Internet ignites as journalist loses eye to Israeli bullet
Journalists and social media activists joined a campaign in support of Palestinian photojournalist Muath Amarneh, who lost his left eye covering confrontations between Palestinians and Israeli forces in the West Bank.
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Palestinian journalists and activists have launched a campaign in solidarity with Palestinian photojournalist Muath Amarneh, who lost his left eye after he was struck Nov. 15 by an Israeli bullet while covering a confrontation between young Palestinians and the Israeli army in Surif, in the West Bank.
The online campaign, which involved activists and journalists who donned eyepatches in solidarity with Amarneh, went viral, and thousands of Twitter users around the world used the hashtag #Ein_Muath (Arabic for the eye of Muath).
One of the captions, appearing in several languages, read, “Muath Amarneh is a Palestinian journalist who documented many incidents with his camera. Yet he could not complete his job as a journalist Nov. 15 because an Israeli bullet hit his left eye.” Other hashtags read, “We are all Muath’s eye,” and "The eye of the truth will not go blind.”
In addition, the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate and media institutions denounced the incident by holding sit-ins in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
