“Without immediate intervention, the last reporters in Gaza will die,” the journalists of Agence France Press wrote in a heartbreaking public letter on Monday, reporting on the plight of the agency’s 10 remaining journalists in the Gaza Strip. All are freelancers and Palestinian citizens, because Israel has barred the international media from entering the strip for two years.
The small amount of food that is available is being distributed by the sketchy and euphemistically named Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, an NGO backed by Israel and the United States and run by former CIA officials and Green Berets. Since the GHF began distributing food at the end of May, 1,054 people have been killed (by Israeli and/or other heavily armed and U.S.-backed forces) while approaching GHF distribution sites; 766 were killed “in the vicinity” of a GHF site, according to the United Nations’ human rights office. GHF only has four distribution sites, and they are open for as little as eight minutes at a time, exacerbating the desperation of the starving people waiting.
Of the 101 people who have died of malnutrition in Gaza since Israel began its genocidal siege following Hamas’s attack in October 2023, a third have died in the last 48 hours, according to Gaza’s health ministry, the BBC reported. Twelve of those who starved to death this week are children.
Starving civilians is a war crime, as is pretty much every other action the Israeli military has conducted against the people of Gaza. Its bombings have been disproportionate and indiscriminate; it has intentionally targeted civilians; and it has summarily executed prisoners. All of these war crimes, along with the crime of committing genocide, are credible accusations for which there is overwhelming evidence; however, none have yet been prosecuted in an international or national court. In fact, as New York magazine’s Suzy Hansen wrote in June, the entire legal concept of a war crime might be too shallow for the level of violence and terror Israel is wreaking on the Gazan populace (and the occupied territories in the West Bank as well): “In its annihilative force and ambition, the Israeli campaign is unique among modern conflicts. … Gaza is different, the number of war crimes virtually incalculable, the war not really a war but rather the ceaseless pummeling of one side by the other.”
While Israel does not appear to be targeting journalists specifically with starvation, it has been credibly accused of targeting journalists, even before its all-out attacks following October 7, 2023. Since then, Israel has killed an average of 13 journalists per month, more than in both world wars, the Vietnam War, the wars in Yugoslavia, and the United States’ war in Afghanistan combined.
“The idea that we could hear of their passing at any time is unbearable to us,” the SDJ said in its letter. “On Sunday, Bashar wrote: ‘For the first time, I feel defeated. Later that day he told one of us… ‘I wish Mr Macron could help me get out of this hell.”
On Tuesday, following the publication of the letter, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot called on Israel to let foreign press back into Gaza, “to show what is happening there and to bear witness,” Le Monde reported.
“Since AFP was founded in August 1944, some of our journalists were killed in conflict,” the SDJ concluded in its letter, “others were wounded or made prisoner, but there is no record of us ever having had to watch our colleagues starve to death.”
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