Spanish reporter harassed, blocked during live broadcast from Jerusalem

By Alyssa McMurtry

OVIEDO, Spain (AA) - One of Spain’s leading foreign correspondents was harassed by a group of men during a live broadcast from Jerusalem on Wednesday, which she later denounced as a routine part of the job when reporting from Jewish neighborhoods.

During the lunchtime edition of the Telediario, Spain’s flagship TV newscast produced by public broadcaster TVE, Almudena Ariza was surrounded by men who forced her to stop reporting.

The first man, wearing a Kippah, a traditional Jewish head covering, stepped in front of the camera, came close to her face and began verbally harassing her.

Despite Ariza telling him in English that she was working and in the middle of a live broadcast, he did not budge.

Then, two other men entered the frame, standing very close to her. Soon, she was forced to cut the broadcast.

She was reporting near the prime minister’s office in Jerusalem, discussing growing pressure on the Israeli government amid the Gaza war.

After changing locations, she got back on air to explain what happened.

“I’m sorry that we had to go through that live but, in a way, it helps you feel like you're a part of what journalists are going through every day when reporting from Jewish neighborhoods,” she said.

“They don’t want us here, and they don’t want us to talk about Gaza. From the moment…they hear the word Gaza, they’ll come right over and try to harass us.”

Ariza, who has been reporting from Israel since January 2024, added that she always gets the same question from those harassing her — “are you with us or are you against us?”

She emphasized that the men who harassed her were not police or security guards, but were instead “just citizens walking down the street.”

“They insult us, they call us liars, they tell us to get out of the country … and as I said, this is a threat that we feel practically every day,” she said on TVE.

Before Ariza was in Israel to cover the ongoing conflict, she spent several months covering the war in Ukraine for TVE in 2022 and 2023.

From 2013 to 2019, she was also TVE’s correspondent in New York. Before that, she reported from the network’s Asia-Pacific desk in Beijing.