Killed, Jailed, Censored: Israel’s War on Palestinian Journalists
This event is sponsored by Just Vision, Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU), +972 Magazine, the Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists Association (AMEJA), and the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Gaza is the deadliest place in the world to be a journalist today. More than 75% of media workers killed worldwide in 2023 have died in Israel’s assault on the besieged enclave. In the occupied West Bank, too, Israel’s jailing of Palestinian journalists has reached an all-time high, with the Committee to Protect Journalists raising the alarm about Israel’s harassment of reporters and the silencing of their coverage.
Join us this Wednesday, February 28th at 1pm ET in a discussion on how this lethal environment for journalists is impacting our ability to understand what’s happening on the ground, what it says about the future of covering conflict zones safely, and the latest efforts to hold the Israeli government accountable for these attacks. We will also discuss the challenges that journalists around the world face in covering Israel’s war on Gaza accurately and ethically.
Kindly note that this briefing will be on-the-record and conducted virtually. The webinar will have automated closed captioning. For accommodation requests or questions about accessibility, please reach out to events@jewishcurrents.org.
SPEAKERS:
Fadi Abu Shammalah is a Palestinian journalist from Gaza who was recently evacuated with his family to the US via Egypt, and who still has colleagues trying to report what is happening on the ground as Israel closes in on Rafah. He also serves as a Just Vision outreach associate. You can read more about his experience in this New York Times op-ed.
Karen Attiah is a columnist at The Washington Post who has written and posted extensively about the impact of Israel’s war on journalists and other civilians (“Where is the outrage over Israel’s killing of journalists in Gaza?”). Karen was the winner of the 2019 George Polk Award as well as the 2019 Journalist of the Year Award from the National Association of Black Journalists. She has been a fierce advocate for accountability and justice since agents of Saudi Arabia killed her late colleague, Saudi-American journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Gypsy Guillén Kaiser is the advocacy and communications director for the Committee to Protect Journalists, which is investigating and documenting the plight of Palestinian journalists. Their most recent reports are available here.
Haggai Matar is the executive director of +972 Magazine, an independent, nonprofit online magazine run by a group of Palestinian and Israeli journalists. He is also co-director, together with Just Vision’s Suhad Babaa, of the Hebrew-language news site Local Call, and serves on the board of the Union of Journalists in Israel.
Julia Bacha (moderator) is Just Vision’s creative director and a filmmaker who directed movies including Budrus (2009) and Boycott (2021).
