Over 70 international media and civil society organizations call on Israel to lift restrictions on foreign media from entering Gaza and allow journalists independent access to report the current Israeli war on the enclave.
Their call have come in a form of a letter to the Israeli government to be granted such access and include prestigious media organizations such as BBC News, The New York Times, the AFP news agency, Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism, and the European Federation of Journalists.
The letter is made in coordination with the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
“More than 100 journalists have been killed since the start of the war and those who remain are working in conditions of extreme deprivation. The result is that information from Gaza is becoming harder and harder to obtain and that the reporting which does get through is subject to repeated questions over its veracity,” the media organizations state in the letter.
The letter stated that after nine months of war on Gaza it is high time the Israeli military grant the international media free access and not through escorted trips arranged by the Israeli military.
“This effective ban on foreign reporting has placed an impossible and unreasonable burden on local reporters to document a war through which they are living.”
CPJ CEO Jodie Ginsberg noted: “President Netanyahu describes Israel as a democracy. His actions with regard to the media tell a different story. International, Israeli, and Palestinian journalists from outside Gaza should be given independent access to Gaza so they can judge for themselves what is happening in this war—rather than being spoon-fed with a handful of organized tours by the Israeli military.”
The full letter is printed on the CPJ website together with the list signatories from at least 26 countries.
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