Journalists can find alternate routes to push to enter. If they tried to enter through the Rafah border, when it was open, they would have gotten in. The reality is that no international organization is willing to send its foreign journalists into Gaza, because after they conduct the risk assessments, they realize there is no ability to actually guarantee any kind of protection, because there isn’t any place that is safe. There isn’t one media office in Gaza, whether local or international or foreign, that has not been targeted since the first week of the war. It’s not even by coincidence or in the midst of fighting. No, it’s happened systematically. Media offices were completely destroyed.

The fact that news organizations are not willing to take the risk to enter Gaza is an implicit acknowledgment of the reality that it isn’t a safe place to be and that journalists are not protected there—and yet those same news organizations are not acknowledging that reality directly, openly, and reporting about the way it is. Beyond newsrooms, press freedom organizations have the ability to place governmental pressure, international pressure to impose sanctions of some kind on Israel. We need to see something other than verbal condemnation. We’ve passed the point of verbal condemnation. We’ve passed the point where we have reports and we’ve documented this. We need something that’s solid on the ground. How can I get back my rights after everything that Israel has committed against me as a journalist? I’m not talking as a Palestinian civilian or a mother, I’m talking about as a journalist, doing my job in my press vest.

Journalists in Western newsrooms could strike. They could refuse to work until some sort of substantive demand for a policy change at these institutions is fulfilled. What could this policy change be? Perhaps a disclaimer at the bottom, or within, every article that quotes Israeli authorities that Israel has killed far more journalists in Gaza than anywhere in the world since the Committee to Protect Journalists started keeping records, and therefore the veracity of any statement is dubious. Perhaps it could be an open-ended strike in solidarity with Palestinian journalists. 

Ultimately, mass resignations by journalists and media workers in protest of the killing of their colleagues and the relative silence of their newsrooms on the subject of Israel’s genocide would go a long way toward not only highlighting the devastation, but also bringing down a media system that can no longer be reformed, but that needs to be dismantled and replaced.

Every single news outlet—TV, print, radio—before and after every report that is Gaza-related, should state something like “Israel is banning journalists from entering Gaza.” Al Jazeera English does this, regarding their not being permitted to report from Israel. I would add the number of journalists and media workers killed to that introduction, as well as the starvation and deliberate-killing numbers. It will add thirty seconds or three sentences, but repetition is important. Outlets should have been doing this all along. 

There is also something to be said about basically banning Israeli government and military voices from air and print until they let the press into Gaza: “We won’t air or use your statements until you let us in to see for ourselves.” No government spokespeople, no Israeli Defense Forces spokespeople on TV, no big statements from them refuting everything. There should be no room in the media for “there is no starvation in Gaza” or “Hamas is stealing the aid” until Israel lets the media in, and not on some manufactured IDF dog and pony show. Just let them in and allow them to report independently.

There should be sanctions on Israeli officials responsible for attacks on the press. When Saudi Arabia murdered Jamal Khashoggi, in 2018, the United States, Canada, and several European countries imposed sanctions on Saudi officials. The European Union sanctioned senior Russian officials in response to the persecution of journalists. The US sanctioned Belarusian officials in 2021 after the state’s forced landing of a Ryanair flight to arrest Roman Protasevich, a dissident journalist. Such measures send a clear signal: attacks on the press are attacks on democracy, and they carry a price. Yet when governments, the EU, or the International Court of Justice assess Israel’s actions, the global press freedom community has too often failed to insist that killing journalists and destroying media infrastructure be treated explicitly as human rights violations in the context of these legal reviews—an omission that risks normalizing the idea that attacks on the press are somehow separate from, or lesser than, other abuses.

Newsrooms are also empowered to act. When a journalist in Gaza is killed or silenced, their work should not die with them. Newsrooms worldwide should take up their last story, give it space in their own pages, and publish it prominently—not buried in the back, but on the front page, above the fold. International news outlets—from the New York Times to Le Monde to El País—could produce coordinated editions, and feature blank column spaces and joint op-eds, naming the victim and the government responsible. Such actions should not be symbolic mourning alone, but a collective act of defiance—a reminder to those in power that silencing one reporter will only make their story louder.

I wonder if a bunch of newspapers would all print a page that just highlighted pictures of journalists who have been killed by Israeli forces and called on the Israeli government to stop killing journalists. News publications could also use the image on social media, have it on their website, maybe even change their logos on social media. The more, the better.

Protect the work of the journalists here—their coverage from Gaza should be saved and kept from being deleted, because you know that the Israelis are going after the Palestinian narrative and trying to delete it, as we see with Meta and Instagram—how they are banning, blocking, and deleting Palestinian content. So, maybe creating a platform that could gather all of those stories and narratives from Gaza, to keep it safe from the risk of being banned and deleted.

Having no international journalists in Gaza is both a blessing and a curse. It’s mainly a curse, but it’s a blessing because it’s shielded us from rampant levels of obfuscation and willful misinterpretation of what’s happening. Ultimately, I think that more journalists need to be in Gaza not because we are missing the truth or that we need somebody to tell the truth. I think we need to have international bodies on the ground because, unfortunately, that is the only way Israel will lessen the blow, and the devastation of Palestinians—because international journalists’ lives are simply worth more in the public sphere.

There could be a flotilla or some kind of march toward the Rafah border—if two hundred, three hundred journalists just went to Egypt and walked toward the river crossing. Even if it were stopped by the Egyptian forces, that would be a news item and drive massive attention.

We were working on something like this starting in 2023 with a group of Egyptian journalists. It was going to be a convoy of activists and journalists and diplomats. But it never crystallized because of security concerns. We were mainly Arab, with “weak” passports. I think it’s a different question if we’re talking about foreign nationals.

An idea that I would have to keep journalists safe—though it’s impossible and ridiculous to even think this—is: for every Palestinian journalist, you send a journalist from the West. The Westerner would have to stand right next to the Palestinian, sleep next to them. Because Israel and the powers that be in Western nations obviously value Western journalists more than Palestinian journalists.

How are we going to get them in there? You’re talking about Western journalists heading to the border of Egypt, Israel, and present-day Palestine, and just basically putting their lives on the line and trying to walk through that border and force their way in—because there’s no other way in. Bring in the most influential Western journalists—an Anderson Cooper, a Wolf Blitzer—along with some politicians. Put some bodies on the line that Israel would be afraid to attack.

It would be useful if the International Criminal Court prosecutor were to file war crime charges explicitly about Israel’s killing of journalists, because killing journalists has a compounding effect by closing the eyes and ears of the world and enabling Israel to commit more war crimes and even genocide. Journalists are already protected as civilians, but by singling out the targeting of journalists, the ICC prosecutor would also spotlight their potential deterrent effect—because when journalists are watching, warring parties tend to behave better.

If journalists are being killed simply because of Israel’s indiscriminate warfare, it would be difficult to single out journalists in war crimes charges. But if cases can be identified where journalists were specifically targeted, those would be cases that could be brought. It would underscore that journalists, like all civilians, are protected, but that journalists are serving a function that protects other civilians.

Clearly, pressuring the US government is borderline useless at this point, and unless Benjamin Netanyahu personally insults Donald Trump in some way, the administration will continue to facilitate the targeting and killing of journalists. To the extent they can, advocacy organizations should increasingly pressure European governments and the European Union in general to make the protection of journalists on the ground and access to the war zone a key red line in any diplomatic or trade negotiations. Given that the US has granted total support to this travesty, until EU countries and the rest of the world take a united and hard-line stance, these crimes will continue.

In order to pressure Israel into allowing foreign press and to stop targeting Palestinian journalists, foreign journalists and media, especially in the West, can refuse to platform Israeli officials and stop treating their statements as fact. Rely instead on Palestinian journalists on the ground and center Palestinian voices in order to help bring awareness, give Palestinian journalists more access to large platforms, and amplify their public profiles. Journalists can publicly condemn Israel’s targeting and killing of their Palestinian colleagues and stop treating the Israeli government, which is currently committing genocide, as a reliable source of information.

More than two hundred journalists have been killed in Gaza—some of them were affiliated with major international outlets, or working as freelancers supporting global media. In solidarity with those who have lost their lives and those who continue to report under extreme danger, news organizations could coordinate a one-hour global media pause across print, broadcast, and digital platforms. During this hour, regular programming or content would be replaced by a unified message such as “Journalism is not a crime,” along with information on journalists killed in Gaza and international journalists’ lack of access to the Strip. Media platforms would display a blackout screen or a full-page message during the campaign. Newspapers could use a blackout front page or banner.

This campaign would aim to raise international awareness about the risks faced by journalists in Gaza, highlight the ongoing denial of access to foreign media, and increase diplomatic pressure to uphold press freedom as a fundamental right.

Just as media organizations and news outlets receive awards for their impact, it’s nonsensical to ignore the reality that they are also responsible for harm. It’s this harm that should be named and shamed, by an international watchdog that tracks violations of media norms and ethics as well as malpractice, offering breakdowns of these practices by journalists, specific news pieces and longer-form stories, or, in extreme cases, entire newsrooms. There are no shared credentials in our profession, which has allowed journalists with histories of violations to continue practices with detrimental—and in Palestine’s case, deadly—consequences without themselves facing repercussions. This watchdog changes that. In Gaza, journalists from Western outlets have shaped ongoing conflicts in favor of one party and given cushion to perpetrators, which is a betrayal of the norm of fairness. They have also parroted government narratives without critical context of past falsehoods and ongoing, proven war crimes, which is a betrayal of the norm of accuracy. Employing active Israeli military-affiliated people as reporters without disclosures is a betrayal of the norm of conflict of interest, and feeds into other professional violations. And misrepresenting and/or omitting major events from coverage altogether—air strikes, starvation, Israeli declarations of intent to commit genocide and prevent distribution of aid—demonstrates inequitable editorial decision-making and facilitates what is now a genocide. Years down the line, the media will be called to account for its role in the extermination of Gaza, and this watchdog would be part of that reckoning.

There are several places we can exert pressure. Primarily, we can place pressure on the systems of international law and justice—we’re witnessing a violation of international law coupled with impunity that allows these violations to continue. Some two hundred journalists and media workers have been killed since October 2023, and we’ve collected evidence that at least forty-six have been specifically targeted. That problem started before October 7: no one was arrested for the murder of Shireen Abu Akleh, a Palestinian American journalist who was killed in 2022. The RSF is pushing for the ICC to acknowledge Israel’s war crimes against journalists and asking the court to investigate. We are helping the victims represent themselves before the court. We ran a petition condemning the violence; more than two hundred journalism outlets signed on. We are reaching out to the United Nations Security Council to apply Resolution 2222, which specifically demands protection for journalists covering war zones. We should also continue to pressure NGOs, activists, politicians, and governments. RSF is calling for the European Union to break its association with Israel and demanding the liberation of the Al Jazeera journalists.

Importantly, we need to speak to journalists on the ground in Gaza. We need to humanize them and their experiences. Many Palestinian journalists are considered “terrorists until proven otherwise.” But for RSF, we always use the same metrics to check the integrity of the journalists we advocate for and defend: journalists can’t actively advocate violence, can’t carry weapons, but opinions are allowed and an important part of journalism. I have never seen such questions from the West about who is and isn’t a journalist. But defending the journalists in Gaza is a service to democracies everywhere.

We, as a profession, need to adapt to these times or we aren’t going to exist as a profession. Direct action—a flotilla, a march, a convoy, or just trying to breach the border—these are all useful ideas, but journalists, as a whole, don’t normally think this way. It is seen as making yourself part of the story or as some stunt. But we are living in extreme times now, and we have to think outside the box. For this profession to survive in a real or meaningful way, we are going to have to shift our mindset as journalists. It can’t just be ad hoc, conflict to conflict, reinventing the wheel. We need to alter our mindset and make structural changes to how we operate and how we advocate, or we will watch our colleagues be wiped out in place after place and conflict after conflict.

In 2023, on the one-year anniversary of Shireen Abu Akleh’s killing, CPJ released a report, “Deadly Pattern,” about twenty journalists killed by Israeli military fire over a period of twenty-two years, including some non-Palestinian journalists. And during that time, not a single Israeli soldier had faced any accountability. So we’re talking about decades of impunity, of Israel targeting and killing journalists who are doing their jobs. 

I personally don’t have faith in the Israeli court process. It was only cases that were very high-profile or that involved non-Palestinian journalists where there was enough pressure to even have them be investigated—but even then, there was no accountability. So I think it’ll have to be the international court system. There needs to be war crimes investigations—there needs to be a process by which to hold them to account—because that’s the only way of stopping this.

We need an international, independent investigation that I think should be launched by the leading press freedom groups and other interested entities. They would be able to establish and spread the word that this is the worst atrocity for journalists in recorded history. Most of those who have been killed have been victims of war crimes. We’re not going to get any tribunals, but what we could do is contribute reporting on this situation, and show that violating Palestinians’ rights is weakening international humanitarian law. 

The experts should include people with military skills and tactical skills, so they can talk about proportionality. Because whether an attack is indiscriminate enough to be considered a war crime is all about two things: intent and proportionality. The problem is that Israel is weakening the rule of international humanitarian law through its actions, and we’re collaborating in that weakening by not calling it out. We should treat Palestinian journalists the same way we would treat Western journalists getting killed at this rate.

Many journalists in Gaza and the West Bank have had their equipment or offices vandalized or destroyed by Israeli soldiers, which has left them with no choice but to turn to social media. Western media outlets should be more open-minded when it comes to publishing the narratives of Palestinian writers who have been driven to post their reporting on social platforms.

That requires the press to make it a priority to amplify the voices of Palestinian journalists. I believe what Prism and The Nation, for instance, have done in setting guidelines and building partnerships with those who cover the genocide should be adopted by other publications. Media hubs, such as the Movement Media Alliance/Media Against Apartheid and Displacement, and other outlets that have shown they are focused on intentional journalism should serve as models as well.

We need to provide historical context. We have a tradition we’ve identified in genocide studies: we call them hidden genocides. We need to understand that, historically, countries turn a blind eye while genocides are happening—then, sometimes, acknowledge the atrocities later. This is a legacy and happens again and again. For a recent example, there was very little in the mainstream media about Yemen, where hundreds of thousands have died, or before that about East Timor, where the media turned their backs on genocide in the mid-seventies; in Indonesia, in the sixties, the media actually celebrated the massacre of almost a million “communists,” and in Congo, a mixture of mineral interests and guilt from past failures makes the conflict too hard to report out. This continues about anywhere that the US has interests, and provides support to the perpetrators.

Overall, journalists tend to side with Israel. This is why, without question, they adopted many of the now-debunked lies in the early days of October 2023, and why many still use techniques—passive voice, playing up protest, etc.—as they cannot accept that the State of Israel is a racist, fascist, genocidal state to its core. And not just this government. 

Journalists have to stop repeating whatever the Israeli government and army are stating. For example, parroting—even critically—the statements that people “are Hamas” is lending credibility to their statements. Journalists are not targets unless they are actually in combat. Anas al-Sharif was killed in a tent—clearly not in combat. I suggest that journalists stop interviewing or giving space to these Israeli spokespeople. Don’t be embedded.

An important stream of activism is action taken by professional associations and individuals against colleagues who abuse basic professional ethics. This is something that should be explored in the journalistic profession. Work can be done to introduce obligations and prohibitions that would prevent serious breaches of solidarity among journalists. Take, for example, the case of a news channel that cheers the destruction of a TV studio. Does that have any implications for how that news channel is received by international organizations of journalists, by other media outlets? Could there be a campaign to put pressure on, maybe even boycott that channel? This may also apply to journalists and channels who incite crimes. Apart from the criminal aspect, there must be disciplinary action and consequences.

Journalists outside in the West and all across the globe must support Palestinian journalists in Gaza financially and nonfinancially. Media outlets commissioning the work of journalists in Gaza, even on a freelance basis, must pressure Israel and tell them that those journalists are working for their organizations on the ground and they should be protected. Those journalists ought to be paid double the original rates—because in Gaza, prices are so high and people have to pay loads and loads of money to continue to survive. Have their back all the time—do not leave them alone, provide them with what they need, and make sure they are safe to continue reporting, because there’s not been a more traumatizing environment for journalists to work in than in Gaza.