“We express full solidarity with our colleagues in Gaza, demand that our government immediately cease harming them, and that an independent investigation be opened into cases of journalists being killed,” declared 131 journalists from Israel who signed a petition calling for an end to the war in Gaza.

According to data from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), some two hundred Palestinian journalists have been killed in Gaza since the start of the war on October 7, 2023. A minority of them were labeled “terrorists” by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), which provided no independently verifiable evidence. Others, according to the army itself, were killed unintentionally or as “collateral damage.”

While international media are barred from entering Gaza to report on events there, and Palestinian journalists are paying with their lives for their work, most Israeli journalists are ignoring the fate of Gaza’s residents. They are also ignoring the tens of thousands of civilians—mostly children and women—who have been killed during the war; the humanitarian crisis and famine in parts of Gaza; the deliberate widescale destruction intended to “encourage emigration”; and the killing of journalists.

As part of the revenge narrative promoted by Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government, and in the context of the ongoing dehumanization campaign carried out on social media and right-wing propaganda platforms, there are also journalists and media figures who do address these issues, praising and encouraging them.

For example, Zvi Yehezkeli, senior Arab affairs analyst on i24news and a popular lecturer, praised the killing of five journalists by the IDF last week (even though the army expressed regret over the incident and said it would investigate it), and called for the killing of all journalists in Gaza.

But there are other journalists as well.

In parallel to an international media campaign in solidarity with Gaza journalists, a petition has also been published by journalists in Israel, calling on the State of Israel to cease killing their colleagues in Gaza and on their colleagues in the Israeli media to stop ignoring this.

“Being at the heart of journalistic work in this country, we are disappointed that many of Israel’s media organizations are failing in their duty,” the petition states. “The human toll of the war in Gaza is being silenced in the media, and the Israeli public is denied the tools and knowledge it needs to analyze reality. This enlisted form of media conduct, stemming from a misguided perception of the public good, conceals vital facts about the army’s operations in Gaza and the West Bank, about their impact on Palestinian residents, on the hostages, on the soldiers, and on all of us.”

Journalists’ protest against the war in Gaza and the killing of journalists by the IDF, Tel Aviv, August 13, 2025 (Photo: Oren Ziv)

“Throughout the war, an absurd situation has developed in which everywhere else in the world people know more about our actions in Gaza and the West Bank than we ourselves know. And let us emphasize: military censorship is imposing its heavy hand these days and gravely harming press freedom, but the greatest problem facing journalism in Israel is self-censorship.”

“To add insult to injury, some media outlets are providing platforms for explicit calls to commit war crimes and even genocide, alongside ongoing racist incitement. Media outlets in this country must report on war crimes and crimes against humanity and investigate the information that comes to their doorstep regarding the fighting in Gaza. Precisely because we are Israeli journalists, we have the ability to make a critical contribution to the pursuit of truth.”

Journalists’ protest against the war in Gaza, Nazareth, August 29, 2025 (Photo: Mohammad Halayla)

Among the signatories to the petition are journalists from Haaretz, as well as from independent media outlets such as Local Call and The Hottest Place in Hell (a partner with The Seventh Eye in the Israeli Independent Journalism Union). Journalists from Israel’s mainstream media are rarer, yet the list does include a few individuals from the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation, Calcalist, ynet, and Channel 13 News.

Alongside dozens of Jewish journalists, the petition has also been signed by Palestinian journalists, citizens of Israel and residents of East Jerusalem, working in Israel for both Israeli and international outlets.

“We believe it is our basic human duty to cry out and demand the immediate end of the war, the signing of a deal for the release of all the hostages, and the beginning of the reconstruction of Gaza and of ourselves, alongside a move toward negotiations and long-term solutions founded on peace, equality, security, and freedom for all who live in this land,” the journalists declare toward the end of the petition.

“We call on fellow journalists to join us in this appeal, as well as on editorial boards, the Union of Journalists in Israel, and the Press Council to adopt our demands.”

The article was published in Hebrew on September 1, 2025