100+ Journalists Push Blinken to 'Immediately Cease' Arms Transfers to Israel

A coalition of individual journalists, news outlets, and press freedom organizations sent a letter Thursday imploring U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to immediately halt all American weapons sales to the far-right Israeli government as the official death toll from its assault on the Gaza Strip surpassed 40,000.

"Israel's military actions are not possible without U.S. weapons, U.S. military aid, and U.S. diplomatic support," reads the new letter, which was organized by the Courage Foundation, Defending Rights & Dissent, and RootsAction.

"By providing the weapons being used to deliberately kill journalists," the letter continues, "you are complicit in one of the gravest affronts to press freedom today."

Letter signatories include Pulitzer Price-winning journalists Spencer Ackerman and Laura Poitras, WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson, Tareq Hajjaj of Mondoweiss, and Ryan Grim of Drop Site News, along with around 100 others.

Current Affairs, In These Times, and Middle East Eye were among the news outlets that backed the letter, which was released less than 48 hours after the U.S. State Department approved a $20 billion sale of additional weapons and other military equipment to the Israeli government—including dozens of F-15 fighter jets and tens of thousands of mortar shells.

"By providing Israel the weapons it uses to kill Palestinian journalists, the U.S. is complicit in these horrifying crimes," Chip Gibbons, policy director of Defending Rights & Dissent, said in a statement Thursday. "It is not enough for the State Department to issue words of concern or request Israel investigate its own crimes. That is why in this historic move, journalists, news outlets, and press freedom groups are joining together to tell the State Department that the only way to support press freedom is to impose an arms embargo on Israel."

An arms embargo against Israel has the support of a majority of the U.S. public as well as United Nations experts and leading human rights organizations.

The new letter spotlights the devastating toll Israel's assault has taken on Palestinian journalists, 109 of whom have been killed since October 7, according to the latest tally from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). In a statement on Wednesday, CPJ condemned the Israeli government for trying to smear the journalists it has killed as "terrorists."

Most recently, Israeli forces killedAl Jazeera reporter Ismail al-Ghoul and cameraman Rami al-Rifee in an airstrike on their car in Gaza City. Targeting journalists is a war crime under international law.

"Journalism is not a crime, and must never be a death sentence," Ackerman said Thursday. "When Russia kills and imprisons journalists, the U.S. is appropriately vocal in condemnation, but when Israel does it, the U.S. falls silent. Yet every Palestinian, Lebanese, American—remember Shireen Abu Akleh—and other journalist that Israel has killed implicates its patron, the United States, which possesses the leverage to stop Israel's onslaught."

The press freedom coalition wrote to Blinken on Thursday that "the U.S. is providing the weapons Israel continually uses to target Palestinian journalists in Gaza."

"This is a violation of international law and U.S. domestic law," the letter continues. "We urge you to immediately cease the transfer of all weapons to Israel."