Al Jazeera urges international community to safeguard journalists in Gaza
It says that as the brave journalists continue to document the harrowing realities in Gaza, they are often overlooked, reduced to mere informants rather than being acknowledged as witnesses to their own stories
Al Jazeera Media Network has urgently called the journalistic community, press freedom organisations, and relevant legal bodies to take decisive action to halt the forced starvation and crimes against journalists and media professionals in Gaza.
According to Al Jazeera, journalists have courageously journalists on the ground have been courageously reporting the ongoing genocide for the last 21 months, risking their lives and the safety of their families to shed light on these atrocities, yet they now find themselves fighting for their survival.
The International news outlet says that as the brave journalists continue to document the harrowing realities in Gaza, they are often overlooked, reduced to mere informants rather than being acknowledged as witnesses to their own stories.
“We owe it to the courageous journalists in Gaza to amplify their voices and put an end to the unbearable suffering they are enduring due to forced starvation and targeted killings by Israeli occupation forces,” Mostefa Souag, Director General of Al Jazeera Media Network, commenting on the plight of journalists in Gaza, stated.
“The journalistic community and the world bear an immense responsibility; it is our duty to raise our voices and mobilize all available means to support our colleagues in this noble profession. If we fail to act now, we risk a future where there may be no one left to tell our stories. Our inaction will be recorded in history as a monumental failure to protect our fellow journalists and a betrayal of the principles that every journalist strives to uphold,” he added.
This comes as at least 232 journalists, including five from Al Jazeera, among otherm Samer Abudaqa, Hamza Dahdouh, Ismail al-Ghoul, Ahmed al-Louh, and Hossam Shabat, and many of the family members of Al Jazeera and other journalists have been killed by Israeli forces.
It makes an average of 13 journalists being killed per month – making it the deadliest conflict for media workers ever recorded.
“Yet, these courageous journalists, along with their colleagues, refuse to succumb to the threats and pressure tactics employed by the Israeli authorities to silence them,” Souag said.
He said submission to such intimidation would have resulted in an almost total blackout of coverage of the ongoing genocide, forced starvation, and crimes against humanity inflicted upon the civilian population of Gaza.
