Journalists should not be targeted in conflict flashpoints, the Embassy of the State of Palestine in Cyprus said on Monday, following the death of three more journalists in Gaza a day earlier.
In a press release, the embassy said the media “are all we have left to record the destruction of our land and the ethnic cleansing of our people”.
It added: “It is no accident that the apartheid state of Israel targets journalists…their plan to execute the free flow of information is known, as the number of murdered journalists in Gaza has reached 110.
“The Israeli occupation state is killing our people daily, but at the same time it is killing the right to be informed.”
The Palestine embassy went on to urge reporters who respect their vocation “to rise up and demand justice” for their colleagues. It also called on the media in general “not to become accomplices in the crime.
“No financial, personal or political gain justifies remaining silent.”
A day earlier, health officials in Gaza and the journalists’ union there had said an Israeli air strike in Rafah killed two Palestinian journalists and wounded a third.
The two killed were named as Hamza Al-Dahdouh and Mustafa Thuraya. Al-Dahdouh had done freelance work for Al Jazeera and was the son of the Qatar-based TV station’s chief correspondent in Gaza, Wael Al-Dahdouh. A third freelancer, Hazem Rajab, was wounded.
A video posted on an Al Jazeera-linked YouTube channel showed Wael Al-Dahdouh crying next to his son’s body and holding his hand. Later, after his son’s burial, he said in televised remarks that journalists in Gaza would keep doing their job.
“All the world needs to see what is happening here,” he said.
Wael Al-Dahdouh is particularly well known to viewers across the Middle East after he learned during a live broadcast last month that his wife, another son, daughter and grandson had been killed in an Israeli air strike.