On Sky News this week we’re showing a film about Israel’s war in Gaza which has now been going on for more than 620 days.
It is a chastening watch.
Swathes of Gaza’s medical infrastructure has been razed, many of the territory’s buildings have been destroyed, and tens of thousands of Gazans have been killed, maimed and left hungry and malnourished in a war fought mainly from the air with heavy ordnance dropped on crowded civilian areas.
These extraordinary eyewitness accounts are not brought to our screens by experienced international war correspondents – they are barred from entering Gaza – but by two British medics whose mission was to save lives, not to report on the horrors of war.
That visiting surgeons Victoria Rose and Tom Potokar felt compelled to do just that speaks not only to the tragedy unfolding in Gaza, but to the swingeing restrictions imposed on reporting what is happening there.
In the history of modern warfare, the presence of journalists on the battlefield has been essential in holding the combatants to account and to ensuring that war crimes and atrocities are uncovered and prevented.
And Israel stands accused of egregious crimes in Gaza.
Since it launched its war there in response to the Hamas terror attacks of 7 October 2023 in which around 1,200 Israelis and other nationals were murdered and a further 250 taken hostage, more than 55,000 Palestinians have been reported killed by the Gazan health authorities. Many of the dead have been women and children.
Earlier this month, former US State Department official Matt Miller told the Sky News Trump100 podcast that Israel had committed war crimes in Gaza. Ex-UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths went further, telling Sky News presenter Yalda Hakim that Israel is responsible for genocide there.
It’s an accusation supported by Ireland, Spain, and South Africa which is pursuing Israel for genocide at the International Court of Justice – the UN’s highest court.
Israel rejects the case against it, claiming that many of the dead are Hamas fighters who have been hiding in tunnels under the hospitals that it has the right to attack in self-defence.
Israeli officials and diplomats deny that its military targets women and children and react with outrage to the suggestion that it is responsible for ethnic cleansing or genocide – accusations of crimes against humanity that are taken as particularly loaded given the dark resonance they have for the Jewish people.
Journalist-military embeds ‘fall well short of independent journalism’
But Israel’s confidence in the integrity of its wartime conduct is not matched by a willingness to allow international journalists into Gaza to witness what is going on there for themselves.
For the course of its longest war, no reporters have been permitted entry to Gaza other than on organised and controlled ‘embeds’ of a few hours alongside Israeli soldiers.
These managed opportunities fall well short of independent journalism, for which Sky News and other global news organisations must rely on trusted and heroic local reporting teams who lack the support and infrastructure to provide a complete picture of what is going on.
And these Palestinians journalists have paid a heavy price for their work; according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 185 of them have been killed during the war and 86 imprisoned.
[Read more: Robert Peston leads Jewish journalists’ call for media access into Gaza]
The Foreign Press Association, which represents the interests of international journalists operating in Israel, has been petitioning its High Court of Justice to lift the ban on reporting independently from Gaza.
So far, that legal action has been unsuccessful and last month the court again postponed a hearing in the case without reason or setting a new date.
Lack of access is ‘preventing proper scutiny’
Israeli officials push back on the need and suitability of allowing journalists to operate independently in Gaza. They say that their military’s priority is the rescue of the remaining hostages and the fight against Hamas and that the safety of reporters could not be ensured.
But journalists from Sky News and fellow news organisations have operated in Gaza in previous conflicts, providing details of their location and movements to the Israel Defence Forces. Moreover, we have decades of experience of covering conflict zones and our reporters are highly trained at doing so. The risks are real, for sure. But they’re risks that we accept. It’s what we do.
The ongoing denial of access to Gaza feels much less about the safety of journalists and more about preventing proper scrutiny and accountability of the desperate situation there.
The barring of international journalists is accompanied by the active delegitimisation of any reporting on the war that has been possible, which is often shamefully labelled as anti-Semitic and compared to the darkest periods in Jewish history.
All together this constitutes a war on truth that is at odds with Israel’s proud and oft repeated claim to be the Middle East’s only democracy – and it should not be allowed to stand.
Gaza: Doctors On The Frontline will air on Sky News at 9pm on Thursday, 19 June.
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