Who is Hazem Nasser? Palestinian photojournalist shot by Israeli forces while covering aggression in Jenin

An Israeli soldier shot a Palestinian photojournalist on Monday while he was documenting the government’s escalating assault on Jenin, an occupied city in the northern West Bank.

Hazem Nasser was shot and hurt on Monday during an occupying army raid on the flashpoint city, according to the Quds News Network. He was said to have a moderate to serious ailment, and he is currently receiving surgery.

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Who is Hazem Nasser?

Hazem Nasser is a photojournalist who was born in 1991. Nasser is a native of the West Bank settlement of Shweikeh.

In 2023, Nasser was shot in the escalating assault that is taking place in Jenin. He is currently receiving treatment. It happened after fierce fighting broke out between resistance members and Israeli government forces during a raid on Jenin by the latter.

Israeli forces used live bullets during the skirmishes, killing at least four Palestinians and injuring numerous others. Only a few meters from the location where veteran journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was assassinated last year, Israeli occupation snipers reportedly fired straight at journalists covering the regime’s onslaught on Jenin.

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As a journalist for the Palestinian television network Falastin Al-Ghad in 2021, Nasser documented the escalating unrest in Jerusalem caused by Jewish nationalist marches, Palestinian protests, and Israeli police violence.

On May 10, 2021, Nasser traveled to the northern occupied West Bank to get footage of a confrontation between Palestinian protesters and the Israeli army. Not the conflict itself, nor the Israeli and Hamas-led military operations that started later that day, but what happened to Nasser afterward is what Nasser remembers most about that day.

When Israeli forces at the Huwara crossing stopped Nasser on his way home and took him away for questioning, he was traveling home. Nasser remained in custody for more than a month while being regularly questioned by the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security organization.

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Nasser stated, “All the questions were about my journalism. They put images from my video reports on the table, including a funeral of a dead Palestinian, people gathering for a protest, a square honoring a shaheed, a march with Hamas flags. The interrogator told me I cannot photograph these things, because they are incitement. I told him that I am a journalist and this is my job to show images of things that are happening, and that Israeli outlets do the same thing. He yelled at me to stop.”

Nasser appeared in court in mid-June and was charged with incitement. Rather than focusing on his journalistic job, as the interrogations did, the indictment highlighted four old Facebook postings he had authored between 2018 and 2020, a time during which he wrote over 1,000 posts. According to the prosecution papers, he hailed the death of Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Ze’evi in 2001 and called a Palestinian militant suspected of murdering two Israelis a “hero,” among other things.