‘A big victory’ – Palestine Chronicle wins two-year legal battle

A US federal court dismissed the lawsuit against the Palestine Chronicle and its editor, Dr. Ramzy Baroud, after the three plaintiffs asked to withdraw it, according to Palestine Chronicle.

Almog Meir Jan filed the case in July 2024. Shlomi Ziv and Andrey Kozlov joined an amended complaint the following year. The suit sought to link the Chronicle to their captivity in Gaza through its publication of reports by Palestinian journalist Abdallah Aljamal.

The Chronicle rejected the accusations throughout the proceedings. The plaintiffs moved to withdraw their case in July, and US District Judge Tiffany Cartwright granted the request on September 15. The court record closed the case after more than two years of litigation.

“After a struggle of over 2 years, we have won a big victory.  We have beaten back a calculated attempt to chill the free speech of some of the most critical voices of the Palestinian people — The Palestine Chronicle and Ramzy Baroud.  I have been so proud and honored to represent these clients and am happy for the outcome,” he said.

“Still, we must remain vigilant for the inevitable attacks to come against people whose only ‘crime’ is advocating for the lives and rights of the Palestinian people.  We are fully prepared for this ongoing struggle,” Kovalik added.

For his part, Baroud welcomed the outcome but said that the case “should have been thrown out from the start.”

“It was initially dismissed, only to be refiled and treated as though the accusations had any legitimacy, despite there not being a single piece of evidence to prove any wrongdoing on our part,” he said.

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A Gaza Journalist at the Center of the Case

The lawsuit grew out of an Israeli massacre in central Gaza in June 2024. Israeli occupation forces freed four captives during the operation, which also killed hundreds of Palestinians.

Among those killed was Abdallah Aljamal, a Palestinian journalist who had contributed reports to the Palestine Chronicle. His wife, father and neighbors were also killed. After the raid, Israeli officials alleged that three of the captives had been held in Aljamal’s home.

The three former captives later sued the Chronicle and Baroud. They alleged that the outlet had aided their captivity by publishing Aljamal’s work and paying him for it. The Chronicle denied paying Aljamal and rejected any suggestion that publishing his reports, which were also widely disseminated in both Arabic and English, connected the outlet to the captives’ detention.

Aljamal had filed many reports during the first six months of the war. Baroud said the value of that work lay in its attention to Palestinians whose experiences rarely reached an international audience.

“When Abdallah was sending articles, what I liked about his work is that he spoke to ordinary people,” Baroud said in an earlier interview with journalist Rachel Blevins.

“(We) did not want political commentary; we already have analysts. We wanted the voices of people you never hear from. That’s all,” he added.

In the same interview, Kovalik challenged the allegation that the Chronicle had financed Aljamal’s activities. “The claim is that the Palestine Chronicle paid a journalist, and somehow that money was used to hold hostages. It’s not true. There’s no evidence,” he said.

For the Chronicle, the case put an ordinary editorial decision—publishing firsthand reports from Gaza—at the center of an accusation of wrongdoing. It also forced a small newsroom to defend its work in court while continuing to cover the genocide facing the people and journalists on whom that work depended.

“The saddest aspect of all this is that the victims once again became the accused,” Baroud said in his latest statement. “Some of us have lost hundreds of family members, relatives, friends, neighbors and colleagues, only to find ourselves having to defend against entirely politically and ideologically motivated accusations.”

Israeli authorities have repeatedly accused Palestinian journalists killed or targeted in Gaza of ties to Hamas. The Committee to Protect Journalists has documented a pattern of labeling journalists as “terrorists” without substantiated evidence, while Reporters Without Borders has reported smear campaigns against Gaza’s journalists. Those allegations should be assessed on evidence, rather than treated as established facts because they come from the army that targeted them.

According to the International Federation of Journalists, at least 240 Palestinian journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza as of September 2026. The federation described the toll as “the greatest massacre of journalists in the history of modern journalism”.

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A Silver Lining

Baroud reflected on the people who helped the Chronicle through the case.

“There is a silver lining. This case made us stronger. Dan Kovalik and his team fought with extraordinary dedication on our behalf, while countless readers and intellectuals stood by us.

“Throughout it all, we refused to let the case slow us down. We expanded our coverage and our network, sharpened our journalism and emerged more resilient and more committed than ever to telling Palestinian stories.”

The Palestine Chronicle dedicated the outcome to its readers, solidarity activists, intellectuals, independent journalists and all those who stood beside it and defended the right of Palestinians to tell their own stories.