Houthis admit they consider the "journalists" killed in an airstrike to be combatants ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Sunday, September 21, 2025

Houthis admit they consider the "journalists" killed in an airstrike to be combatants

Thirty-one journalists and media workers were killed in Israeli airstrikes on a newspaper complex in Yemen last week, according to a report released Friday by the Committee to Protect Journalists.

The attack was the deadliest against journalists since the Maguindanao massacre in the Philippines 16 years ago and the second-deadliest the New York-based press freedom group has recorded.

Israeli strikes hit a government press complex at 4:45 p.m. local time on Sept. 10, as staff of the Yemeni army’s official news outlet were finalizing a weekly print edition, the publication’s editor in chief, Nasser Al-Khadri, told CPJ. The timing contributed to the high death toll in the attack, which killed journalists and media workers at three Houthi-connected media outlets in the heart of Yemen’s capital, Sanaa.

The Committee to Protect Journalists has a very strange definition of what a journalist is. Its own press release states:

Yemen’s September 26 newspaper was the first to name the 31 killed by multiple strikes on its office and that of the Yemen newspaper, . All but one of the dead worked for the two outlets, both in the government’s Moral Guidance Directorate’s headquarters.

So the IDF bombed the Houthi's "Moral Guidance Directorate" building. Does that sound like a center for journalism?

The CPJ extends the definition of a "journalist" in absurd ways to include people whose only job is to promote government and military propaganda. Real journalists expose deceit, Houthi "journalists" live by deceit, pretending to be real journalists. A writer on the payroll of a government or an army is no more a journalist than the person who issues press releases for Exxon.

But are these faux journalists military targets? The Houthi's own government newspaper Al Thawra (September 26) says they are:

The slain journalists, who were described as “men of the pen,” belonged to the newspapers “September 26” and “Al-Yaman.” They were said to have died while stationed on the “frontline of the word” against the aggression.
This funeral underscores the pivotal role journalists play in confronting the aggression and reflects a deep understanding of the seriousness of the “media war,” which is no less fierce than the battlefield war.

The Houthis (and Hamas and Hezbollah and Iran) say explicitly that their media are part of the military. They understand the cognitive war is as important as the kinetic war, and that the lies they publish are regarded as "journalism" because their outlets resemble legitimate news media.

The Houthi Moral Guidance Department is part of its military. It includes a psychological warfare department. It issues newspapers.

When terrorists pretend to be members of the Red Cross or any legitimate aid group, legitimate aid groups condemn their actions as endangering innocents. But journalist organizations are more interested in inflating the number of supposedly killed journalists than they are of protecting legitimate journalists. There is no difference - these members of Yemen's military pretend to be journalists.

CPJ's tally isn't just wrong - it's dangerous. By lumping Houthi propagandists into the "deadliest attack on journalists" stat, they hand the regime a PR coup: Global headlines scream "Israel slays 31 journalists," drowning out the actual war crimes (Houthis' media suppression of independent reporters). It's the ethical equivalent of calling ISIS's Dabiq magazine staff "reporters". Press freedom organizations should be shaming the pretenders, not inflating their martyr count. If "journalist" means anyone with a byline in a regime rag, then the word's as hollow as Houthi "democracy."

Protect the truth-tellers, not the tale-spinners.