VIDEO - Reporting while risking one's life: Gazan journalists recount to RSF a year of war in Gaza
One year after the start of the war in Gaza, the profession of journalist has become almost impossible in the Palestinian enclave. A handful of media professionals continue their dutie, risking their lives after their colleagues have been forced into exile or killed by the Israeli army. In this exclusive documentary, three Gazan refugee journalists speak for Reporters Without Borders (RSF).
If you allow it to happen to Palestinian journalists today, then it will happen to you tomorrow’
Gazan journalists Adel Al Zaanoon - correspondent for Agence France-Presse (AFP), Ola Al Zaanoon - correspondent for RSF - and Youmna Al-Sayed of Al Jazeera, all three forced into exile, describe their work conditions in front of the lense of RSF.
Intimidations, bullet wounds, arrests, murders - these three experienced professionals describe the threats and psychological pressure they faced as Gazan journalists, in terrible humanitarian and material conditions. The majority of media outlets have been bombed. Like the rest of the enclave's population, almost all Palestinian journalists have been displaced several times and are subject to regular power and internet cuts. Media professionals forced into exile, like the journalists in this documentary, have no prospect of returning to Gaza.
"The testimony given by the journalists about what they have experienced and what their relatives and colleagues who are still in Gaza are going through is unbearable. In a climate of impunity, more than 130 Palestinian journalists have been killed in one year by Israeli forces in Gaza, including more than 30 in the course of their work. We have already lodged four complaints with the International Criminal Court and we will not stop demanding justice and protection for Palestinian journalists and calling for the gates of Gaza to be opened to foreign journalists."
Jonathan Dagher, Head of RSF’s Middle East desk
