Journalism leaders express support for Gaza reporters, ask for more protection
Signees include journalists from The Associated Press, New York Times, Washington Post and Israel’s Haaretz, among several others
Three dozen leaders at news organizations around the world have signed a letter expressing solidarity with journalists in Gaza, calling for their safety and freedom to report in the war zone.
The letter, released Thursday, was spearheaded by the Committee to Protect Journalists, which said at least 89 journalists and media workers have been killed in the Israel-Hamas war, the vast majority of them Palestinians.
The war broke out on October 7, when thousands of Hamas terrorists invaded Israel’s South, killing some 1,200 people and taking 253 hostages. Four Israeli journalists were killed in the October 7 onslaught.
The war has wrought massive destruction in the Gaza Strip, with more than 30,000 people killed, according to Gaza-based Hamas health officials. That figure cannot be independently verified and includes some 13,000 Hamas terrorists Israel says it has killed in battle and as a consequence of the terror groups’ own rocket misfires. Israel also says it killed some 1,000 gunmen inside Israel on October 7.
Leaders at The Associated Press, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Reuters, New Yorker, CNN, NBC News and ABC News have signed on. International signatories include the BBC, Der Spiegel in Germany, Agence France-Presse, Daily Maverick in South Africa, Nawaiwaqt Group in Pakistan and The Asahi Shimbun in Japan.
Aluf Benn, editor-in-chief of Israeli left-leaning news outlet Haaretz, signed the letter as well.
More organizations are welcome to participate, said Jodie Ginsberg, CEO of the Committee to Protect Journalists.
“We felt that it was important that we show that the international journalism community stands in solidarity with our Palestinian colleagues,” Ginsberg said.
The letter says that journalists are civilians and that Israeli authorities must protect them as noncombatants in accordance with international law. Anyone violating this should be held accountable, it said.
“Attacks on journalists are also attacks on truth,” the letter said. “We commit to championing the safety of journalists in Gaza, which is fundamental for the protection of press freedom everywhere.”
Israel is only mentioned once in the letter. While CPJ has advocated for more access for journalists in Gaza, the letter steered clear of that subject because it was important to focus on solidarity, Ginsberg said.
She would not comment on whether any news organization contacted chose not to participate.
Israel has presented evidence that several Palestinian journalists working in Gaza have also been active members of terror groups like Hamas.
A number of survivors of the Hamas October 7 attack on Israel and families of victims also filed a lawsuit in Florida against The Associated Press, accusing the news agency of being complicit in the Palestinian terror group’s killing spree by working with freelance photojournalists they believe were embedded with the thousands of terrorists who overran southern communities.
The lawsuit names four freelance photographers whose work was bought and published by the AP and other outlets, claiming they are “known Hamas associates who were gleefully embedded with the Hamas terrorists during the October 7th attacks.”
The four captured some of the earliest images, widely disseminated, of the shock attack as it was unfolding. AP said the case was “baseless.”
Israel denies targeting journalists and says it makes every effort to avoid harming civilians, blaming the high death toll on the fact that Hamas fights in densely populated urban areas and embeds itself deliberately among civilians who are used as human shields. In a statement on December 16, the Israeli army said “the IDF has never, and will never, deliberately target journalists.”
