The deaths of 79 journalists covering the three-month-old Israel-Gaza war are the highest in a war zone in decades, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CJP) has reported. By comparison, 17 journalists have been killed in Ukraine since Russia’s full scale invasion nearly two years ago, while 63 died in the 20-year Vietnam War.
The CJP said 72 of the journalists killed since the outbreak of the Gaza war were Palestinians, four were Israelis and three Lebanese. The Gaza conflict has been “the deadliest period for journalists since [the] CPJ began gathering data in 1992″, the committee wrote on its website. The CJP says it is investigating “numerous unconfirmed reports of other journalists being killed, missing, detained, hurt or threatened, and of damage to media offices and journalists’ homes”.
“The continuous killings of journalists and their family members by Israeli army fire must end: journalists are civilians, not targets,” said the CPJ’s Middle East and North Africa programme co-ordinator, Sherif Mansour.
The committee has called for an independent investigation into Sunday’s deaths in a drone strike of Al-Jazeera journalist Hamza Al-Dahdouh, son of the Qatari network’s bureau chief Wael Al-Dahdouh, and freelance photographer Mustafa Thuraya, who worked with the French news agency AFP. Israel told the BBC the men were travelling by car with another man, also a journalist, it described as “terrorist who operated an aircraft that posed a threat to [Israeli] troops”. This man was injured in the attack. Journalists conducting aerial surveys of destruction often use drones. Israel’s statement showed the car was targeted deliberately rather than struck randomly during bombing or shelling.
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Hamza Al-Dahdouh was the fifth member of his family to be killed in Israeli attacks. His mother, sister, brother and nephew were victims of an Israeli air strike on Nuseirat refugee camp on October 25th, the CJP reported. The Dahdouhs and colleagues in Gaza “are rewriting what it means to be a journalist today with immensely brave and never-seen-before sacrifices”, said Mansour.
The CPJ pointed out that on October 27th the Israeli military told Reuters and AFP it could not guarantee the safety of their journalists in Gaza, after the news agencies “had sought assurances that their journalists would not be targeted”.
Since the only foreign correspondents allowed to enter Gaza have been briefly embedded with Israeli troops, all journalists covering the war from inside Gaza are local Palestinians. They not only report from deadly shifting front lines but also must cope with poor communications and the hardships inflicted by the war on Gaza’s 2.3 million civilians. Journalists and their families have joined the 90 per cent of Gazans who have been displaced at least once and struggle to find shelter, water, food and medical care. Journalists also bear the heavy burden of describing the grief of survivors, devastated neighbourhoods where the dead decompose beneath rubble and doctors operate on wounded on the floors of damaged, overwhelmed hospitals.
Despite terrible trauma over the death of his son, survivor Wael Al-Dahdouh wrote on social media, “As long as we are alive and as long as we are able to perform this duty, we will do so without hesitation.”
The Israeli government press office did not reply to The Irish Times’s request for Israeli comment on the CPJ report.
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