Statement in Support of the Joint Submission by the Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF) and the Palestine Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) to the International Criminal Court (ICC)

In their joint submission to the International Criminal Court, the Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF) and the Palestine Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) accuse Israeli political and military officials of war crimes and genocide, calling for arrest warrants, the expansion of charges against Netanyahu, and the inclusion of every documented killing of a journalist in the ICC’s Palestine investigation.

The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention & Human Security unequivocally supports this submission, recognising it as a vital step toward holding perpetrators accountable and defending the essential role of a free press in preventing and exposing mass atrocities.

Press freedom is an essential pillar in genocide prevention. The courageous work of journalists in regions torn apart by conflict and atrocities, often done at great personal risk, enables the international community to understand and to react to human rights abuses when they occur. These journalists act as early warning systems, exposing the signs of escalating violence before it reaches the scale of mass atrocities. Without the protection of journalists, the world is left blind to the early stages of genocide, making it more difficult to intervene in time to prevent further suffering.

Once genocide is underway and has taken root, journalists become the voices of the victim communities, ensuring that their destruction cannot be hidden and is not forgotten.

In a blatant attempt to silence the truth and conceal the reality of its actions in Gaza, Israel has carried out the unprecedented killing of more than 220 journalists. Most recently, on August 10, Israel carried out a targeted airstrike on a media tent outside Al-Shifa hospital, willfully killing multiple journalists, including the prominent Al-Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif, freelance journalist Mohammed Qreiqeh, and cameramen Ibrahim Zaher and Mohammed Noufal.

Most of the killings of Palestinian journalists appear to be deliberate hits on media targets, and, in fact, appear to be the new normal, despite international laws protecting journalists during times of conflict. Article 79 of the Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions explicitly prescribes that “Journalists engaged in dangerous professional missions in areas of armed conflict shall be considered as civilians” and that they shall be protected as such. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) further established that civilian journalists must be respected and protected in international and non-international armed conflicts. We join the HRF and PCHR in highlighting that an intentional attack on civilians and civilian objects, including journalists and media tents, amounts to a war crime under Article 8 of the Rome Statute of the ICC.

As noted in our 2022 statement on threats to journalists worldwide, the courageous work of journalists helps ensure that human security concerns that escalate into mass atrocity and genocide are not able to run rampant without public scrutiny. Attacks on the press that are allowed to continue with impunity undermine the work of peacemakers worldwide. Israel’s assault on Palestinian journalists in Gaza is an assault not only on individual lives, but on the Palestinian community as a whole, on international law, and on press freedom worldwide.