Some 60 media and rights organizations on Monday urged the the European Union to suspend a cooperation accord with Israel and impose sanctions, accusing it of “massacring journalists” in Gaza.
The organizations urged the European Union’s Foreign Minister Josep Borrell and Trade Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis to suspend the partnership agreement, which specifically deals with trade exchanges with Israel, and to impose “targeted sanctions on those responsible” for human rights violations.
The organizations stated in their letter, “More than 100 Palestinian journalists and three Lebanese journalists were killed in the ongoing aggression, making it the deadliest period for journalism in decades.”
The organizations pointed to the practical prevention of foreign journalists from entering the Gaza Strip and the “arbitrary detentions” of media workers, with at least 49 of them detained.
They called for the urgent need to preserving media freedom, protecting the lives of journalists, and putting an end to impunity, as a meeting of European Union foreign ministers approaches on August 29 in the capital, Brussels.
Since the start of the comprehensive aggression against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank on October 7, 2023, 161 journalists have been killed , 186 have been injured, and 51 others have been detained, according to the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate.