Their names are Rami Al Meghari, Hassan Jaber, Kamal Abu Shabab, Fady Hossam, Anas Baba... They have been working with the French media for years; they are our colleagues, our friends. Without them, we would have been deprived of vital information from within Gaza. For more than 18 months, these Palestinian journalists have been the eyes and ears of our newsrooms, keeping you informed about the ongoing horror taking place in the territory as the Israeli government obstructs the international press from covering the war by denying it access to the Gaza Strip. Without them, we would be drastically impeded from gathering survivor testimonies, documenting the destruction of hospitals, following the repeated displacement of the population or having any understanding of the scale of the humanitarian tragedy currently unfolding in the Middle East.
Since the terrorist attack of October 7, 2023, and Israel's responding offensive, more than 200 of our Gazan colleagues have died, according to figures from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. According to researchers from Brown University in the United States, the number of journalists killed during the past 18 months in Gaza exceeds the total number killed in both World Wars and five other major conflicts of the past 150 years put together.
Today, as Benjamin Netanyahu's government seeks to take control of the entire Gaza Strip, our colleagues and their families are in mortal danger. Rami Al Meghari was shot at as he was driving home from a reporting trip. His daughter miraculously survived a bombardment. Fadi Hossam and his family survived a strike in Khan Younis. Kamal Abu Shabab's house in the northern Gaza Strip was destroyed by an Israeli strike and then bulldozed. Hassan Jaber, victim of a stroke, cannot receive treatment in a territory whose health system has been almost completely destroyed by Israel. And all of them, with the more than two million other Gazans, are threatened by famine. Faced with this danger, and after French President Emmanuel Macron denounced the "intolerable level of suffering" of Gazan civilians while the international community fails to impose a ceasefire, we call on the French authorities to do everything in their power to evacuate our colleagues and their families and bring them to safety.
With the support of the following journalists' associations (in alphabetical order): SDJ of AFP, SDJ of Arrêt sur images, SDJ of Arte, SDJ of BFM Business, SDJ of BFMTV, SDJ of Challenges, SDJ of Les Échos, SDJ of L'Express, SDJ of Le Figaro, SDJ of France 24, SDJ of France 3 national newsroom, SDJ of franceinfo TV, SDJ of FranceTV national newsroom, Société des personnels de l'Humanité, SDJ of L'Informé, SDJ of LCI, SDJ of Mediapart, Société des rédacteurs du Monde, Société des journalistes et du personnel de Libération, SDJ of Nouvel Obs, SDJ of Le Point, SDJ of Radio France Internationale, SDJ of Télérama, SDJ of TF1, SDJ of La Tribune, SDJ of TV5 Monde, SDJ of L'Usine nouvelle.
Translation of an original article published in French on lemonde.fr; the publisher may only be liable for the French version.