Ottawa – Zaytoun News
The Canadian Association of Journalists (CAJ) today condemned the targeted killing of four Al Jazeera journalists and two freelance reporters in Gaza, who were killed in an Israeli bombing.
“Attacks on journalists anywhere in the world are attacks on journalism,” the CAJ said in its statement. “We join the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Reporters Without Borders (RSF), and other media organizations in condemning Israel’s killing of a team of Al Jazeera journalists in Gaza, along with more than 190 others since October 7, 2023. These acts are egregious breaches of humanitarian law and demand independent investigations.”
The statement noted that being a journalist in Gaza today means bearing witness to an escalating humanitarian catastrophe, one that several human rights groups have described as genocide. According to CPJ, the period since Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel has been the deadliest for journalists since the organization began tracking data in 1992.
To underscore the scale of this loss, Brown University’s Cost of War Project reports that more journalists have been killed since October 7, 2023, than during the U.S. Civil War, World Wars I and II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the wars in the former Yugoslavia, and the post-9/11 war in Afghanistan combined.
In November 2023, the CAJ raised alarm over the scale of journalist deaths and threats to reporters working in Gaza. The association has consistently stood with CPJ, RSF, and others engaged in critical advocacy and frontline support for journalists in the Gaza Strip.
The CAJ has also signed statements from the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) calling on the Israeli government to take explicit steps to protect journalists in accordance with international law. In addition, the CAJ has established an Emergency Support Fund to help Canadian journalists cover short-term expenses related to threats and crises stemming from their work.
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