They had no weapons in their hands. His work tools were photo or video cameras, microphones, notebooks or a simple mobile phone, like his or mine. Many were clearly identified with a blue helmet and bulletproof vest and a word in white letters: Press. They were journalists and have died in the war between Israel and Hamas at the rate of one a day since October 7.
In the two months of conflict, 63 informants have died: 56 Palestinians, four Israelis and three Lebanese. The Committee to Protect Journalists, based in New York, keeps the ominous account and assures that it has not seen any conflict so lethal for journalists before.
No Western media is reporting independently with its journalists from inside the Strip and Israel has confirmed to the international agencies Reuters (British) and AFP (French) that if they send journalists to Gaza it cannot guarantee their safety since Hamas is deliberately places them next to journalists and civilians. The Palestinian reporters trapped in the Strip – like the rest of the civilians – are therefore helpless. Like the journalist Mohamed Abu Hatab, who died from Israeli bombings along with 11 other members of his family.
“International journalists are prohibited from entering Gaza. The journalists inside have no safe shelter or possibility of leaving. They are being murdered one after another,” denounced Jonathan Dagher, Middle East head of Reporters Without Borders (RSF).
“In a classic war, like in Syria, Iraq or the former Yugoslavia, we did not see this type of massacre” of journalists, denounced Anthony Bellanger, secretary general of the International Federation of Journalists.
They are part of the thousands of civilian victims of the atrocious terrorist attack by Hamas that caused 1,200 deaths and, in a much larger number, of the merciless response from Israel, which totals more than 17,000 deaths in a Gaza in which more than half of the population has already lost their homes.
The lives of journalists are not worth more than those of the rest of the civilian victims of the conflict, thousands of children among them, but the death of dozens of journalists in the field limits the ability for the rest of the world to know the magnitude of the tragedy of Loop.
