Marking Saturday’s International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists, United States officials have yet again failed to condemn the Israeli regime for killing a record number of journalists in Gaza.
More than 180 Palestinian journalists have been killed while performing their duties in the besieged Palestinian territory since October 7th last year, when the Israeli regime launched its genocidal war.
They were killed with weapons supplied by the US government to the Tel Aviv regime.
The latest journalist to be killed in Gaza is Baraa Ali Daghish, whose life was brutally cut short on Saturday in the massacre at the Nusseirat camp in central Gaza, five kilometres from Deir al-Balah.
In a statement posted on X, formerly Twitter, US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said his country ‘reaffirms its commitment to ending impunity for crimes against journalists.
‘We call on all governments to protect journalists from violence and hold perpetrators of crimes accountable,’ he wrote, inviting an avalanche of responses from social media users.
Stella Assange, Swedish-Spanish lawyer and wife of whistleblower Julian Assange, blasted Miller and reminded him of the classic American hypocrisy on free press.
‘What a joke. Israel hunts and kills journalists with bullets and rockets supplied by the US. The US has funded 73% of the military costs associated with Israel’s attack in Gaza. Over 170 journalists have been killed in Gaza so far,’ she wrote.
Journalist Ben Norton also hit out at the US State Department spokesperson and drew his attention to the impunity provided to the Israeli regime in killing Palestinian journalists.
‘Israel has killed 183 journalists in Gaza in the past 13 months, using US-provided weapons,’ he wrote.
‘The number of Palestinian journalists killed by Israel in Gaza in one year is more than double the annual average of all journalists killed worldwide. The US is sponsoring this.’
Mai al-Sadany, a human rights lawyer, reminded Miller of Shireen Abu Akleh, an American citizen and Al-Jazeera journalist killed in cold blood in the occupied West Bank by the Israeli forces.
‘Fabulous, @StateDeptSpox. Let’s start with Shireen Abu Akleh, an American journalist who was killed by the IDF two and a half years ago while wearing a press vest,’ she stated.
‘Not a single person nor unit have been held accountable for her death.’
Code Pink, a US-based grassroots human rights group, also referred to Palestinian journalists killed in Gaza since October 7th, 2023.
‘The United States and Israel have killed at least 183 journalists in Gaza in 394 days. Your government is the perpetrator of the most deadly assault on journalists in over 30 years,’ it wrote.
Sohail Nakhooda, an Amman-based journalist said the US government has supplied weapons to Israel that have made it possible to target journalists in the Gaza Strip.
‘Perhaps it is best to urge your government to uphold the principle first before preaching to the rest of the world,’ he tweeted, in response to Miller’s tweet.
Meanwhile, US ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, also took to X on Saturday to speak about ‘grave threats’ facing journalists, without mentioning the perpetrator in Gaza.
‘In Russia, Gaza, Iran, and all around the world, journalists face grave threats simply for doing their jobs. Today, on the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists, we call on the international community to make progress on the United Nations Plan of Action on the Safety of Journalists – and ensure crimes against journalists are brought to light and perpetrators are held to account,’ she wrote.
In response, commentators reminded her of journalists killed in Gaza in the past year with weapons her government has been supplying to the Israeli regime.
Sopo Japaridze, a Georgia-based commentator, pointed to journalists slaughtered in Gaza.
‘What happens to journalists and who kills them, Gazans? I didn’t know Gaza was a country. You mean the occupied territory of Israel where Israel is committing genocide of Palestinians and mass murdering journalists. Funded by US weapons, money and support,’ she tweeted.
Another social media user slammed the US envoy and her colleagues for ‘grandstanding about crimes.’
‘There are few things more conducive for sowing cynicism among the general public than members of the current US government grandstanding about crimes they choose not to admit to being currently complicit in committing,’ the user wrote.
The number of journalists killed in Gaza since October last year exceeds the number of journalists killed in any country globally in the past 35 years when the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) started recording it.
In the six years of World War 2, 69 journalists were killed, or 11 per year, meaning that 16 times as many journalists have been killed in Gaza.
In 20 years between 1955 and 1975, a total of 63 journalists were killed in Vietnam.