Hamas: Israel silencing journalists to bury the truth about Gaza
Hamas has condemned Israel’s continued aggression against journalists, describing it as a systematic campaign aimed at suppressing voices that reveal the regime’s crimes against the people of Gaza.
As the world marks World Press Freedom Day on May 3, Palestinian media workers remain under Israel’s deadly attacks.
The Palestinian resistance group said in a statement on Saturday that the regime’s forces are deliberately targeting journalists to hide the reality of their crimes against the people of Gaza.
Israel’s continued crimes against Palestinian media, it said, reveal the extent of the regime’s “fear of the media’s impact and its role in exposing its crimes and aggression against our people.”
“The freedom of journalists to convey our people’s suffering to the world and expose the crimes of the occupation is a right guaranteed by all international conventions,” it said.
Yet, Hamas said, Israel “continues to flagrantly violate this right with complete impunity.”
Since the Israeli regime launched its genocidal war on Gaza in October 2023, “212 Palestinian journalists have been martyred,” said the statement.
And “more than 177 have been subjected to arbitrary arrest, with at least 49 currently imprisoned in Israeli jails.”
“Dozens of Gaza-based journalists have also been forcibly disappeared, reportedly enduring extreme torture, abuse, starvation, and medical neglect,” Hamas said.
The resistance group called on “rights and legal groups worldwide to take their responsibilities, reclaim their true role, resist the pressure exerted by the occupation, work to criminalize and expose the occupation’s violations against Palestinian journalists, and press for the immediate release of all those detained in the occupation’s prison.”
A joint statement released by the Palestinian Prisoners Society (PPS), the Commission of Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners, and Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association said Israel has killed more than 200 journalists and kidnapped about 180 others over the past 18 months.
Israel, it said, continues to hold 49 of them.
The statement said the regime has escalated “the assassination operations on journalists” in an unprecedented manner since Oct.7, 2023.
“The targeting of Palestinian journalists has been and remains one of the most prominent policies of the occupation throughout its history.”
The killing of journalists in Gaza is probably deliberate, according to Ajith Sunghay, representative of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Sunghay said the Palestinian territory is one of the deadliest places in the world for reports.
