GAZA (Palestine Foundation Information Center) Thirty media organizations around the world have issued a message calling for the protection of journalists in the Gaza Strip. The number of journalist casualties in the enclave has risen to 132 martyrs since the beginning of the Israeli aggression on the sector on October 7th of last year, according to statistics from the Government Media Office in the Strip.
CNN reported on Friday that more than 30 news organizations signed an open letter on Thursday, expressing solidarity with journalists working in the Gaza Strip and calling for their protection and the guarantee of their freedom to perform their work. Signatories of the letter, coordinated by the Committee to Protect Journalists, included international news agencies such as AFP, AP, and Reuters, as well as prominent media outlets such as The New York Times, BBC News, and the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
The letter stated, “For about five months, journalists and media workers in Gaza, who are the sole source of field reports from inside the Palestinian enclave, have been working in unprecedented conditions.” It pointed out that at least 89 journalists and media workers in Gaza were martyred in the war, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
The letter, also signed by the International Federation of Journalists and the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers, said that journalists are civilians and that the Israeli authorities must protect them as non-combatants under international law. It continued, “Those responsible for any violations of this protection must be held accountable.”
This message comes after continuous calls from various media outlets, urging the international community to increase pressure on Israel and Egypt to allow international media access to the besieged enclave and to press the parties to the conflict to protect journalists as civilians.
The British newspaper Financial Times, in one of its editorials, noted that the number of media workers killed in the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip is higher than the number recorded in any other country in one year, considering the deliberate targeting of journalists a war crime.
It is worth mentioning that Al Jazeera correspondent Ismail Abu Omar and photographer Ahmed Matar were targeted by an Israeli drone during their journalistic coverage in the Al-Najjar neighborhood in the southern Gaza Strip on February 13th of last year. This immediately resulted in the amputation of the correspondent’s right leg, while the photographer was seriously injured.
