NWU Stands Unrelentingly with Gazan Journalists
by National Writers Union, October 10, 2024
“Every day that this war goes on, our commitment to Palestinian journalists and PJS grows stronger. They will not surrender and neither will we.”
The National Writers Union (NWU) unequivocally condemns Israel’s ongoing, targeted murder of journalists. We are exasperated, incensed, and heartbroken over this massacre, with impunity, of our fellow journalists. An attack on one journalist is an attack on all of us, and we implore all newsrooms and unions to treat these murders as they would the murder of colleagues at home. We reiterate our demand for an immediate arms embargo against Israel, and reject the harassment of journalists worldwide for covering and speaking out about Palestinians.
In just the past week, six more Palestinian media workers have been killed or gravely injured:
- On October 6, an Israeli air strike killed 19-year-old Hassan Hamad, a freelance TV reporter, at his home in the Jabalia refugee camp in Northern Gaza, after he was reportedly threatened by an Israeli officer via WhatsApp.
- On October 7, Israeli forces shot another cameraman, Ali Al-Attar; he remains in critical condition.
- On October 9, Israeli snipers shot Fadi Al-Wahidi during a raid of Jabalia Refugee Camp; he was critically injured. Israeli warplanes targeted and killed Al Aqsa TV photojournalist Mohammed Al-Tanani, and injured his colleague, Tamar Lubbad, in North Gaza. The Israeli military also killed Omar Al-Balaawi, a journalist and school teacher.
Since October 7, 2023, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has found that Israeli forces have killed at least 128 media workers, all but five of them Palestinian. In at least five cases, the deaths were a result of intentional attacks. Our sibling union, the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate (PJS), counts more than 150 slain journalists, comprising 10 percent of the Palestinian press corps, and some 200 wounded.
PJS has documented Israel’s targeting of journalists’ workplaces and homes, including surgical air strikes that have killed journalists’ entire families. Israeli forces admitted to killing Ismail al-Ghoul and Rami al-Rifi, but smeared these reporters as “terrorists” to justify their deaths.
More than 100 Palestinian journalists are in Israeli prisons, in Gaza, the West Bank, and Jerusalem, according to PJS. Most have been held on nebulous charges or no charge at all.
“The systematic crimes against journalists have ranged from killing those who bear witness to the truth, to imprisoning and intimidating them,” said Nasser Abu Bakr, president of PJS. “Even more devastatingly, their homes have been destroyed, their families killed, and their media institutions targeted.”
All this is happening against the backdrop of grave media censorship, with the Israeli government continuing to bar international press from accessing the region, repeatedly shutting down the internet, and raiding and shuttering offices. Meanwhile, Western outlets have been muted in condemning these crimes against our colleagues and our profession.
“While Palestinian journalists are being silenced with bullets, many US journalists are being silenced by firings, intimidation, fear, and self-censorship,” said NWU president Larry Goldbetter. “Every day that this war goes on, our commitment to Palestinian journalists and PJS grows stronger. They will not surrender and neither will we.”
In May, NWU released a report that analyzed 44 cases of retaliation since October 7, 2023, affecting more than 100 people. We found that journalists of color and particularly those of Muslim and Arab descent were disproportionately impacted.
“When management at media organizations keep their employees in the West from critically covering the Israeli government, highlighting extreme violence on social media, or advocating for the protection of their colleagues, they contribute to the escalating violence that is materially affecting the most vulnerable media workers in Gaza,” the report says. “They also risk undermining several core journalistic imperatives—including the imperative to minimize harm. In other words, retaliation is just as much a media ethics issue as it is a labor issue.”
We again call on our colleagues in newsrooms and unions across the US to demand an end to these murders and an end to the arming of Israel.
