A Palestinian radio station shut down by Israel. Photo: Twitter.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) defended the right of a terrorist-affiliated Palestinian media outlet to incite murder against Israelis, according to Honest Reporting.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) recently closed down Palestine Today — a Palestinian Islamic Jihad radio and television station — for inciting violence and glorifying Palestinian terrorists. Instead of condemning the Palestinian media outlet, the IFJ accused Israel of engaging in a “wave of violence targeting journalists.”

“The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), which represents 600,000 journalists across the globe, stands by its affiliate the Palestinian Journalists Union (PJS) in condemning this brutal attack against free press and ask for UN immediate reaction to the escalation of attacks against the press in the occupied territories,” reads an IFJ statement.

The IFJ statement bestows journalistic legitimacy upon the propaganda arm of an organization designated as terrorists by the United States, European Union, and other major Western countries. The IFJ also failed to point out that Palestine Today calls for Palestinians to kill Israelis.

“Freedom of the press does not extend to terrorist propaganda and to those who incite to murder,” Israeli parliamentarian Yair Lapid in a statement to the IFJ. “The content on Palestine Today would not pass the editorial guidelines of any of your members. I was a journalist for over three decades; this isn’t journalism. This isn’t free speech, this is hate speech. You are not defending press freedom; you are defending incitement to murder.”

The IFJ has a history of supporting other “journalists” who were exposed as terrorist operatives. The IFJ pressured the Newseum, a Washington, DC, based museum specializing in media, to maintain two Hamas terrorists on its journalist commemoration list, despite revelations of their true identities.

The IFJ also failed to condemn Hamas for intimidating Western journalists in Gaza who were covering the 2014 summer war between Israel and the terrorist organization. Hamas operatives threatened and harassed journalists for reporting cases of the terrorist groups’ use of human shields, inhibiting the ability for journalists to report the conflict accurately.

Steven Emerson is the Executive Director the Investigative Project on Terrorism (www.investigativeproject.org) where this article first appeared.