Israel has assassinated almost 270 Palestinian journalists.

"if these words reach you, know that Israel has succeeded in killing me and silencing my voice." - Anas al-Sharif.

In a targeted assassination attack on August 10, Israel bombed a gathering of journalists outside al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City in another heinous crime as part of its ongoing genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza.

Israel's pattern of murdering Palestinian journalists and their extended families is aimed at suppressing coverage of its livestreamed genocide and creating a media blackout ahead of its plan to commit further atrocities.

Honour their voices by amplifying them and by joining the global majority in supporting a complete boycott of genocidal Israel and the corporations and institutions that are complicit in its crimes.

In that fatal attack Israel murdered Al Jazeera reporters Anas al-Sharif and Mohmamed Qreiqeh, and camera operators Moamen Aliwa, Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammad Khaldi and Mohammed Noufal. Since the beginning of its genocide, Israel has murdered almost 270 Palestinian journalists and media workers.
More journalists have been killed in Gaza since October 2023 than in the US Civil War, World Wars I and II, the Korean War, Vietnam War, the wars in the former Yugoslavia and the post-9/11 war in Afghanistan – combined.⁠

Israel has sought to suppress coverage of its atrocities in Gaza by adopting a two-fold strategy: preventing international journalists from entering Gaza to report freely and assassinating the most impactful Palestinian journalists in Gaza after threatening them that unless they stopped reporting they and their families would be killed, as reported by several Palestinian journalists.

This latest murder is part of a consistent pattern of Israeli violent attacks against Palestinian journalists, and to a lesser extent international journalists covering Palestine, revealing the brutalities of Israel's 77-year-old regime of settler-colonialism and apartheid.

Even now, more than 22 months into Israel's genocide, most mainstream Western media coverage, with some notable recent exceptions, remains as racist and dehumanizing towards Palestinians as ever — and as supportive of Israel's genocide, leading a former senior UN human rights official to say:

"The repeated non-critical recitation of false, dehumanizing Israeli propaganda by western media is not sloppy journalism -- it is war propaganda and incitement to genocide for which they must be held accountable as their media counterparts were in the Nuremberg and Rwanda tribunals."

Justice for Anas, Mohmamed, Moamen, Mohammed, Ibrahim and Mohammed, and for the tens of thousands massacred or maimed by apartheid Israel during its genocide in Gaza, demands far more than mere condemnation. It starts with ending all business-as-usual with Israel, ending all forms of complicity in its regime of colonial oppression. Without unprecedented measures of accountability and lawful sanctions against it, starting with a comprehensive military embargo, Israel will set a new norm of might-makes-right, where powerful states can perpetrate a livestreamed genocide against weaker nations and racialized communities with utter impunity.

In response to Israel's targeted killing of almost 270 Palestinian journalists in Gaza, and many others elsewhere, Palestinian civil society urges media professionals as well as local/national journalist syndicates and federations to take concrete action, including:

• Ending ties with complicit Israeli institutions.
• Pledging to refuse junkets to Israel funded by the Israeli government, complicit Israeli institutions and Israel lobby groups.
• Supporting journalists who refuse to cover assignments in Israel on ethical grounds.
• Supporting the IFJ case before the ICC on Israel's systematic targeting of Palestinian journalists.
• Pledging to respect the ethical and professional journalistic guidelines developed by the Palestinian Journalists' Syndicate and the Palestinian BDS National Committee.
• Pledging to center Palestinian voices and eyewitnesses instead of centering Israeli government and military spokespersons.

We urge media studies and journalism faculties and departments to:

• Respect the Palestinian BDS call by ending ties with complicit Israeli institutions.
• Refuse to host official representatives of complicit Israeli institutions.

Silencing Palestinian journalists is silencing the truth. The genocidal perpetrators must face serious consequences. Journalists and media organizations worldwide have an ethical obligation to cut ties with Israel and its regime of apartheid and genocide or be held complicit with it.