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Stop killing journalists in Gaza
‘Now we are here - mired in the horror’
THIS is the speech that former London Freelance Branch Chair Pennie Quinton gave at our rally on 3 February for an end to the killing of journalists in Gaza.
Pennie Quinton speaks
THROUGHOUT the Second Intifada I worked as journalist for the International Middle East Media Centre in the occupied West Bank - covering Israeli state violence against civilians in the West Bank and Gaza.
I also worked with NGOs documenting this - there are thousands of downloadable UN and Red Cross reports going back to 1967, showing increasing violence, dispossession, and seizure of land from Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza,
These reports, which Western governments have spent millions compiling, are ignored. The warnings of the genocide that the International Court of Justice ruled on last week were flashing red day after day with every Israeli Army incursion, the siege of Arafat's compound, every house demolition, settler attack, new settlement, Operation Summer Rain in 2006, Operation Cast Lead in 2008-2009, Operation Protective Edge 2014 - each bombing campaign killing thousands of civilians in Gaza.
Now we are here! Mired in the horror of witnessing the most intense slaughter of Palestinian civilians we have seen in the last fifty years. Amid this carnage the voices of Palestinian journalists in Gaza are being destroyed daily!
The Committee to Protect Journalists and the International Federation of Journalists have counted 97 journalists killed in Israel's war on Gaza since October 7, 2023.
As of 29 January, 90 Palestinian journalists have been killed by Israeli air strikes in Gaza.
Three Lebanese journalists have been killed by Israeli air strikes in South Lebanon.
Four Israeli journalists were killed in the 7 October Hamas attacks.
Five Palestinian journalists are missing suspected to have been detained by Israeli state forces.
One Israeli journalist is missing suspected to be detained by Hamas.
Now where are the BBC's broadcasts condemning the targeting of journalists killed almost daily since 7 October?
To kill a journalist is a war crime.
Where is our professional solidarity - how do we push the media outlets we work for such as the BBC or CNN - for example to condemn the slaughter of our colleagues in the strongest possible terms?
We see our colleague's killed day after day - dying along with their entire families in targeted air strikes. This daily carnage must be stopped.
The Western media are crucial in making this happen.
I saw footage last week of a Gazan journalist filming a man heading South from Khan Younis to Rafah.
The man heading south asked: why are you filming?
The Palestinian journalist said: I am filming the war.
The man asks 'who sees us, who sees we are hungry, who sees we are thirsty - do the Muslims see us - does the world see our life?
That is the question who sees and who reports - we are seeing horrific documentation of suffering in Gaza but the pressure on our decision makers from Western media is weak.
28,000 civilians have been killed, TV stations, schools, universities Mosques and churches bombed by the Israeli state, bombs paid for by British money, and American money.
Prime Minister Sunak protects ships in the Red Sea but does not protect the lives of civilians in Gaza many of whom killed are not yet one year old.