Journalist Charged With Hate Crime for Covering Gaza Protest

In an egregious violation of press freedoms and First Modification-protected exercise, a New York Metropolis video journalist was arrested on felony hate crime prices Tuesday for allegedly being current throughout and documenting a pro-Palestine protest motion.

In keeping with the costs, Sam Seligson, a credentialed impartial videographer, filmed a small group of individuals final June graffitiing the properties of the Brooklyn Museum’s director, president, and two different museum officers with pro-Palestine, anti-Zionist slogans.

Spray-painted messages and banners held on the properties accused the museum leaders of complicity in Israel’s genocidal struggle on Gaza. Every week prior, the museum had referred to as in police to mass arrest protesters who had assembled inside its constructing to demand divestment from holdings associated to Israel’s struggle.

Nobody is suggesting that graffitiing non-public property is authorized beneath New York legislation. Seligson will not be accused of spray-painting or vandalizing any property. He’s nonetheless going through prices for legal mischief enhanced as a felony hate crime; one different individual alleged to have pushed individuals to and from the executives’ properties can be going through legal mischief hate crime prices. The police are nonetheless on the lookout for 4 alleged individuals. 

{That a} participant within the graffiti motion would face legal mischief prices comes as no shock. To categorize the acts as a felony hate crime is, nonetheless, itself a troubling overreach. 

The house of Brooklyn Museum director, Anne Pasternak, was not focused as a result of she is Jewish however due to the museum management’s therapy of Gaza solidarity protesters. The opposite properties focused didn’t belong to Jewish individuals.

Even those that would possibly disagree with the character of the techniques can not moderately declare that the motion was focusing on people for being Jewish. The targets had been the properties of people in management roles in an establishment that has been a website of antiwar protest. 

To counsel the Brooklyn Museum’s ties to Israel and its navy–industrial advanced in some way confer Jewish identification on the establishment’s executives is a very offensive model of the widespread, pernicious conflation of anti-Zionism with antisemitism.

The explanations behind it, nonetheless, are clear. The hate crime cost is amongst numerous repressive efforts to deal with Palestinian solidarity as de facto antisemitic, and thus flip it into de jure antisemitism. 

The hate crime enhancement is dangerous sufficient. Making use of the overreaching hate crime prices to a journalist masking the incident is past troubling; it’s an outrage. It’s not alleged that he participated within the graffiti. He’s accused of merely touring with the individuals and being current to doc their actions. 

“If he’s being charged for being transported by these individuals to doc the occasion, that’s not a criminal offense, that’s journalism” stated Robert Balin, an legal professional who has represented photojournalists arrested by the NYPD in the course of the George Floyd uprisings. Balin careworn that it’s potential that extra related data may emerge to complicate the story, “but when the info are as they’re being portrayed, which is that he didn’t truly take part within the underlying occasions, bringing felony prices in opposition to him could be very, very regarding.”

At this level, the prosecution has not even confirmed that Seligson was current, and Seligson and his legal professional didn’t touch upon whether or not he was. However he would hardly be the primary video journalist to accompany individuals engaged in illegal political or different actions — together with graffitiing non-public property — for documentary functions. 

“If he’s being charged for being transported by these individuals to doc the occasion, that’s not a criminal offense, that’s journalism.”

A legislation enforcement official who spoke anonymously to The Related Press conceded that Seligson was “indirectly concerned within the spray-painting or property harm.” So there will be little doubt he’s being charged only for documenting the act.

In keeping with Seligson’s legal professional, Leena Widdi, the legal grievance in opposition to the journalist “doesn’t allege any particular conduct that’s attributed to him exterior of presence, which is completely constant together with his function as a journalist in documenting protests or different actions.” 

“The state has not supplied any dependable proof that he was truly there,” Widdi advised me. “And even when he had been there, they haven’t made any allegations that he engaged in any exercise past mere presence.”

Roped Into Hate Crime Fees

There isn’t a legislation that requires journalists — or any members of the general public — to behave as police informers ought to they observe an crime. 

Quite the opposite, there’s a explicit public curiosity in making certain that members of the press can reply to suggestions and canopy tales with out worry that they’ll in flip face prosecution for his or her continued presence. Certainly, the fitting to watch and report illegal conduct with out being thought-about complicit mustn’t solely be reserved for journalists. 

“That is VERY alarming,” wrote the advocacy group Freedom of the Press Basis, on X. “Cops and prosecutors have dreamed up loads of convoluted theories to criminalize journalism.” The group added that “charging a reporter with a hate crime for documenting information must be probably the most outrageous but.”

Seligson’s prices danger a chilling impact on journalistic exercise, when even the commentary of an illegal incident by a member of the media exposes that journalist to claims of legal culpability. Seligson shouldn’t be going through prices in any respect, not to mention severe hate crimes prices for masking an motion that itself shouldn’t be deemed a hate crime. 

“This seems to be a transparent try and stifle each journalistic actions and pro-Palestine speech,” stated Widdi, Seligson’s legal professional. “The costs necessitate the idea that any help of Israel is essentially synonymous with Jewishness, which is palpably unfaithful and very harmful.”

“I don’t assume any of the allegations are enough to make out a hate crime,” stated legal professional Moira Meltzer-Cohen, who’s representing an individual charged with driving the individuals. Her shopper additionally faces a number of counts of legal mischief as felony hate crimes. 

Meltzer-Cohen stated that she couldn’t communicate on to Seligson’s case, however, as a basic level, expressed severe considerations concerning the potential precedents set if journalists are threatened with prosecution for documenting illegal exercise. 

“We’ve an expectation on this society that you could doc illegal conduct, significantly illegal political conduct and illegal aesthetic conduct,” Meltzer-Cohen advised me. “I don’t assume anybody may have anticipated that this was going to be charged as a hate crime. And I don’t assume anybody may have anticipated that somebody in a documentary function was going to be roped into these prices.”

“I don’t assume anybody may have anticipated that this was going to be charged as a hate crime.”

The Manhattan District Legal professional’s Workplace stated that these going through hate crime prices are accused of “vandalizing these properties and utilizing an inverted pink triangle.” That’s, utilizing a well-liked image of Palestinian resistance and Arab unity, which is a function on the Palestinian flag, and a well known image of worldwide Palestinian solidarity, nearly as widespread as a watermelon on protest banners. The truth that Hamas’s navy wing has additionally used the image in movies to determine Israeli navy targets in Gaza — throughout a genocidal struggle — since October 7 doesn’t make the image an antisemitic one. It’s, nonetheless, on these spurious grounds that the hate crime prices are based mostly.

“No person right here was focused because of their membership in a protected class,” Meltzer-Cohen advised the New York Instances. 

Police are nonetheless reportedly trying to find 4 different individuals within the motion. 

Underneath the First Modification, Fifth Modification, and the New York Defend Regulation, which protects reporters from being pressured to disclose confidential sources or supplies, skilled journalists don’t have any authorized obligation to share any data with police or prosecutors concerning the individuals within the occasions they might cowl, even these involving illegal conduct.

If Seligson’s arrest and perversely overreaching prices are an effort to compel a journalist to share data, the police and prosecutors have already set a pernicious, coercive precedent, whether or not or not the costs stick.