Press-İş, Journalist Union from DISK, the Confederation of Progressive Labor Unions, gathered in front of the German Consulate in Istanbul for the 100 journalists killed by Israeli forces in Palestine since October 7, 2023. DİSK Press-İş, together with the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and affiliated trade unions, declared its support for Palestinian journalists
Nearly five months have passed since Israel launched its attack on the Gaza Strip on October 7, 2023. In the 143 days of its unilateral war against Palestine, Israel has killed 100 journalists. According to the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, 10 percent of journalists in the Gaza Strip have lost their lives.
“This massacre is a horrific and unjustified tragedy,” said the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), together with the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate (PJS), declaring February 26 as the Day of Solidarity with Palestinian Journalists.
DİSK Press-İş also gathered in front of the German Consulate and protested with a banner reading, “Israel, stop killing journalists.”
The statement read:
Today, on the Day of Solidarity with Palestinian Journalists, journalists’ organizations in many parts of the world held demonstrations for the murdered journalists in Palestine at noon. We, as the Press and Printing Employees Union of Turkey, filed a criminal complaint against Israel’s crimes against journalists at the Ankara Courthouse at the same time.
Israeli forces have killed more than 100 journalists since Oct. 7. Almost all of them were shot in the field while working in vests with the word “PRESS” written on them. States that commit war crimes target journalists everywhere so that their crimes are not heard and try to discourage and intimidate them from doing their jobs. The world is following what is happening in Palestine thanks to heroic journalists who work at the risk of death and maiming.
This is not the first time Israel has targeted journalists. Shireen Abu Akila, a journalist of 25 years known not only to Palestinians but also to the entire Arab world, was killed by a sniper’s bullet in May 2022 while covering an Israeli raid on the West Bank city of Jenin, wearing a PRESS vest and a cameraman friend by her side.
During the Great March of Return, which started with a Facebook post by Ahmed Abu Artema, a journalist and poet, where the people under siege in Gaza marched to the border every Friday between March 30, 2018, and December 27, 2019, 2 journalists were killed, and 357 journalists were injured by sniper bullets. Among them were those who had their knees and eyes pointed at them and those who had been maimed because the Israeli government had prevented their treatment.
After October 7, Israel has been targeting not only Palestinian journalists but also the Lebanese press and reporters of Western agencies reporting from Palestine. For example, Issam Abdallah, a Lebanese video journalist working for Reuters, was killed on Oct. 13 by Israeli tank fire in southern Lebanon.
According to the report of the Committee to Protect Journalists, 75 percent of the journalists killed worldwide in 2023 are Palestinians. The International Federation of Journalists said that one in 10 journalists working in Gaza was killed after Oct. 7.
In addition, journalists are systematically arrested and detained for months without any charge or trial through administrative detention. When they are released under house arrest, the internet of their homes is cut off so that they cannot work.
More than 7,000 Palestinians have been detained in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, where more than 400 Palestinians have been killed and thousands injured since Oct. 7. According to the report of the Committee to Protect Journalists, many Palestinian journalists are among those detained.
Israel commits these war crimes with impunity. Israel, for example, has not faced any sanctions to date despite being repeatedly condemned by the United Nations. Although the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said on February 23 that arms sales to Israel should be stopped, sales continue.
Although countries such as the United Kingdom, Canada, France, and Australia are among the states that sell weapons to Israel, the largest arms support is provided by the United States and Germany. While the people in these countries and all over the world fill the streets to support Palestine and say, “End the occupation,” the greatest pressure on these protests is being made in Germany. Instead of coming to terms with its own Nazi past, Germany, which supports Israel, which attacks the Palestinian people in very similar ways, has gone so far as to ban the Palestinian flag and the keffiyeh, one of the typical clothes of the Arab peoples and one of the national symbols of the Palestinian people.
In Turkey, on the other hand, while the spokespersons of the AKP government protect Palestine on the podium, trade relations with Israel continue unabated. According to the Turkish Exporters Assembly data, in the last three months of 2023, the total export value with Israel exceeded 1 billion dollars. The products that Turkey exports the most to Israel are steel and chemicals, which are the most used in the arms industry.
That is why we are expressing our support for Palestinian journalists here today.
That is why we shout once again: Freedom for Palestine, boycott of Israel.
MB Sendika.Org News