As of November 8 2024, Israel had killed at least 137 journalists and media workers, many of whom were killed while working. Organisations such as the Committee to Protect Journalists, and Reporters without Borders are concerned that these attacks are deliberate, with journalists being killed at a rate fourteen times higher than the general population in Gaza. The deliberate targeting of journalists is constituted by International Law as a war crime.
The journalists being killed are not just Palestinian, but Lebanese as well, with six Lebanese journalists reported dead. It has even gotten to the point where Lebanese journalists have started wearing their blood types on their vest, in case they become badly injured, a sign that the journalists have become scared for their lives, working in extremely unsafe conditions.
Israel has also accused several journalists of being members of military groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihadist groups. These accusations are unsubstantiated, and one was based on documents which proved to be contradictory and untrue. The Israeli military accused the journalist Al Ghoul of receiving a military ranking from Hamas in 2007, which is highly unlikely considering Al Ghoul was born in 1997 and therefore would have been ten years old. The International Federation for Journalists has condemned Israel for these accusations, stating them to be unfounded slander putting the lives of the six reporters at risk, and in violation of UN Security Council resolutions to protect journalists.
Israel is not only killing journalists, they are targeting their families as well. Al Jazeera journalist Wael al-Dahdouh has lost three of his children, one of whom was a seven year old girl, along with his wife, grandchild, and eight other relatives. The Israeli military confirmed that some of these relatives died in a targeted strike, stating that one of the people in their car was a terrorist in charge of operating a threatening aircraft. It has additionally confirmed that they were aware of other people in the vehicle, and chose to carry it out regardless.
Despite the indescribable horrors that al-Dahdouh experienced, he reassured NBC news that he will continue in furthering his cause through reporting. “We are going to proceed as long as we are alive and breathing. As long as we are able to do this duty and deliver this message”. An especially critical message considering that 55 journalists wrote in an open letter that they are being denied access to Gaza if not accompanied by the IDF, meaning that the journalists already in Palestine are one of the only sources of unfiltered information.
This is the resilience that journalists across the world need to strive towards. Journalists are the mouthpiece for the weak, for the hunted, for the oppressed, and for all the people that have experienced injustice. Without a free and independent press the public would never know what happened to al-Dahdouh, to Mustafa Thuraya, or to the over 43,000 people that have been killed in Gaza.
Carlos Martinez de la Serna, the program director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, stated that “every time a journalist is killed, injured, arrested, or forced to go into exile, we lose fragments of the truth”. This is why we keep reporting, to never leave the public without the story, or the dead without remembrance.
Hassan Hoteit is a Lebanese camera operator reporting on the situation in southern Lebanon. An Israeli airstrike hit a compound where 18 journalists were staying, killing three journalists and injuring two others. During the strike Hoteit broke his hip, requiring a week of hospitalisation and bed rest for a month.
Although the Reporters Without Borders organisation has been attempting to keep journalists safe by partnering with local organisations such as Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism, and prosecuting Israel in the International Criminal Court through four separate complaints, they are unable to keep journalists from being killed.
In these times, the Committee to Protect Journalists is doing critical work in reporting on the lives of each and every journalist risking their lives in Lebanon and Palestine, telling their stories, and ensuring that the world does not forget their braveness in doing one of the world’s most important jobs in its most dangerous conditions.
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