Agency]

 

January 6, 2022 

Deputy Chairman of Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party, Numan Kurtulmus, yesterday condemned an attack carried out by a far-right Israeli against an Anadolu Agency cameraman, Faiz Abu Rmeleh, in Tel Aviv.

"I condemn this perfidious assault which shows the real face of the unlimited racist Zionist ideology in Israel," Kurtulmus said.

Abu Rmeleh was attacked by a far-right Israeli protester in Tel Aviv in front of a hospital where a Palestinian prisoner, who had been on hunger strike for 141 days, is undergoing treatment.

Journalists were covering the events outside the hospital where far-right Israelis had been called to protest against Israel's decision to release 40-year-old Hisham Abu Hawash on 26 February after holding him in administrative detention – without charge or trial – since 27 October 2020.

"One of them came up to me and asked who I work for. I told him I work for Anadolu, a foreign media company," Abu Rmeleh recalled, according to Haaretz. "He said to me, 'You're a liar, and you're all liars,' and began advancing toward me. I told him to keep away from me because of COVID and that I have no problem with him. He spoke to me in Russian, thinking that I'm Russian. When I told him that I don't understand what he's saying, he repeated it in Hebrew – 'Go away, I'll kill you.' After that he knocked me down."

Abu Rmeleh was hit in the head and later taken to hospital for treatment. He intends to press charges.

The attacker fled the scene and was not apprehended.