Over 100 internationally recognized journalists, photographers, and war correspondents have signed a petition demanding immediate and uncensored access to the Gaza Strip to cover the ongoing war.
The petition, launched under the “Right to Cover” initiative by award-winning war photographer Andre Liohn, urges both Israel and Hamas to grant independent media full access to report on the ground.
The signatories include prominent figures from leading global outlets such as Sky News’ Alex Crawford, journalist Mehdi Hassan, CNN’s Clarissa Ward, and acclaimed war photographer Don McCullin. They emphasized that the current ban on foreign journalists since the war began in 2023 constitutes a blatant violation of the public’s right to know.
“This is not just about Gaza,” the petition states. “This is about safeguarding press freedom globally. The truth must not be the exclusive domain of those who carry weapons and control the narrative.”
The “Right to Cover” initiative pledged to support journalists’ entry into Gaza “by any legitimate means,” whether independently or in coordination with humanitarian or civil society organizations. The petition asserts that media presence is not only necessary to document atrocities but also essential to prevent the manipulation of reality by parties to the conflict.
Hamas welcomed the initiative, condemning the Israeli ongoing policy of banning international journalists from entering Gaza as a deliberate attempt to suppress the truth and hide its war crimes.
Ezzat al-Resheq, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, described the ban as “a crime added to the occupation’s long list of violations against media professionals in Gaza, the West Bank, and occupied Jerusalem.”
Al-Resheq noted that since the start of the war, 233 Palestinian journalists and media workers have been martyred, calling on the international community to escalate pressure to criminalize such acts and ensure journalists are allowed to witness and report the full reality of the genocide, starvation, and destruction being inflicted on the people of Gaza.
Since October 7, 2023, Israel has waged a genocidal war in Gaza marked by mass killings, forced displacement, systematic starvation, and the destruction of civilian infrastructure.
Despite international condemnation and binding rulings from the International Court of Justice, the war continues with US backing. To date, over 210,000 Palestinians have been martyred or wounded, most of them women and children, while more than 9,000 remain missing amid famine affecting hundreds of thousands.
Source:Websites
