Israel Detains Emmy-Winning Journalist at Airport, Questions Him on Gaza 'Genocide' Views

Secunder Kermani landed at Ben Gurion Airport on Monday expecting to cover Israel's upcoming elections. Instead, the Emmy and Bafta-winning Channel 4 News correspondent was told he was being denied entry.

"Just arrived in Tel Aviv for coverage ahead of the Israeli elections," Kermani wrote on social media, posting a letter from Israeli authorities confirming the refusal. "Only to be told the Israeli authorities are denying me entry to the country!"

According to Haaretz, border officials questioned Kermani about whether he believed Israel was committing genocide in Gaza, and whether he considered Hamas and Hezbollah terrorist organizations. Kermani later confirmed on X that the decision was reversed after he spent time in an airport detention facility. He said other journalists had reported similar difficulties entering the country in recent weeks.

The Foreign Press Association, which represents international media working in Israel and the Palestinian territories, condemned the episode. The group said it was tracking a broader pattern.

"The Foreign Press Association is aware of several other cases of journalists being turned back at the airport or their digital entry authorisation cancelled in the last year," the FPA said in a statement issued Monday.

The association accused the government of denying entry to or deporting media workers "on the basis that their reporting was deemed to be unfavourable toward Israel," and called the practice incompatible with press freedom.

A second case, days apart

On Sunday, German journalist Serena Bilanceri, a correspondent for the newspaper Die Tageszeitung, said she had been denied entry after calling for sanctions against Israel over settler and military violence in the West Bank and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Addressing Israeli officials directly on X, she wrote that they were not banning "anti-Israel actors" but "foreign journalists who criticized the actions of your government."

Israel's Diaspora Affairs Ministry told Haaretz the recommendation to deny Bilanceri entry was made under the country's Entry Law, part of an arrangement under which the ministry shares recommendations with the Population and Immigration Authority.

The broader access fight

The incidents land amid ongoing restrictions on independent foreign reporting from inside Gaza itself, which Israel has barred for three years citing security concerns. The FPA has pressed for access since early in the war. Reporting from inside the territory has fallen almost entirely to Palestinian journalists, at extraordinary cost: Gaza's Government Media Office says Israeli forces have killed 263 journalists and media workers since October 2023, a figure the International Federation of Journalists said last month made the war's death toll among journalists the highest in modern journalism history.