Global Media Outlets Push Israel to​ Give Journalists Independent Access to Gaza

More than 70 global media and civil society organizations on Thursday signed an open letter urging Israel to open access to Gaza for international journalists.

In the letter, published by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), the news organizations argue that Israel’s policy of highly restricting access to Gaza "has placed an impossible and unreasonable burden on local reporters to document a war through which they are living." More than 100 Palestinian journalists have been killed during Israel’s nine-month assault on the enclave, according to CPJ.

The signatories included major U.S.-based outlets such as CBS, NBC, ABC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Bloomberg News, as well as prominent organizations from at least 25 other countries.

The letter describes "a free and independent press" as the "cornerstone of democracy," and calls into question Israeli leaders' commitment to press freedom—international journalists are only allowed access to Gaza in carefully guided tours.

"[Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu describes Israel as a democracy. His actions with regard to the media tell a different story," CPJ CEO Jodie Ginsberg said in a statement that accompanied the letter. "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 Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the largest Muslim civil liberties group in the United States, praised the letter and called for the U.S. government to use its leverage to demand that Israel open up media access to Gaza.

"Israel's far-right government has blocked international media access to Gaza and murdered local media professionals in a cynical effort to keep the world from witnessing its ongoing genocide, ethnic cleansing, mass destruction, and forced starvation," CAIR communications director Ibrahim Hooper said in a statement. "The Biden administration, the main enabler of Israel's genocide, must live up to its claims that it supports press freedom and demand that Israel allow free access by the international media to Gaza."

Thursday's calls follow months of international pleas for the protection of Palestinian journalists and increased media access to Gaza. In January, CPJ and other organizations called on the Biden administration to pressure the Israeli government to make conditions safer for journalists in Gaza. In February, prominent journalists from U.K. and U.S. media outlets issued a call for access to Gaza.

Since the war began, Reporters Without Borders has filed multiple complaints to the International Criminal Court alleging "war crimes against journalists in Gaza." And last month, the nonprofit newsroom Forbidden Stories released an investigation that suggested the Israel military may have in fact been targeting some of the Gazan journalists it killed.

Thursday's open letter came about a week after the Israeli military took a small number of journalists, including one from The Wall Street Journal, into Rafah in open vehicles. The WSJ, which didn't sign the new letter, then published a piece of on-the-ground reporting that quoted Israeli officials but no Palestinians.

The world has relied primarily on Palestinian journalists to share more comprehensive news from the besieged enclave, and the burden they've carried has been immense.

At least 103 have been killed, while 48 have been arrested by Israeli authorities, according to CPJ, which published available details from each case. Two Israeli journalists and three Lebanese journalists have also been killed during the conflict; three Israeli journalists have been arrested by Palestinian authorities.

The journalists still working in Gaza do so "in conditions of extreme deprivation," the open letter states.

"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," it says.

"We ask that Israel uphold its commitments to press freedom by providing foreign media with immediate, independent access to Gaza, and that Israel abides by its international obligations to protect journalists as civilians," the letter concludes.