"Starved, Exhausted": Al Jazeera Calls Upon Media Bodies For "Decisive Action" To Save Journalists In Gaza
Doha, Qatar: International media house Al Jazeera Network on Wednesday appealed to the journalist community, press freedom organizations, and relevant legal organizations to intervene and take decisive action on crimes against journalists and media professionals in war-ravaged Gaza.
In a statement, the media network pointed out that the Israeli bombardment and the systematic starvation of the people of Gaza for the past 21 months have pushed an entire population to the brink of survival, including the journalists. The journalists in Gaza have risked their lives and the safety of their families by courageously reporting from the warzone, the media house pointed out, while underscoring that they now find themselves fighting for their own survival.
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Notably, the news network’s statement comes days after the French news agency, AFP’s journalists’ association, issued a warning that its last remaining journalists in Gaza are facing extreme food shortages and risk starvation under Israel’s ongoing blockade and relentless bombardment. In its statement, the AFP’s journalist body said since the news agency’s origin in 1944, it has lost journalists in conflicts, and have had wounded and prisoners in our ranks, However, the news agency stated, none of them can recall seeing a colleague die of hunger.
Recently, Al Jazeera journalists started flagging concerns, suggesting that their capacity to continue in the war-ravaged strip was waning. It drew attention to a post shared by Anas al-Shariff, Al Jazeera Arabic channel correspondent in Gaza, lamenting that he has not stopped covering news from the ground for a moment in 21 months, but now, he said, he is drowning in hunger, trembling in exhaustion and resisting the fainting that follows him every moment. “Gaza is dying. And we die with it,” the journalist wailed.
The media organization noted that the journalists in Gaza are often overlooked while continuing to document the harrowing realities. “They are reduced to mere informants rather than being acknowledged as witnesses to their own stories,” the statement added.
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Talking about the miserable plight of media professionals in Gaza, Mostefa Souag, director general of Al Jazeera Media Network, said that the network owes it to the courageous journalists in Gaza “to amplify their voices and put an end to the unbearable suffering they are enduring due to forced starvation and targeted killings by Israeli occupation forces.”
Souag regretted that the journalist community and the world bear an immense responsibility to raise their voice and mobilize all available means to support their colleagues in this noble profession. If we fail to act now, we risk a future where there may be no one left to tell our stories. “Our inaction will be recorded in history as a monumental failure to protect our fellow journalists and a betrayal of the principles that every journalist strives to uphold,” he asserted.
The media network in its statement emphasized that submission to intimidation would have resulted in an almost total blackout of coverage of the ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in the besieged strip. “Al Jazeera Media Network calls for immediate action by concerned international organizations to bring an end to this forced starvation that does not spare journalists, who are the bearers of truth,” the media house appealed.
As per reports, at least five Al Jazeera journalists – Samer Abudaqa, Hamza Dahdouh, Ismail al-Ghoul, Ahmed al-Louh, and Hossam Shabat-have been killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza since October 2023.
