The shroud of silence over Gaza

Had members of the foreign news media been allowed into Gaza, they would have seen and heard what Palestinian journalists have been reporting all along.

- ARWA DAMON

AMIR LEVY Getty Images

ISRAELI SOLDIERS escort some journalists outside a hospital near Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip, in June.

THE PRESS gaggle gathered last month by the Israeli government at the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza could see the concrete walls snaking through the sand and debris dunes, the Israeli watch towers and a couple of army vehicles driving through.

This is as close as foreign journalists have been able to get to Gaza, other than rare trips carefully organized by the Israel Defense Forces into the strip, where journalists are instructed not to speak to any Palestinians — in the unlikely chance that they come across any while surrounded by the Israeli army.

A journalist asks Israel's deputy foreign minister, Sharren Haskel, why the press is not permitted to enter.

"If I were a reporter, I would check my facts," she responds, dodging the question.

The journalist pushes back, arguing that that is exactly why the foreign press is demanding access.

"You see Gaza, it's a very dangerous area," Haskel counters, without a trace of irony given that the biggest danger to the media in Gaza is Israel. The Committee to Protect Journalists has recorded nearly 200 journalists and media workers killed by Israel since Oct. 7, 2023, with at least two dozen of those killings determined by the committee to be deliberate murders.

Gaza's journalists don't just have to dodge death to report. There are often communications blackouts, or telecom systems go down due to a lack of fuel or because fiber lines are cut — generally by Israeli bombings.