According to a new study published by Brown University on April 1, more Palestinian reporters have been killed by the Israeli army than the combined total of journalists in the US Civil War; First and Second World Wars, the Korean War and four other conflicts – including the former Yugoslavia, Cambodia and post 9/11 wars.
As of March 26, 263 Palestinian journalists and aid workers have been killed since the war began on October 7, 2023.
Gazan reporters were simply doing their job: telling us what international journalists, who are banned from entering the Gaza Strip by Israeli authorities, cannot. Without them, we are blind to the war crimes Israel is committing against Gazan civilians.
They are witnessing war crimes that can later be used as evidence in The Hague. During the Syrian civil war, emergency workers at the White Helmets were reportedly targeted because they wore Go-Pro cameras on their helmets, documenting the war.
Journalists should be protected under the Geneva Conventions as long as they do not take part in the hostilities. But Israel has not abided by any international law. Earlier this month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defied an International Criminal Court arrest warrant by travelling to Hungary. Journalists are possibly their biggest threat, even more so than Hamas’s rockets.
“The Israel-Gaza war war has been the deadliest conflict that the CPJ [Committee to Protect Journalists] has ever documented and is unprecedented in both the devastation it has wrought on the local press corps but also in the complete ban on independent media access from outside,” says Jodie Ginsberg, chief executive of the CPJ.
One among the deceased was 23-year-old Hossam Shabat, who worked for Al Jazeera Mubasher. He wrote a touching letter before he was killed in late March in northern Gaza. “If you’re reading this, it means I have been killed – most likely targeted – by the Israeli occupation forces.
“I documented the horrors in northern Gaza minute by minute, determined to show the world the truth they tried to bury. I slept on pavements, in schools, in tents – anywhere I could. Each day was a battle for survival. I endured hunger for months, yet I never left my people’s side.”
Shabat started reporting before completing his university degree as the war escalated, refusing to move south with his family when civilians were being evacuated. He was separated from them for more than 400 days. Shortly before his death, he posted a photograph of his joyous reunion with his mother after 427 days. Now Israeli hawks are attempting to defame Shabat by claiming he was a Hamas operative. This is the easy thing for them to do: anyone who criticises Israeli policy is branded a Hamas supporter – including foreign reporters and academics.
As a former war reporter who lost many colleagues on the battlefield, I know very well the dangers of reporting war. But the journalists in Gaza who are dying are a very different case than my colleagues who died in Bosnia, Sierra Leone or Syria.
There, they were caught in crossfires, mortar attacks or an unlucky sniper’s bullet (aside from colleagues who died in an ambush by rebel forces in Sierra Leone's capital of Freetown in May 2000). The Gazans are dying because it appears the Israeli forces do not want them to live to tell their story.
Last week in Perugia, Italy, thousands of journalists from around the globe gathered for the five-day International Journalism Festival that concluded on Sunday. There, reporters and scholars, media heads and donors attended panels, workshops and discussions about the threats to media in society, but also to highlight the dangers and restrictions.
Last year, the CPJ's Ginsberg gathered hundreds of journalists in the town square for a moment of silence in solidarity with the Gazan journalists. It was one of the most moving moments of my long career.
I would like to believe the Israeli authorities will read the report by Brown University and consider what it does to their reputation. But the Israeli propagandist machine, known by the generic term hasbara or “explanation”, feeds the population an entirely different version of the truth.
The Israeli leadership has long believed that it is necessary “to aggressively distort the truth to manipulate adversaries and allies”, according to a report in The Intercept. Led by Likud Party and Netanyahu loyalists, they are basically rewriting history.
But all of this does nothing for the grieving families of the 263 journalists. Nor does it help to fill the information vacuum their deaths leave.
However, their deaths make other Gazan journalists more determined and steadier. They keep on going, knowing that their work is crucial. Last October, I was a judge at the Prix Bayeux for War Reporters in France, one of the most prestigious prizes in journalism. The Gazan reporters on all media fronts – long- and short-format documentaries, print and radio – swept the boards by winning nearly all the prizes. That is not an easy feat in an extremely competitive market.
Ginsberg says this is the deadliest period for journalists since CPJ began gathering data in 1992, during the Bosnian War.
In those days, we considered Bosnia to be the most dangerous place on Earth. Today, that terrible sobriquet goes to Gaza, where journalists struggle to describe the displacement of 90 per cent of the population and the destruction of 80 per cent of the buildings.
These journalists are being starved, bombed and deprived of medical and suffering numerous threats such as cyber attacks, censorship and killing of family members even as they try to work.
I wish that everyone could take a moment and look up the names of each and every one of them, look at their photos, and remember their short lives as a tribute to them. As well as the brave contribution they have made to keeping the narrative truthful in one of the most terrible wars against civilians in recent history.
