PALESTINIAN journalists who are "reporting on their own extermination" have issued an urgent call for action to their colleagues in the media.
It comes ahead of a major press conference on Thursday evening hosted by former BBC journalist Karishma Patel, who left the corporation last October because of its coverage on Gaza.
The conference, being held in Palestine House in London, will call for accountability from Western media outlets, as well urging these outlets to employ Gazan journalists and to push for international reporters to be allowed entry into Gaza to report on the genocide.
Journalists are also set to call on the media to "apply journalistic principles to coverage and no longer launder Israeli propaganda".
"The BBC has failed to do its job, it has failed to hold Israel to account."
Of the journalists from the UK and Palestine set to attend the conference on Thursday evening include Assel Mousa, an award-winning Palestinian journalist who has been published in The Guardian, Middle East Eye, The Telegraph and CNN.
Mousa said: "Hundreds of journalists and their families have been killed, or threatened to be killed. Every story I write affects me very personally – it is psychologically and physically exhausting to report on your people being killed by Israel, yet we have no time to grieve.
"These people are not numbers, they are people."
Mousa added: "The bias of the Western Media has provided cover for the Israeli genocide in Gaza, which is why myself and my Gazan colleagues must continue to do this heartbreaking and relentless work and report on our own attempted extermination.
"Our stories and our voices are victories our Western colleagues must support”.
Youssef Hammash, a co-producer on the Gaza: How To Survive A Warzone documentary, which was removed from BBC iPlayer after a row surrounding the child narrator – whose father had worked as Hamas’s deputy minister of agriculture – said it is currently "the deadliest time for Palestinian journalists in history".
“There is a moral imperative that Gaza’s journalists receive international protection, access, support, and global outrage for their systematic targeting that translates into definitive action," he said.
"This is the deadliest time for Palestinian journalists in history, yet day in and day out they continue, despite the great risk to their safety and the safety of their families.
“No journalist should have to anticipate their own demise as an inevitability because their entire field is being targeted.
"We owe Palestinian journalists material assurances so they can continue to carry out their invaluable work with dignity”.
The conference coincides with the final evening of a three-day mourning vigil held in honour of the six journalists who were targeted and killed in an Israeli strike on Sunday evening, including prominent Al Jazeera reporter Anas Al-Sharif, who had previously been threatened by Israel.
Israel’s military confirmed killing al-Sharif and alleged he was with Hamas – an accusation Al Jazeera has denied.
Reflecting on the killing of Al-Sharif and his colleagues, Palestinian journalist and human rights advocate Yara Eid said: “Anas Al-Sharif was not just a journalist, Anas was a son, Anas was a father, Anas was a husband. He was a fighter for freedom – he refused to stay silent and be scared by the threats of Israel. He risked his life so other Palestinian children would not go through what his children are going through.
"Anas refused to stop talking about the genocide. He asked for his killing to support the freedom for Palestine – who will answer this man’s dying wishes?
Eid added: "The Western Media owes Anas and his martyred colleagues the minimum dignity of reporting their deaths with journalistic integrity."
According to a report published earlier this year, the genocide in Gaza is the deadliest conflict for media workers ever recorded.
The report from The Watson School of International and Public Affairs found the death toll of journalists is higher than the combined toll of casualties in the US Civil War, World War One, World War Two, the Korean War, the Vietnam War – including the conflicts in Cambodia and Laos – the Yugoslav Wars, the war in Afghanistan and the ongoing war in Ukraine.
The Committee to Protect Journalists estimates that since the start of the genocide on October 7, 2023, at least 192 journalists have been killed.
At least 184 of those journalists were Palestinians killed by Israel.
