The Jerusalem District Court in Israel has ordered Palestinian journalist Lama Ghosheh to do nine months of community service, according to multiple news reports on Wednesday, July 12. Ghosheh has already spent 10 months in house arrest with a ban on her social media use. The court gave her a six-month suspended sentence over the next three years and a fine of 4,500 Israeli shekels (USD 1,220). Her lawyer Nasser Odeh said that they will appeal the verdict in a higher court. Ghosheh has been working in Palestine for the last several years as a freelance reporter for multiple Palestinian news outlets.
She was arrested by the Israeli security forces in September last year and subsequently placed under house arrest. The Israeli authorities also confiscated her mobile phone and personal computer. She was accused of causing incitement to violence through her writings and social media posts. She was also charged with “identification with a terrorist group.”
Israeli authorities claimed she had supported and praised what they consider terrorist activities in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. Ghosheh had expressed support for Palestinian resistance fighters trying to defend their towns and villages from Israeli raids which routinely lead to killings, arrests, and large-scale damage to Palestinian homes and property. In several of these violent raids, Israeli forces have reportedly deliberately fired at journalists, even when they could be identified as press, to prevent them from covering the human rights violations taking place. Several journalists have been killed or injured as a result, or faced arrests and legal persecution.
The Palestinian journalists’ union condemned the court’s decision in Ghosheh’s case as “unjust”. In its statement, the union said that the verdict “aggravates the violations committed by the occupation authorities against journalists in the framework of their professional work and their freedom of opinion and expression.”
