Quds Press – June 5, 2025 – More than 130 news organizations and press freedom groups have called on Israel to grant international journalists “immediate, independent, and unrestricted” access to Gaza. They also urged full protection for Palestinian journalists working in there with over 200 journalists have been killed by Israeli forces in Gaza over the past 20 months.
At the initiative of Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), more than 130 international news outlets and press freedom groups – including FRANCE 24, RFI and Monte Carlo Doualiya – on Thursday issued a joint appeal, calling Israel’s near-total restrictions on press access to Gaza for 20 months “a situation that is without precedent in modern warfare”.
“Local journalists, those best positioned to tell the truth, face displacement and starvation,” they noted.
To date, 225 Palestinian journalists have been killed by the Israeli forces since the start of the Israeli genocide in October 2023, according to Gaza’s Government Media Office on Thursday.
Many more have been injured and face constant threats to their lives for doing their jobs: bearing witness. “This is a direct attack on press freedom and the right to information,” the letter read.
“At this pivotal moment, with renewed military action and efforts to resume the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza, it is vital that Israel open Gaza’s borders for international journalists to be able to report freely and that Israel abides by its international obligations to protect journalists as civilians.”
Reporters Without Borders said last month in its World Press Freedom Index 2025 that Israeli forces killed nearly 200 journalists and media workers in the first 18 months of its war in Gaza, at least 42 of whom were killed while doing their job, adding that Palestine has become the world’s most dangerous state for journalists amid the Israeli war.
“Trapped in the enclave, journalists in Gaza have no shelter and lack everything, including food and water,” said the Paris-based group, which is also known by its French acronym RSF.
“In the West Bank, journalists are routinely harassed and attacked by both settlers and Israeli forces, but repression reached new heights with a wave of arrests after 7 October, when impunity for crimes committed against journalists became a new rule.”
Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza has been considered the deadliest for journalists and media workers in the world in 30 years.
The Gaza Media Office said that Israel targeted journalists “in an attempt to suppress the Palestinian narrative and erase the truth. However, the occupation failed to break the will of our great people.”
Israel’s assault on Gaza has been the “worst ever conflict” for journalists, according to a recent report by the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs.
The report, titled News Graveyards: How Dangers to War Reporters Endanger the World, said the Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip had “killed more journalists than the US Civil War, World Wars I and II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War (including the conflicts in Cambodia and Laos), the wars in Yugoslavia in the 1990s and 2000s, and the post-9/11 war in Afghanistan, combined”.
“In 2023, a journalist or media worker was, on average, killed or murdered every four days. In 2024, it was once every three days,” said the report.
“Most reporters harmed or killed, as is the case in Gaza, are local journalists.”
The Center for Protecting Palestinian Journalists (PJPS) said that the killing of journalists is part of a series of human rights violations committed by the Israeli occupation.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) chief Jodie Ginsberg said in a statement, “The war in Gaza is unprecedented in its impact on journalists and demonstrates a major deterioration in global norms on protecting journalists in conflict zones, but it is far from the only place journalists are in danger.”
The advocacy group also accused Israel of attempting to stifle investigations into the killings, shift blame onto journalists for their own deaths, and ignoring its duty to hold its own military personnel accountable for the killings of so many media workers.
In a recent report, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) described 2024 as “one of the worst years” for media professionals. It condemned the “massacre taking place in Palestine before the eyes of the entire world.”
