LIV condemns in the strongest terms the brutal killings of journalists in Gaza by the Israeli military forces.
As Vietnamese independent journalists working under an authoritarian regime, we know what it means to face persecution. Yet, we also recognize that what our colleagues in Gaza endure goes far beyond our own struggles. To be targeted and killed simply for doing their job is an unimaginable level of violence against the press.
The attacks on journalists in Gaza are not just assaults on individuals, they are assaults on press freedom everywhere.
We join Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and Avaaz, and hundreds of other media organizations from around the world to stand in solidarity with our colleagues in Gaza and reaffirm our shared commitment: journalism must never be silenced by violence, intimidation, or repression.
We do not support any form of violence committed by Hamas, Israel, or any other parties, except where strictly justified under international law. Our foremost concern is the protection of civilians, and we call for an urgent commitment to peace and full respect for international law in Gaza.
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Under international law, journalists must be protected, not targeted. Yet in Gaza, we are witnessing the deliberate killing of reporters and the destruction of press offices by the Israeli military occupation.
Israel has killed more than 270 journalists and media workers since launching its assault on Gaza in 2023, an average of 13 journalists every month. This loss is even more devastating given that Gaza’s own voices are being silenced at the very moment Israel is blocking international media from entering the besieged enclave.
Palestinian journalists who remain are forced to report under man-made starvation, constant bombardment, threats and smears from Israeli politicians, and face arbitrary detention and torture in retaliation for their work—a systematic assault on press freedom itself by Israel.
UN experts have described Israels attacks as part of a campaign to create conditions of genocide in Gaza, with every credible human rights organisation (Amnesty International, Human Righs Watch, etc.) already confirming that Israel is committing genocide. In a larger context, Israel’s occupation in the Palestinian Territory was declared “unlawful” by the International Court of Justice in July 2024.
The Gaza genocide has become the deadliest onslaught against journalists in recorded history. According to a Brown University’s Costs of War report, more media workers have been killed in Gaza than in both world wars, the Vietnam War, the Korean war, the wars in Yugoslavia, the U.S. civil war and the United States war in Afghanistan combined.
Israel has intentionally bombed press offices, restricted international media, and continues to target those documenting the truth. And yet, there remains no accountability for these war crimes. This is not only an attack on Palestinian’s lives, it is an attack on press freedom and the public’s right to know.
And Israel’s targeting of Palestinian journalists is not new. It is part of a historical continuum of attacks on Palestinian writers, educators, and cultural figures, what scholars have called Israel’s campaign of ‘scholasticide,’ the systematic obliteration of Palestinian education and cultural life since the 1948 Nakba. Today, that same strategy extends to silencing Palestinian journalists, whose voices are essential to documenting truth and preserving collective memory.
Killing journalists is a war crime. Killing truth is an assault on humanity. Israel must abide by its international obligations to protect journalists as civilians and open Gaza’s borders for international journalists to be able to report freely.
End the genocide. End the occupation.