UNITED NATIONS, Aug 12 (IPS) – A rise in killings of Palestinian journalists in the Gaza Strip has sparked calls for the United States to halt arms supplies to Israel.
A letter to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken — signed by scores of journalists, news outlets and media unions — says Israel has killed more than 165 Palestinian journalists since October 7 last year.
“This is the highest recorded death of journalists in any war,” says the letter, which was launched by three international organizations: Defending Rights & Dissent, the Courage Foundation and Roots Action.
The letter said Israel’s indiscriminate bombing of the densely populated Gaza Strip left no civilians safe, and that there were repeated documented instances of Israel deliberately attacking journalists.
“Israeli military action would not be possible without American weapons, American military support, and American diplomatic support. By providing the weapons used to deliberately kill journalists, you are complicit in one of the most serious affronts to press freedom today,” the letter to Blinken, which is now circulating, reads.
Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Democracy for the Arab World (DAWN), told IPS it was “inconceivable” that Biden would now sell new weapons to Israel to facilitate more massacres, despite the international community’s pleas for a halt to arms supplies to Israel in response to its unprecedented atrocities against Palestinians in Gaza, including the killing of more than 165 Palestinian journalists.
Despite mounting evidence that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have used American weapons to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity, the U.S. State Department formally notified Congress on August 9 of its intention to approve new weapons licenses for Israel, including the provision of 6,500 Joint Direct Attack Weapon (JDAM) guidance kits, DAWN said in a news release Friday.
“This is an affront to humanity and to all the values we hold dear,” Whitson said.
Blinken also announced that he had decided not to impose sanctions on the IDF’s notorious Netzah Yehuda Battalion, despite credible evidence that it has committed systematic and serious human rights abuses in the occupied West Bank, in violation of strict U.S. law requiring the imposition of such sanctions.
“Given the overwhelming evidence of unprecedented crimes committed by the IDF in Gaza that have shocked the conscience of the world, it is incomprehensible that the Biden administration would authorize the transfer of additional lethal weapons to Israel,” Whitson said.
“It is difficult to understand how the Biden administration can justify providing new weapons to Israel, given that Israel has consistently ignored every appeal the Biden administration has made for minimal restraint, and given the very clear fact that such sales violate strict U.S. laws prohibiting the sale of weapons to egregious abusers like Israel,” she noted.
Meanwhile, preliminary estimates by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) as of August 9, 2024, show that more than 40,000 people have been killed since the war began, including at least 113 journalists and media workers. This is the deadliest period for journalists since CPJ began collecting data in 1992.
CPJ reports that journalists in Gaza attempting to cover the conflict during the Israeli ground offensive face particularly high risks, including devastating Israeli airstrikes, communications outages, supply shortages, and widespread power outages.
This makes documenting the situation increasingly difficult, and CPJ is investigating an additional 350 cases of potential killings, arrests and injuries.
Dr. Ramzi Baroud, a journalist and editor of The Palestine Chronicle, told IPS that Israel has killed 168 Palestinian journalists as of last week, in the same way it has killed more than 200 aid workers, hundreds of doctors and medical personnel, and people from all walks of life and backgrounds. None of this is an accident.
A simple proof that Israel deliberately targets journalists is that Israel routinely produces and promotes stories that justify their killings, often accusing them of terrorism. Israel has yet to provide credible evidence of a single journalist being killed, he said.
On October 11, Israeli President Yitzhak Herzog said, “There are no innocent civilians in Gaza.” This disturbing Israeli logic applies to all Palestinians in Gaza, including journalists.
“Israel must be held accountable for its continued killings of journalists. But an enormous responsibility also lies with journalists and media organizations around the world, who often ignore the killings of their colleagues in Gaza and spread baseless accusations against Israel, often without questioning their credibility or merits,” he said.
The fact that Gazans continue to report their own massacre by Israel is heroic beyond words. But they should not be abandoned, and they should not continue to report and die alone without real international solidarity to hold the killers accountable, said Dr. Baroud, who is also a non-resident senior fellow at the Center on Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA).
Dr. James Jennings, president of Conscience International, told IPS that the heroic martyrs of free speech in Gaza deserve the respect of all humanity, at the very least a Nobel Peace Prize. Standing under a bomb, reporting the truth, and then giving your life is an act of superhuman courage.
The job of a journalist is simply to keep a journal. To shed light on the truth by recording or telling what he sees on the battlefield. Killing the messenger, he noted, is a sign that the perpetrators are afraid of them and their influence.
Deception and lies are a major part of war. Otherwise, how could people slaughter so many others with impunity? he asked.
But there are two sides to truth: sending and receiving. Not giving honest journalists credit means you don’t want to hear what they have to say. Choosing to believe a lie means you want it to be true, which allows wars to continue.
“There is nothing worse than lying to your enemies, and that is lying to yourself. It is madness to try to hide the obvious truth by denying the facts or looking the other way. When will Americans stop lying to themselves and start believing in their own ideals?” Dr. Jennings asked.
“The only thing that can explain the shocking silence of American and international media professionals about the mass murder of their fellow Palestinians is the decades-long, systematic dehumanization of the Palestinian people. Palestinian lives are considered worthless or less than worthless,” said Ibrahim Hooper, national communications director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in Washington. “Journalists around the world must speak out about these killings and the Israeli massacre in Gaza.”
In a press release last week, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) said it was monitoring attacks and threats against journalists.
The agency noted that in recent months, many journalists covering protests around the world have suffered a range of attacks, including killings, injuries, arbitrary detentions and confiscations of equipment, while exercising their legitimate duties as journalists.
UNESCO stressed that “all relevant authorities have a duty and responsibility to ensure the safety of journalists covering protests around the world, in accordance with international norms and human rights obligations.”
The joint letter to Blinken says Israel has gone to great lengths to suppress media coverage of the war in Gaza, imposing military censorship on its own journalists and international journalists operating in the country, and blocking all foreign journalists from Gaza with the help of Egypt. Israel has shut down Al Jazeera, raided its offices, confiscated its equipment, and blocked its broadcasts and websites in Israel.
The world expects only Palestinian journalists in Gaza to report the truth about the war and Israel’s widespread violations of international law.
“Israel’s deliberate targeting of these journalists appears to have been intended to suppress reporting on the attacks in Gaza. Investigations by UN agencies, NGOs and media organizations have all found instances of deliberate targeting of journalists.
In a joint statement, the five UN special rapporteurs declared: “We have received worrying reports that journalists have been attacked, even when they are clearly identifiable by their ‘press’ jackets and helmets, or when traveling in well-marked press vehicles. This appears to be a deliberate strategy by Israeli forces to stifle the press and silence critical reporting.”
Meanwhile, under international law, deliberately targeting journalists is considered a war crime. While all governments are bound by international law to protect journalists, U.S. domestic law prohibits the State Department from providing support to foreign security forces accused of serious human rights abuses. Israel’s well-documented pattern of extrajudicial executions of journalists is a serious human rights abuse.
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© Inter Press Service (2024) — All rights reservedOriginal Source: Inter Press Service
