Former IDF spokesman: Journalists should have been let into Gaza ‘a long time ago’

Amid the more than two-year ban on international journalists freely entering the Gaza Strip, a former spokesman for the IDF argues that these restrictions should have been lifted long ago.

“Israel should have let international journalists in to Gaza a long time ago, to deprive Israel haters and propagandists with one effective talking point repeatedly used against it,” tweets Jonathan Conricus, sharing a New York Times piece that includes comments from him on the matter.

The ban should have been eased “more than a year ago, and definitely since the ceasefire,” he tells the US outlet, saying that while the policy was logical at the start of the war, “I think there is very little logic left. I think it is self-defeating and does not serve any clear purpose for the State of Israel. At this stage, I think it is harmful.”

Conricus was the IDF’s international spokesman between 2017 and 2021, and later returned to serve in the Spokesperson’s Unit as a reservist during the war.

Now a senior fellow at the US-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Conricus adds on X that “many media workers and their bosses have failed in basic journalism and ethics in how they’ve chosen to cover this war and Israel in general, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t allow them in to do their work. At this stage keeping them out only serves our enemies and antagonists.”

Emanuel Fabian contributed to this report.