Arab News Japan

TOKYO: The Freedom of the Press Committee of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan (FCCJ) has issued a statement calling on all parties in the Israeli-Hamas conflict to avoid targeting journalists and to respect their work.

“Since the conflict began with the attack on Israel by Hamas on October 7, at least 27 journalists have been killed (as of October 26), according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ),” the FCCJ statement said. “Another 17 journalists have been injured or are missing.”

The CPJ says that as the conflict continues, these figures are most certainly an underestimate. Some of the attacks have taken place in the West Bank and neighboring areas that are not directly at war. “That makes the conflict one of the most dangerous for media workers in recent memory,” the FCCJ said.

The statement continued: “Responsibility to protect working journalists falls particularly heavily on the Israeli government and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), which is bombing the densely populated Gaza from the air. Most of the dead or injured are Palestinian. They include Duaa Sharaf of the Hamas-affiliated Radio Al-Aqsa who was killed with her child during an airstrike on her home.”

There are repeated claims that the killings of journalists are orchestrated, a violation of press freedom and international human rights law, according to the Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists Association.“The FCCJ is particularly mindful of the fate of journalists in the conflict following the case of Shireen Abu Akleh, who won the 2023 Freedom of the Press Asia Award. Shireen Abu Akleh was shot dead in the West Bank in 2022. The IDF initially blamed Palestinian gunmen, but independent probes by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and several media organizations concluded she had been killed by Israeli soldiers, almost certainly deliberately. We join our sister organization, the Foreign Press Association, in calling for the IDF ‘to ensure the safety and freedom of reporting of our Palestinian members on the ground in Gaza, who are reporting the news despite extremely dangerous circumstances’.”