The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate stated that the Israeli occupation committed in Gaza the largest and first media extermination crime in human history during two years of continuous Israeli war on our people in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including occupied Jerusalem.

The syndicate demanded in a statement issued today, Tuesday, coinciding with the two-year anniversary of the ongoing Israeli war on Gaza, “all governments, parliaments, institutions, and international bodies to pressure the occupation to allow international and Arab journalists to enter Gaza.”

The syndicate’s statement said: “After two years of continuous Israeli aggression on Gaza, two years of bloodshed and killing, and two years of assassinating the truth by the occupation army, at this time two years ago, the Israeli killing machine opened the gates of hell on the Gaza Strip, where the aggression was a deliberate and systematic decision to exterminate life, starting with the extermination of the media, journalists, and media institutions crushed and annihilated by the occupation by silencing voices, uprooting cameras, executing, arresting, and injuring witnesses.”

It added: “We at the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate do not count numbers, but rather names, faces, memories, colleagues, and friends with whom we lived together, who had families, dreams, and human lives assassinated by the occupation. We counted the last message a journalist sent to his colleague before missiles tore it apart, the last photo taken before being buried under rubble, the last live broadcast ending with the sound of moaning and the cry ‘We are targeted, we are dying,’ living the pain, injustice, oppression, and daily suffering. More than 252 journalists were martyred during two years, some killed with their families inside their homes, some targeted while raising a camera, not a weapon, and others assassinated because they wrote and published the truth.”

The statement continued: “Hundreds wounded, some lost limbs, others lost their eyesight, but none lost their faith in the truth. As for the detainees, some spent months in solitary confinement cells just for publishing news or exposing a crime.”

The syndicate confirmed that this war is not only a war on Gaza but on the human conscience, the journalism profession, and the world’s right to see, hear, and know. The occupation does not only kill the journalist but kills the narrative it does not want the world to know.

It said: “We affirm that we at the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate have nothing but to be the voice of those whose voices were silenced, the camera of those whose lenses were broken, and the call of those who can no longer call. Therefore, we declare to the whole world: the martyrdom of this number of journalists in just two years is the first and largest media extermination in the modern era and the first of its kind in human history, and it is a shame on everyone who remains silent or equates the oppressor with the victim.”

The syndicate saluted all international institutions that stood with the rights and justice for Palestinian journalists, foremost among them the International Federation of Journalists, calling on everyone who has not taken a stance against the occupation’s crimes that it is time to support the oppressed, the victimized, the crushed, and the wronged.

The General Secretariat of the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate pledged to continue the legal, moral, and media battle by all means and at all levels to defend our journalists and expose the war crimes and extermination committed by the occupation against our journalists until the killers of journalists are held accountable, calling on everyone in all international forums for an ethical stand to save what remains of our shared humanity.

The syndicate also called on colleagues worldwide saying: “Do not allow the assassination of journalism in Palestine, because its assassination here is its assassination everywhere.”