US lawmakers join calls for justice in Israel’s attacks on journalists

Washington, DC – American journalist Dylan Collins wants to know “who pulled the trigger” in the 2023 Israeli double-tap strike in south Lebanon that injured him and killed Reuters video reporter Issam Abdallah.

Collins and his supporters are also seeking information about the military orders that led to the deadly attack. But more than two years later, Israel has not provided adequate answers on why it targeted the clearly identifiable reporters.

Press freedom advocates and three United States legislators joined Collins, an AFP and former media journalist, outside the US Capitol on Thursday to renew calls for accountability in this case and for the more than 250 other killings of journalists by Israel.

“I want to know who pulled the trigger; I want to know what command structure approved it, and I want to know why it’s gone unaddressed until today – on our strike and all the others targeted,” Collins said.

Senator Peter Welch and Congresswoman Becca Balint, who represent Collins’s home state of Vermont, and Senator Chris Van Hollen stressed on Thursday that they will continue to push for accountability in the strike, which wounded six journalists.

“We’re not letting it go. It doesn’t matter how long they stonewall us. We’re not letting it go,” Balint told reporters.

The attack

Welch said he was sending his seventh letter to the US Department of State demanding answers, accusing Israel of obfuscation.

Israeli authorities, he said, claim they investigated the attack and ruled the shooting unintentional, but they provided no evidence that they questioned soldiers. Israel also never contacted the key witnesses – namely, Colins and other survivors of the strike.

In October, the Israeli army told the AFP news agency that the attack was still “under review” in an apparent contradiction of what Welch had been told.

“The investigation, non-investigation – there’s nothing there,” Welch said. “You’re basically getting the run-around, and you’re getting stonewalled. That’s the bottom line.”

Israel received more than $21bn in US military aid during the two years of its genocidal war on Gaza.

Throughout the war, Israel has stepped up its attacks on the press. But the country has a long history of killing journalists without accountability.

The October 13, 2023, strike, which wounded media’s Carmen Joukhadar and Elie Brakhia and left AFP’s Christina Assi with life-altering injuries, was well-documented in part because the journalists were livestreaming their reporting.

The correspondents, who had set up their equipment on a hilltop near the Lebanese-Israeli border to cover the escalation on the front, were in clearly marked press gear and vehicles.

Israeli drones had also circled above the journalists before the attack.

“We thought the fact that we could be seen was a good thing, that it would protect us. But after a little less than an hour at the site, we were hit twice by tank fire, two shells on the same target, 37 seconds apart,” Collins said at a news conference on Thursday.

“The first strike killed Issam instantly and nearly blew Christina’s legs off her body. As I rushed to put a tourniquet on her, we were hit the second time, and I sustained multiple shrapnel wounds.”

The AFP journalist added that the attack seemed “unfathomable in its brutality” at that time, but “we have since seen the same type of attack repeated dozens of times.”

Israel has been regularly employing such double-tap attacks, including in other strikes on journalists in Gaza.

“This is not an incident in the fog of war. It was a war crime carried out in broad daylight and broadcast on live television,” Collins said.

Earlier this year, UN rapporteur Morris Tidball-Binz called the 2023 strike “a premeditated, targeted and double-tapped attack from the Israeli forces, a clear violation, in my opinion, of IHL (international humanitarian law), a war crime”.

US response

Despite the wounding of a US citizen in the strike, the administration of then-President Joe Biden – which claimed to champion freedom of the press and the “rules-based order” – did next to nothing to hold Israel to account.

Biden’s successor, Donald Trump, also pushed on with unconditional US support for Israel.

On Thursday, Collins decried the lack of action from the US government, saying that he reached out to officials in Washington, DC, and showed them footage of the strike.

“I thought that when an American citizen is wounded in an attack carried out by the US’s greatest ally in the Middle East that we would be able to get some answers. But for two years, I’ve been met by deafening silence,” he told reporters.

“In fact, neither the Biden nor the Trump administrations have ever publicly acknowledged that a US citizen was wounded in this attack.”

Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed at least 10 US citizens, including media correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh, over the past decade.

Senator Van Hollen said accountability in the October 13, 2023, attack is important for journalists and US citizens across the world.

“We have not seen accountability or justice in this case, and the State Department – our own government – has not done much of anything really to pursue justice in this case,” Van Hollen told reporters.

“It is part of a broader pattern of impunity for attacks on Americans and on journalists by the government of Israel.”

He called the US approach a “dereliction of duty” by the Trump and Biden administrations.

Israeli ‘investigation’

Amelia Evans, advocacy director at the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), said Senator Welch’s description of the Israeli probe shows that the country’s “purported investigative bodies are not functioning to deliver justice but to shield Israeli forces from accountability”.

Evans urged the Trump administration to “take action” and demand the completion of probes into the killing of Abu Akleh in 2022 and the 2023 attack on journalists in Lebanon.

“It must demand Israel name all the military officials throughout the command chain who were involved in both cases,” she said.

“But as Israel’s key strategic ally, the United States must do much more than that. It must publicly recognise Israel’s failure to properly investigate the war crimes committed by its military.”

Israel often uses claims of investigation in response to abuses.

Former State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller, who spent almost two years defending Israeli war crimes and justifying Washington’s unflinching support for its Middle East ally, acknowledged that tactic recently.

“We do know that Israel has opened investigations,” Miller, who incessantly invoked alleged Israeli probes from the State Department podium, said in June.

“But, look, we are many months into those investigations. And we’re not seeing Israeli soldiers held accountable.”

‘Chilling effect’

Amid the push for justice, Collins paid tribute to his colleague Abdallah, who was killed in the 2023 Israeli attack.

“Losing Issam was tough on everyone,” he told media. “He was like the dynamo of the press scene in Lebanon. He knew everyone. He was always the first person to help you out if you’re in a jam. He had a larger-than-life personality.”

The killing of Abdullah, Collins added, had a “chilling effect” on the coverage of that conflict, which escalated into a full-blown war between Israel and Hezbollah in September 2024.

The violence saw Israel all but wipe out nearly all the border towns in Lebanon.

Even after a ceasefire was reached in November of last year, the Israeli military continues to prevent reconstruction in the devastated villages as it carries out near-daily attacks across the country.

“If the intention was to stop people from covering the war, then it has worked to some degree,” said Collins.