Reporting from an active conflict zone is one of the most dangerous, but necessary, jobs a journalist can undertake in our society and even in an increasingly callous and authoritarian Pig Empire, we regard those who undertake that task as heroic truth tellers. By that same metric, we regard a government that would engage in the specific and intentional targeting of clearly-identified journalists in a conflict zone as dangerous, lawless, and criminal in the extreme. Unless, as it turns out, those journalists are covering the ongoing U.S.-backed genocide in Gaza, and the country murdering them is Israel. In that case, Pig Empire media will barely take notice and the U.S. government will gladly ship another $20 billion worth of weapons to continue conducting a genocide.

Thankfully however, not everyone in the (primarily) American media is prepared to be complicit by their silence; over 100 journalists "including four Pulitzer Prize winners, along with 18 news outlets and seven press freedom organizations" have signed a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken decrying American material support for Israel's targeted murdering of journalists and demanding an immediate U.S. arms embargo that would ultimately end Israel's campaign of genocide in Gaza.

https://web.archive.org/web/20240817235700/https://www.thenation.com/article/world/israel-gaza-journalists-war-killing/

More Than 100 Journalists Come Together With Their Fellow Journalists in Palestine and Against US Complicity in Their Killing

"But it isn’t just Israel’s indiscriminate killings that have resulted in the unprecedented killing of journalists. By Israel’s own admission, al-Ghoul was targeted directly. The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate filed an amicus brief in support of an American lawsuit charging the Biden administration with violating the Genocide Convention. In the brief, they stated, “Evidence strongly indicates that the vast majority of the journalists and media workers killed since the start of the genocide were specifically targeted for assassination by the Israeli military.” Al Jazeera similarly has accused Israel of assassinating its journalists. While the scale of Israel’s killing of journalists is without precedent, Israel has a longer history of targeting Palestinian journalists. Israeli snipers were credibly accused of intentionally targeting journalists during the 2018 Great March of Return and independent investigations have found evidence that in 2022 intentionally killed Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Alkeh.

Israel’s assassination of journalists, like its wider military actions, are made possible by US support. The US provides the weapons and uses its diplomatic and political clout to make sure Israel is sheltered from any accountability when it uses those weapons to violate international law.

“Israel’s military actions are not possible without US weapons, US military aid, and US diplomatic support,” we write. “By providing the weapons being used to deliberately kill journalists, you are complicit in one of the gravest affronts to press freedom today.”

While I strongly recommend you read the whole article, I think it's important to note here that the assassination of journalists working in Gaza isn't about random accidental killings in a conflict zone; in some cases the Israeli government has proudly announced the intentional murder of journalists while accusing them of being members of Hamas, and in other cases they have merely refused to comment after evidence makes it very clear military personnel knew they were targeting journalists and simply didn't care. When a 10-month old conflict (read: active genocide) results in the (often targeted) murder of at least 160 journalists, while the entirety of both World War II and the Vietnam War only resulted in 132 journalists being killed, combined, it would take a level of obtuse myopia that stretches all limits of credibility to pretend these deaths are merely the result of legally-acceptable acts of war.

Israel is clearly trying to cover up its acts of genocide by intentionally murdering journalists and they're using U.S. weapons to do so, which means the Biden administration is responsible for these heinous acts against press freedom. And that's not just my opinion, that's a legally defined reality according to international law.