UNS info
23. 08. 2024.
Palestinian photojournalist Hosam Manal Al-Dabaka and his family were killed; Gutiérrez: It’s High Time for Sanctions Against Israel
General Secretary of the European Federation of Journalists, Ricardo Gutiérrez, announced that photojournalist Hosam Manal Al-Dabak, his wife, children, and several other family members were killed yesterday when their apartment in the Al-Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza was targeted by Israeli airstrikes. The Journalists' Association of Serbia asked him for the European Federation of Journalists' stance on this tragic event. We are publishing Gutiérrez’s response in full.
The EFJ strongly condemns this new targeted killings.
As you know, the IFJ documented 132 cases of killed journalists since 7 October: 125 Palestinian journalists, 4 Israeli journalists and 3 Lebanese journalists (https://www.ifj.org/war-in-gaza).
These figures are unprecedented: it makes it the deadliest period for journalists in the decades that IFJ has been gathering data. Never before in history has our profession faced a massacre of such intensity in such a short space of time.
Hossam's case is a targeted killing case. Independent investigations showed that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) directly targeted and killed at least five other journalists. Journalists' organisations are researching at least 10 other deaths that indicate possible IDF targeting. The targeted or indiscriminate killing of journalists, if committed deliberately or recklessly, is a war crime. Those responsible must be prosecuted and condemned.
We believe that it is high time for the international community, and in particular the European Union, to apply international sanctions against Israel, taking into consideration the Israeli authorities’ unprecedented killing of journalists and other violations of media freedom, in contravention of Israel’s human rights and international humanitarian law obligations.
Widespread and systematic abuses are committed by Israeli authorities in Gaza, the West Bank, Israel, and elsewhere, as documented or acknowledged by Israeli, Palestinian and international NGOs, UN experts, the International Court of Justice, and in a request for arrest warrants by the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court.
The EFJ believes that these violations should trigger the suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement and further EU sanctions against those responsible.
We consider that the passivity of the 27 EU Member States in the face of the war crimes and genocidal actions underway amounts to complicity with Israel. It is high time for sanctions. We call on the he EU 27 governments to impose sanctions at next week's meeting of EU foreign ministers. Failure to impose sanctions is tantamount to complicity in an ongoing genocide.
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