Gaza-based Palestinian journalist refutes Israel’s smear campaign

- Dalloul uses international SIM card due to widespread internet blockouts in Gaza, showing his location as Poland

- ‘Israeli propaganda outlets seized this opportunity to launch a smear campaign against me,’ Dalloul tells Anadolu

GAZA CITY, Palestine / ISTANBUL

From his tent in the war-torn Gaza Strip, Palestinian journalist Motasem Ahmad Dalloul refuted a smear campaign against him by Israeli authorities.

On Sunday, the Israeli Foreign Ministry claimed that Dalloul was a “fake reporter,” alleging that he was reporting about Gaza affairs from his residence in Poland.

From inside his tent next to the ruins of his destroyed home in the Zeitoun neighborhood of southern Gaza City, Dalloul told Anadolu that he had not left the Gaza Strip throughout two years of Israeli bombardment and continued to cover Israeli atrocities against civilians in the enclave.

Like many of his fellow journalist, Dalloul had to use an international SIM card to access the internet and communicate with the outside world, as the Israeli army destroyed Gaza’s communications infrastructure, cutting off internet services to wide areas of the enclave for long periods.

He said the SIM card he uses belongs to the company “Plus,” which is owned by a Polish entity, which caused his account on the US social media company X to appear as being based in Poland.

Israeli propoganda

Dalloul emphasized that he has remained in Gaza during Israel’s two-year genocidal war and continued to publish about atrocities committed against his people.

“Israel has historically targeted journalists during its wars on Gaza, terrorizing them and attacking their families to obscure the truth and intimidate reporters from publishing about atrocities,” he said.

“Israeli propaganda outlets seized this opportunity to launch a smear campaign against me,” Dalloul said.

The Palestinian journalist has lost his wife and three of his children in Israeli attacks in Gaza. However, he is still determined to continue his work, driven by a “sense of duty” toward his people and cause.

Dalloul has been working for years as an English-language journalist, translating and writing analytical pieces and opinion articles for several Western media outlets, including the London-based Middle East Monitor.

“During the war, I worked with dozens of foreign media outlets from around the world, in the US, South America, and Europe, and conducted dozens of interviews to expose Israeli crimes against Palestinians,” he said.

“The (Israeli) occupation relies on a particular narrative in its war on all Palestinians, disseminated through Western and international media, which largely adopt it under the influence of dominant Zionist lobbies in Western countries.

“We strive professionally to expose the occupation’s false narrative, which has embarrassed Israeli media in Western outlets that now receive the real voices and images of the crimes in Gaza,” Dalloul said.

“They want to silence these voices, even if they cannot match Israel’s massive media machine; they do not want any real voice or image to reveal the false narrative of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the genocide.”

Blatant fabrications

Ramy Abdu, head of the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor in Geneva, said on X that the Israeli smear campaign against Dalloul “exposes the ugly face of Israel and the lies it feeds on."

Dalloul is “a well-known journalist in Gaza who lost his wife, three children, and most of his family to Israeli attacks. He is now targeted by blatant fabrications aimed at undermining the victims’ narrative.”

During two years of attacks in Gaza, Israel pursued Palestinian journalists in Gaza, threatening them to silence their voices, and killed dozens of them despite regional condemnation.

More than 250 journalists have been killed during the Israeli genocide, the highest toll of media casualties in any conflict since World War II, according to official statistics.

In October only, two journalists were killed and 10 others injured in Israeli attacks in Gaza despite a ceasefire deal that took effect on Oct. 10, according to the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate.

Since October 2023, the Israeli army has killed nearly 70,000 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, and injured 171,000 others in the brutal war that has left much of the enclave in ruins.