© Mohammed Zaanoun ActiveStills
Dozens of Palestinian journalists have been injured while covering the Great March of Return protests in Gaza.
Dozens of Palestinian journalists have been injured while covering the Great March of Return protests in Gaza.
The Israeli military has reacted with deadly and purposeful force, killing and wounding at seemingly random. And still people have come from all over Gaza to demonstrate and protest their right of return to the lands from where they, their parents and grandparents, were once evicted.
With them we came, the journalists, watching and filming, bearing witness to the events as they transpired and talking to people to hear their stories and motivations.
For us, too, the protests have been dangerous. I was lucky to have a dermatologist father-in-law who could give me the required cream for a rash on my shoulder and abdomen that appeared hours after being exposed to tear gas on the day of the first demonstration on 30 March.
And from that relatively mundane example to the deadly, journalists have been very much in the line of fire.
So far, there have been two fatalities among those covering the protests. There have been a high number of injuries to journalists - as many as 66 over the four demonstrations held so far, according to Ashraf al-Qedra, a spokesperson for Gaza's ministry of health - prompting calls for the protection of journalists and investigations into the violence. Human right organizations and international watchdogs like the Committee to Protect Journalists have been at the forefront of these calls. These have had little effect on Israel's behavior.
Comment: Kill the messenger to stop the message by sending another.