The Gazan journalist who works for the SANAD news agency, which is supervised by the Qatari Al Jazeera media outlet, made the remarks while speaking at a summit held in Turkey’s Istanbul. The 5-day summit is being held at the initiative of Al Jazeera with the topic of media and war.
About 100 journalists and experts from different media outlets in the region are present in this specialized meeting. Journalists from Mehr New Agency are also participating in the dialogue-oriented meetings.
The sessions are in the form of workshops with the presence of legal and media experts, and on the first and second days, Ahed discussed how to pursue war crimes legally in international forums.
On the fourth day of the summit, the Palestinian journalist presented the attendees with some information regarding the Open Source Intelligence (OSINT).
The main activity of the SANAD news agency is related to finding sources and researching the validity of news published in the media, especially with a focus on Middle East news. Journalists and researchers of this media organization, who are currently working as a part of Al Jazeera, in recent days, have had very successful research activities in proving the falseness of the Zionist regime’s narratives, the most important of them can be considered the proof of the Zionists’ lie regarding the bombing of Al-Mamadani Hospital by Resistance forces.
In the current situation, the field of media conflict has been transferred to the Western media, especially after the Al-Aqsa Storm operation, and these days we have focused on the war in this field with false Zionist narratives in connection with the Gaza war, he said.
He went on to say that in recent weeks after the start of the Al-Aqsa Storm operation, the information and news published by the Zionist media have been very deceptive, adding that in this regard, they were focusing on exposing the lies of the Zionist regime.
Turning to the OSINT subject, the Palestinian journalist underlined that the existence of a roadmap and a clear goal is essential when it comes to using Open Source Intelligence.
Considering archiving the collected information as important in using the OSINT, he said that using OSINT can help journalists and researchers in finding the truth and validation of the events that happened.
Finding the exact location of the events can help journalists understand the events, which can be done using various maps available online and other available tools, he continued, further citing that having access to satellite information can also help journalists obtain advanced and accurate information.
He went on to say that analyzing satellite images in the recent war in Gaza helped many journalists to understand the events of the war, for example, the analysis of satellite images during the ground battle in the Gaza Strip made them realize how far the tanks of the Zionist regime have advanced in different axes.
He also provided some other examples of when satellite images helped journalists gather true information during the Gaza war.
Referring to the issue of the authenticity of information in the OSINT, he pointed out that using major keywords in searching is of high importance in this regard. He added that checking the quality of videos and photos is also important in assessing if they are valid or not.
“For example, if you have a picture or video from at least two different angles of a certain event, you can almost certainly say that this event is real and happened in the field and is true,” he added.
At the end of his remarks, he referred to the case of the Al-Mamadani Hospital bombing as a case study, saying that the false narrative of the Zionists was focused on claiming that the incident happened as a result of an unsuccessful missile attack by Resistance forces who intended to target the occupied lands.
He further cited that immediately after this incident, they (journalists) analyzed the images of Al Jazeera’s cameras from the sky of Gaza, as well as other existing and available images. It took 14 hours to find out that the missile that the Zionist regime claimed was launched from Gaza towards the hospital was destroyed by the missile defense system of the Zionist regime’s military, and at the time of the bombing of the hospital, no rockets were fired from Gaza towards the occupied territories, he added.
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