The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) urged the US media on Thursday to condemn Israel’s latest killings and attacks on journalists in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
“By remaining silent as their Palestinian colleagues are killed, kidnapped and attacked, American media professionals give tacit approval to the far-right Israeli government to continue its campaign of censorship targeting all those who expose its ongoing genocide,” CAIR National Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper said in a statement.
His remarks came after five journalists from the Al-Quds Today channel were killed Thursday when an Israeli airstrike struck their broadcasting van near the Al-Awda Hospital in Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp.
And a video online showed an Israeli four-wheel drive trying to run over a journalist in the occupied West Bank during live coverage of an Israeli raid on a refugee camp in Tulkarem.
“The genocidal Israeli government enjoys impunity in attacking the media because of a lack of reporting on its killings, attacks and kidnappings targeting journalists.
“This must stop, and journalists must begin to accurately report on Israel’s slaughter, mass destruction, forced starvation, and ethnic cleansing, and call it what it is-‘genocide,'” said Hooper.
He noted that CAIR, the US largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, has repeatedly condemned Israeli killing and kidnapping of journalists.
Israel has killed more than 130 Palestinian reporters since the beginning of its current genocide in Gaza and does not allow foreign journalists to enter the enclave, except with military escorts, according to the CAIR statement.
Israel has continued a genocidal war on Gaza that has killed nearly 45,400 people, most of them women and children, since a cross-border attack by the Palestinian resistance group, Hamas, on Oct. 7, 2023.
The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants last month for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Israel is also facing a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its actions in Gaza.