The freedom to inform and be informed continues to be violated by Israel in Gaza, Palestine and southern Lebanon. Update on the situation of journalists in Gaza, one year and one month from the start of Israel's genocidal offensive.
By Palestine Media Agency, November 5, 2024
KEY FIGURES in Gaza since October 7, 2023:
174 journalists murdered by Israel
360 journalists injured
134 journalists detained
88 media premises destroyed
On November 2, 2024, on the occasion of the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres declared in a statement that journalists in Gaza were being killed “to a extent never before seen in any conflict in modern times,” adding that the current ban preventing international journalists from traveling to Gaza “further suppresses the truth.”
The Director General of UNESCO, Audrey Azoulay, declared for her part that 900 journalists have been killed around the world since 2013, an average of 82 journalists per year: this represents less than half the number of Palestinian journalists killed. for a year by Israel in Gaza.
Questioned by the Palestine Media Agency, the spokesperson for the Palestinian Journalists Union confirms to us that 174 journalists have been murdered by Israel since October 7, 2024, and that 134 others are currently imprisoned. In this genocidal war by Israel against the Palestinians, the press is deliberately stifled.
Cheikh Niang, president of the United Nations Committee on the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, confirmed that “access to information has been severely hampered. Journalists have been killed, newsrooms destroyed, the foreign press blocked and communications cut. Israeli forces, as the occupying power, have systematically dismantled the Palestinian media infrastructure, silencing voices through restrictions, threats, targeted killings and censorship. »
Surge of violence in siege of northern Gaza
Since the beginning of October 2024 and the brutal siege imposed on northern Gaza, the press has been hampered by all means. When journalists are not directly targeted, killed, injured or imprisoned, they are prevented from doing their job due to movement bans, cutoffs in communications networks, electricity, fuel shortages which prevent them from moving.
Most journalists have left the north and are forced to cover the news from Gaza City, south of the demarcation line drawn by Israel. As Imen Habib, coordinator of the Palestine Media Agency, explained in an interview with the online media Regards, the horror of the situation in Gaza is under-documented due to Israel's repeated and deliberate attacks against media.
“I'm afraid as soon as I start filming,” a journalist trapped in the north of the Gaza Strip confided anonymously, interviewed by Reporter Sans Frontières (RSF).
In the Gaza Strip, the presence of foreign journalists is prohibited by Israel, unless they are “embedded” alongside the Israeli army. Army which subsequently controls each image and each sound and which gives, or not, authorization for broadcast. So for more than a year, only Palestinian journalists who were present when the genocide began, and who are blocked in the territory, have been able to document what is happening there. They are present in almost the entire enclave to bear witness to the tragedy unfolding there and which has left more than 43,000 dead and more than 100,000 injured since October 7, 2023.
For Israel, access to international journalists on the territory “endangers the forces in action on the ground and the security of soldiers”, for example by revealing their location. It is therefore an international media blackout.
