ICYMI: Palestinian Journalists Are Starving In Gaza

0:07You're listening to the 1A Podcast. I'm Jen White. And this is in case you missed it, where we bring you some of the week's most important conversations you might have missed. Last week, more than 100 aid and human rights groups warned that Gaza is at risk of mass starvation. Nearly 150 people have already died of malnutrition since the war began. That's according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza. The organizations signed an appeal demanding Israel allow food shipments into the territory. On Saturday, Israel's military announced airdrops of aid began in Gaza, and humanitarian corridors were established.

0:42On Monday, while in Scotland, President Trump told reporters that the U.S. would work to set up food centers in Gaza. But among those starving in the besieged strip are members of the press, Palestinian journalists working for outlets around the world because Israel has barred international reporters. Several news organizations warn their employees in Gaza will die unless urgent action is taken to allow food aid to reach the hungry, and they are allowed free passage out of Gaza to recover from the past 21 months. After the break, Jodi Ginsberg joins us to tell us more about the situation. She's the Chief Executive Officer of the Committee to Protect Journalists, or CPJ.

1:21That's an independent, non-profit organization that promotes free press worldwide and one of the organizations that signed the appeal. For all the latest on this story, visit npr.org or tune into your local member station. Stay with us. More in a moment.

1:40Jodi, welcome to the program. Thank you for having me. So first, just describe the conditions journalists in Gaza are working under right now. The conditions journalists are working under in Gaza are horrific, unprecedented. I've been a journalist for a quarter of a century, and we have never experienced anything like this. journalists have been reporting on the war and living through the war for 21 months. They are subject to repeated displacement by Israel. They are living under the daily reality, of course, of massive indiscriminate bombings, as well as deliberately targeted attacks that we've seen.

2:21They're working with broken equipment, lack of fuel, and now, of course, starvation. In the past week alone, at least three journalists have fainted on air. And of course, as you said, we're now hearing unheard of appeals from organizations, including Agence France Presse and others, saying out loud that unless food is allowed into Gaza, we are likely to see journalists die on air from deliberate starvation. Last week, we saw journalists and their media organizations, including the AP, AFP, BBC and Reuters, speaking out about these dire conditions. Let's listen to one reporter describing conditions in Gaza.

3:00This is from the project the Committee to Protect Journalists launched. It's called Voices from Gaza. This is Moad El-Kahlout, a Palestinian journalist based in the Gaza Strip. I usually report the human cause of the war and the surviving of those who have been suffering the war for more than 600 days so far. I usually wake up in the morning on the sounds of the drones, and the day always ends with the sounds of the bombings. My job being a journalist is not only a job, this is a responsibility I carry as a voice for those who are unseen and for those who were silenced The most hard thing I have witnessed in the past week is the loss of my cousin who shot dead while waiting for the humanitarian aid to cross in the Zikkim area The journalism has changed a lot in this war.

3:54At the start of this war, we were trying to report and cover the war, but now we are trying to survive. Jody, reporters have always taken risks when covering wars and conflicts, but we're talking about Palestinian journalists who are covering their home, a war in their home. And as we heard, they're trying to survive while covering this war. But often they're part of family systems as well. How does that complicate what we're talking about? It complicates it hugely because, of course, imagine you're going to a hospital and you might discover a family member. You might be going there and in the full knowledge that you will see loved ones injured, killed.

4:39and as you say it's different from what we usually think of about war correspondence which is foreign correspondents sort of literally being parachuted in with the flak jackets and the helmets who've had training who can be removed from the situation frequently war correspondents will go in for a few weeks and then be cycled out and replaced these are journalists who didn't choose to be war correspondents they are journalists who are war correspondents because that is their daily reality. War has come to them. And for whom a flak jacket and a helmet is no longer protection from the huge bombings that we have seen, and who are trying to report the daily reality for everyone else.

5:23They are the people on whom we rely for our information on Gaza, because no international correspondent has been allowed independent access into Gaza since the start of the war, which again is unheard of in modern warfare. Now, Israeli forces, as you say, have banned international journalists from working independently in Gaza. But Israeli forces allowed some international journalists to travel with them on Sunday to witness an aid distribution site. And that's where Ilan Levy, a spokesperson for the government, told NPR's Eleanor Beardsley that the blame for the lack of aid does not lie with Israel, but with the UN.

6:03Israel has called the UN's bluff because here are hundreds and hundreds of pallets of aid that the UN is letting rot in the sun. And instead of taking responsibility for that failure, fessing up, they're blaming Israel and pretending that Israel isn't letting this aid in altogether. Israel now says it's pausing fighting in some areas and allowing airdrops of humanitarian aid to resume. But Jodi, what's your response to that assertion? And how does it align with what you're hearing from Palestinian journalists on the ground? It doesn't align at all with what we're hearing, nor does it align with several independent reports.

6:36You may have seen a report from The New York Times over the weekend that manifestly contradicted what you just heard from Levy there, that actually there was no issue with the UN allowing food in or dealing with food, that the blame for food not being given and food not getting to Gazans lies squarely with Israel and its deliberate policy of denying food. We've heard two Israeli organizations today accusing Israel of genocide and saying that, again, this is part of a deliberate policy. But this is the issue, right? That trip that you heard about was not an independent trip. It was an Israel-organized trip.

7:22One of the reasons that we have been pushing so hard for independent access is because it's important that journalists are able to see those things for themselves independently, not on trips controlled either by Israel nor by Hamas, that they are able to see these things for themselves so that they can help corroborate what guards and journalists have been saying and reporting and documenting for 21 months now. Starvation isn't the only threat to journalists in Gaza. How many have died in the conflict so far? So far, Committee to Protect Journalists has documented the deaths of 186 journalists.

8:01The vast majority of those are Palestinians, at least 178 Palestinians killed by Israel since October the 7th, making Gaza the deadliest place for journalists that CPJ has ever documented. So what steps are you calling for to protect journalists in Gaza right now beyond the need for humanitarian aid? What more would you like to see change? Well, we would like to see journalists protected as they should be protected, as all civilians should be protected in war. It's important to remember that journalists under various UN conventions are considered civilians and so must never be targeted. We've documented at least 17 journalists since the start of the war that we believe to have been deliberately targeted by Israel and the number may be far higher because of course as we've just been talking about the challenge that we have is to get in and to be able to document some of the some of these cases.

9:03So it's at least 17 that we think has been deliberately targeted. And in addition, of course, as we've heard, it's not just the killing of journalists. It's everything else that goes along with that. It's the constant displacement. It's the attacking of media facilities. It's the fact that you can't get equipment, obviously food we've heard about, but even equipment in, which means that people are having to operate with increasingly degrading equipment. All of those are challenges to journalists. With the entire population of Gaza facing famine conditions, why do you think it's so important to highlight the threat journalists face specifically?

9:39Well, because journalists are part of the reason we know about what's happening inside Gaza. They have the role of being our eyes and ears. They are documenting. They are taking photographs. They are recording video. They are documenting testimonies. We know about what's happening inside Gaza in large part because of what journalists are doing. And so it's not that they are a special case. It's not that journalists need special protection above and beyond ordinary civilians. But we do have to recognise the important role that journalists play, particularly in war, when we know that the first casualty is truth and various sides will be trying to control the narrative.

10:22It's critical that we have journalists, independent journalists, a plurality of media that it is able to document and verify what is happening on the ground. What are the next steps for CPJ in trying to get the necessary aid into Gaza to Palestinian journalists, but also to provide more support for the work they're doing inside the Strip? Well, frankly, in what has been an abject silence often from the international community, one of the things that we have to keep doing is shouting loudly about the situation facing journalists. It's important that the US president recognize the starvation that's happening inside Gaza.

11:01And we hope that by raising the profile of this issue internationally, an international community will take the much needed action to ensure that Israel meets its international obligations, allows food aid in, allows international journalists in, and allows Gazan journalists and others to travel freely so that they can receive the medical attention and get the respite that they need. That's Jodi Ginsberg. She's Chief Executive Officer at the Committee to Protect Journalists. Jodi, thank you for speaking with us. Thank you. This program comes to you from WAMU, part of American University in Washington, distributed by NPR.

11:38I'm Jen White. Thanks for listening. We'll talk more soon. This is 1A.

11:50Thank you.