There is no doubt that south Lebanon’s roads have become highways of death, and that cell phones and their signals have become a strategic tool. But it’s also true that the recent incidents must be seen in the context of what the International Federation of Journalists has called a “pattern of targeting” of journalists in recent weeks. The dirty little secret of this conflict, which the U.S. media rarely talks about, is that all reporters in Israel are subject to strict military censorship. Al-Jazeera has long operated with relative freedom in Israel, but since the conflict began, its correspondent has twice been detained by the Israeli military and one of its camera crews was fired on.

There has also been a string of other incidents in both Lebanon and Gaza. The “appalling perception is of soldiers opening fire on unarmed journalists and of intimidation of Arab journalists to keep them from covering the news in the Palestinian territories and in Lebanon,” says IFJ General Secretary Aidan White.

The latest incident came Thursday, when a cameraman for Palestine TV was seriously wounded when his team was fired on with rubber bullets.

“We were wearing vests indicating that we were media workers,” said one of those involved. “But an Israeli army tank located 150 meters away began firing towards us. We began to run but the shots continued.” Meanwhile, threats from various Palestinian factions likewise make journalism in the Occupied Territories treacherous for Westerners and Arabs alike. In Lebanon, where Hezbollah dictates where the media can and cannot go, few are likely to forget it was Hezbollah itself that elevated the kidnapping of journalists to an art form. As CJR Daily has noted, freelancer and Time stringer Christopher Allbritton recently revealed on his weblog that “[t]he Party of God has a copy of every journalist’s passport, and they’ve already hassled a number of us and threatened one.”

War is dangerous. Journalists know the risks. But there is a big difference between being hit by a piece of shrapnel or catching a stray bullet and being purposely bombed, kidnapped or beheaded (the fate of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl at the hands of Islamist militants in Pakistan.) In Iraq alone, some 74 media workers have been killed since the invasion, many in targeted assassinations. Even Arab channels like al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya can no longer operate there because of attacks on their staff by various armed groups.

Journalists themselves bear some responsibility for this weaponization of the media. Flag-waving by the U.S. media in the wake of 9/11 and a mirror-image jingoism among many Arab journalists mean news organizations on both sides are seen to be part of the war effort. The historic standing of the media as independent, reporting all perspectives without bias or distortion, was frittered away. But that does not mean journalists deserve to die.

Reporters without Borders has called for an investigation to determine whether the Geneva Conventions have been violated in Lebanon. But there is plenty of wiggle room in current international laws. Indeed, a Pentagon legal directive states, “Civilians and civilian property that make a direct contribution to the war effort may also be attacked…”

In an age when satellite television transmits real-time images from the battlefield, and when media drives public opinion which itself drives policies of war and peace, clearer legal protections for journalists are required.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has in his hands a proposal for an international law that would make it a war crime for any military force to specifically target journalists. Events now unfolding in the Middle East underscore the urgency of its passage.

Let’s not be naive. The UN hasn’t been able to protect itself - its Baghdad headquarters was leveled by a car bomb, four UN peacekeepers were killed last week in an Israeli attack on their base in south Lebanon, and the UN offices in Beirut and Gaza were sacked over the weekend. Even mass murderers rarely face international justice. So a UN resolution is not going to stop attacks on journalists by governments or non-state actors. But it will at least send a symbolic message back to those seeking to muzzle the press.

As al-Arabiya’s Nabil Khatib, who has seen eleven of his staffers killed in Iraq alone, recently told me, “This, with time, could build momentum where insurgents or military will be less violent. Now they feel they have a free hand.” Lawrence Pintak is the director of the Adham Center for Electronic Journalism at The American University in Cairo. A former CBS News Middle East correspondent, his books include Beirut Outtakes; Seeds of Hate: How America’s Flawed Middle East Policy Ignited the Jihad; and, most recently, Reflections in a Bloodshot Lens: America, Islam & the War of Ideas. He can be reached at lpintak ~at~ aucegypt.edu.

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