Were it not for the remarkable work of so many courageous Palestinian journalists, Israel’s war on Gaza would occur entirely out of sight of the rest of the world. Through those reporters, photographers and videographers we have seen the territory’s bombed-out streets, the horrors in its hospitals, and the terrible human toll of the bombardment. But Israel continues to block access to the strip for foreign journalists, allowing entry only for rare, escorted trips arranged by its military. This is the same Israeli government that accuses global media of accepting as fact the “unverified” testimony of the hundreds of brave and trapped Gazan journalists and the eyewitness testimony of ordinary people in the enclave.
Over 70 international media and press freedom organisations from 26 countries, including The Irish Times, have signed an open letter urging Israel to give journalists independent access to Gaza.
“More than 100 journalists have been killed since the start of the war and those who remain are working in conditions of extreme deprivation,” the letter says. It was coordinated by the respected international media NGO, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
They warn “that information from Gaza is becoming harder and harder to obtain and that the reporting which does get through is subject to repeated questions over its veracity.”
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A separate investigation by several international media groups has pointed to deeply worrying evidence of what they say is intentional targeting of journalists by the IDF and ambiguity over whether they are included in Israel’s list of “legitimate targets”. Among those listed by the CPJ as having been killed in Gaza, 23 worked for the largest media outlets closely tied to Hamas, al-Aqsa.
“When we lose a journalist, we lose our eyes and ears to the outside world. We lose a voice for the voiceless,” Volker Turk, the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights has warned. Israel, which claims to be a model democracy, must let in the light.