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Guest Essay
By Kavitha Chekuru
Ms. Chekuru is a journalist and a producer of a documentary investigation into the killings of civilians in Israeli military attacks in Gaza.
Hunted.
That is how Hossam Shabat recently described his life as a journalist in northern Gaza.
Just days earlier, the Israeli military accused him and five other Al Jazeera journalists of being fighters in Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The accusations, which the network has said are “baseless” and which Mr. Shabat and the others have denied, effectively put targets on these journalists and come amid a horrific recent Israeli offensive in northern Gaza. In the past month, this small group of journalists has provided important documentation of what the United Nations human rights chief has said are possible “crimes against humanity.”
At least 129 Palestinian journalists and media workers have been killed since the war in Gaza started last year, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists; the Gaza media office puts that number much higher, at 188. This has been the deadliest year for journalists since the C.P.J. began recording the numbers in 1992. The group has said that in the first 10 weeks of the war, more journalists were killed than had been killed in any country over an entire year.
The C.P.J. has also determined that five journalists who were killed, including one in Lebanon, were “directly targeted” by Israeli forces, and the organization is investigating more than 20 others. (The Israel Defense Forces has repeatedly denied targeting journalists.)
The record number of journalists killed has been met with little response from Israel’s most important ally, the United States. The Biden administration has powerful tools to help pursue accountability for these killings. It could ensure independent investigations, enforce the Leahy law, which prohibits the United States from assisting foreign military units suspected of having committed human rights abuses, or even impose sanctions, which it did for far less just a few months ago in response to a Georgian law that could limit press freedoms.
Decades of........