U.S. Senator Peter Welch, member of the Democratic Party. (Credit: Photo taken from his X account)
U.S. Senator Peter Welch, a member of the Democratic Party, was one of four members of congress who spoke at a news conference in Washington DC on Thursday on the need to hold Israel to account for the attacks on journalists in Lebanon.
He accused the Trump administration of continuing to “stonewall” his demands for answers regarding the deadly attack carried out by the Israeli army against journalists in southern Lebanon in October 2023.
“We have been extremely patient and have done everything we reasonably can to obtain answers and accountability. We’ve been stonewalled – stonewalled at every single turn,” Welch told reporters, according to Al-Jazeera.
On Oct. 13, 2023, five days after Hezbollah opened the "support front" in Gaza, two Israeli tank shells targeted the town of Alma al-Shaab (Sour), killing Reuters videographer Issam Abdallah and wounding six other journalists, including two from AFP: U.S. national Dylan Collins and Lebanese Christina Assi, who had to have her right leg amputated following the attack.
Described as a “war crime” by a U.N. rapporteur, the deadly attack is far from the last since the start of the war between Israel and Hezbollah, with 13 journalists killed in Lebanon since Oct. 8, 2023, including one after the largely one-sided truce was reached in November 2024.
The attack on the journalists two years ago was "a premeditated, targeted and double-tapped attack from the Israeli forces, a clear violation, in my opinion, of international humanitarian law, a war crime," said Morris Tidball-Binz, U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, at a press conference in Beirut in October of this year.
“It’s clear that the [Israeli army] has never had serious intentions to investigate this attack. The only thing they’ve told us is that the attack was, ‘unintentional’ – unintentional to fire at people who were in the open, very visible, who were observed being there for several hours,” Welch continued.
“We expect the Israeli government to conduct an investigation that meets international standards and to hold accountable those people who did this,” he concluded.
Collins called for Washington to publicly acknowledge the attack. "I'd also like them to put pressure on their greatest ally in the Middle East, the Israeli government, to bring the perpetrators to account," he added, echoing the lawmakers who have called the attack a "war crime."
"We're not letting it go," Vermont congresswoman Becca Balint said. "It doesn't matter how long they stonewall us."
AFP conducted an independent investigation which concluded that two Israeli 120mm tank shells were fired from the Jordeikh area in Israel.
The findings were corroborated by other international probes, including investigations conducted by Reuters, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Reporters Without Borders.
Unlike Welch's assertion Thursday that the Israeli probe was over, the IDF told AFP in October that "findings regarding the event have not yet been concluded," although no further information has been made available. Israel is known to investigate itself, usually with no repercussions.
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