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Qatar Press Center condemns the assassination of journalist Omar Al-Diraoui and photographer Hassan Al-Qishawi

The Qatar Press Center condemns in the strongest terms the assassination of journalist Omar Al-Diraoui and 8 others, following an airstrike on his family’s home in the town of Al-Zawaida in the central Gaza Strip at dawn today, and the assassination of photojournalist Hassan Al-Qishawi, after he was targeted by a missile from an Israeli drone west of Gaza City yesterday evening, bringing the number of journalist martyrs in Gaza since the beginning of the Israeli aggression on October 7 until now to 203 journalists, both male and female.

The Center condemns the continued assassination of journalists and media professionals by the Israeli occupation forces, in flagrant violation of international law, by bombing their locations and places of residence, in order to silence the free media and prevent it from conveying the truth to the world. The Center calls on the international community, UN, human rights and media organizations to condemn the targeting of journalists and their families in Gaza with killing, arrest and intimidation, and to take urgent action to hold the Israeli occupation accountable before international courts for war crimes against journalists and media professionals, and to pressure it to stop the crimes of genocide and the assassination of Palestinian journalists. The Center expresses its surprise at the continued international silence of UN, human rights and media organizations regarding the deliberate and systematic targeting of journalists and media professionals in Gaza.

The Center calls on the international community to pressure Israel to release journalists detained in Israeli prisons, who are suffering from dire conditions that deprive them of the most basic rights of prisoners, as stipulated in international laws and conventions.

Journalist Omar Al-Diraoui had prayed the funeral prayer for his brother the day before his martyrdom, before joining him with his father, mother and siblings in the middle of the Gaza Strip. By killing and disappearing journalists, Israel seeks to monopolize the narrative, as it does not want the world to see the crimes it is committing against the Palestinian people, while preventing international press crews from reaching Gaza and covering the war of extermination. All of this is within the framework of a comprehensive process in which it is practicing genocide, and a group of other international crimes through which it is trying to establish a second Nakba against 2.3 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip for more than a year. Since the beginning of the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip, journalists have been subjected to continuous Israeli persecution, which constitutes a clear violation of international laws; in an attempt by the occupation to silence them and prevent them from conveying the facts of what is happening in the Gaza Strip to the world. Over the past months, human rights and international institutions and journalistic investigations have called for strict measures to be taken to prevent the ongoing attacks and deliberate targeting of journalists. They also stressed the need to criminalize such crimes and impose penalties on those responsible, but that has not happened.