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16-02-2024
NEW YORK/ GAZA CITY: Seventy-two of the 99 journalists martyred worldwide in 2023 were Palestinians reporting on Israel’s war on Gaza, making those 12 months the deadliest for the media in almost a decade, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
Killings of reporters would have dropped globally year-on-year had it not been for the deaths in the ongoing war on Gaza, the CPJ said in its annual report released on Thursday.
“In December 2023, CPJ reported that more journalists were killed in the first three months of the Israel-Gaza war than have ever been killed in a single country over an entire year,” the organization said.
In total, it documented 77 journalists killed in the war on Gaza last year while doing their jobs: 72 Palestinians, three Lebanese and two Israelis.
The Palestinian victims account for nearly 75 percent of all journalists killed worldwide.
“This war is unprecedented in terms of the threat to journalists,” Jodie Ginsberg, president of the CPJ, told media from New York.
“What’s important to remember about this war is that Gazan journalists are the only journalists able to report on what’s happening inside Gaza. International journalists have not been able to get in, have not been allowed in, except on very, very controlled trips that are overseen by the Israeli army.
“So we are entirely reliant on those (Palestinian) journalists, who are risking their lives to bring us this story,” she added.
On February 7, the New York-based press freedom organization said the number of journalists killed in the war on Gaza had risen to 85.
The CPJ has previously attacked what it calls the “persecution” of journalists by Israeli forces and is investigating whether a dozen journalists killed in the Gaza conflict were deliberately targeted by Israeli soldiers, which would constitute a war crime.
Ginsberg said she was “disappointed … at the lack of public solidarity that we have seen” with Palestinian journalists during the ongoing war.
She said Western “hesitancy” to show solidarity with those targeted and killed in Gaza was “sadly unsurprising” given that Israel is “the country, the issue that has divided international media, international politicians more than anything” but she emphasized; “I think it’s really important that we let our colleagues inside Gaza as well as in the region know that we stand with them, that we are there to support them, so that we can make sure that press freedom and journalists are protected not just at this crucial moment in Gaza but also globally at a time when journalists are under threat everywhere.” (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
