OPINION | It’s time to let the global media into Gaza

This piece originally appeared on Dan Perry’s Substack, “Ask Questions Later,” and was distributed by the Forward.

The war in Gaza has been going on for 11 months now, and has grown into a full-fledged, globally historic disaster that could actually affect the outcome of the US presidential election. During this time, the international press has been prevented from reporting directly from the ground, and has become dependent on local reporters, whose primary mission, one might assume, is to somehow survive.

Last December, the Jerusalem-based Foreign Press Association for Israel and the Palestinian Territory — a volunteer organization I chaired from 2001 to 2004 — filed a petition with Israel’s Supreme Court requesting access for foreign journalists to Gaza. Although the petition was denied on security grounds, the court acknowledged that restrictions infringed on press freedom and invited the FPA to reapply for access if circumstances changed. The FPA filed just such a petition this week.

The court should rule in favor of the FPA. Such a ruling would not be about foreign journalists. Rather, it would be about two things.

First, the global community, including Israelis and Palestinians themselves, has the right and even the duty to know what is happening in the Strip. The irony, for Israel, is that the blackout has opened the field for information coming from Hamas — including reports of over 40,000 dead. In the absence of verifiable information, these numbers are passed on, and Hamas propaganda enjoys a near-monopolistic status in the global discourse.

This distorts public opinion — not only globally, but also within Israel itself. Israel’s own people do not fully understand what the army is doing in their name in Gaza. Some assume the worst; others dismiss any criticism as absurd given the satanic nature of the Hamas army that is trying to defeat Israel, and no one knows what is really going on.

Second, such a stance would be very good news for Israel’s global standing. It could remind people around the world that Israel is still a democracy, despite the far-right government’s best efforts to undermine the limits of that democracy in the tumultuous months leading up to the Hamas invasion and the October 7 massacre.

To be clear, the Israeli government, however awful, is still a million times less repulsive than Hamas, which started the war and is both a blot and a curse on the Palestinians. It was democratically elected (by half a whisker, but that’s another story), but it currently does not enjoy the confidence of the vast majority of that electorate. It is precisely at times when democracies make mistakes that the separation of powers built into a liberal democracy is tested and becomes crucial.

Below is a brief overview of the situation.

For starters, we’re dealing with a 360-square-kilometer (140-square-mile) strip of desert beach that’s essentially cut off from the world by Israel to the north and east, the Mediterranean Sea (blockaded by Israel) to the west, and Egypt to the south. The tightly controlled blockade—also supported by Egypt, though there has been massive smuggling—was imposed when Hamas seized control of the area and its more than 2 million residents in 2007. (It should also be noted that Egypt has also banned foreign journalists from the current conflict.) The idea was to prevent Hamas from amassing an army and prevent an invasion—so it’s safe to say the policy has failed miserably.

Hamas has been firing rockets into Israel since it came to power, and even before October 7, it had launched four smaller wars. Each was followed by billions in reconstruction aid — money that appears to have gone toward building tunnels and an offensive capability; the Strip remains one of the most impoverished places on earth.

In the past, foreign journalists have been allowed access to Gaza during conflicts, albeit with restrictions. Never before have they been shut out for so long. This marks a troubling shift, especially given the scale of the current conflict and its profound humanitarian impact. As the fighting continues, the world must rely on official Israeli and Hamas accounts, both of which are likely to be biased and serve their respective narratives. (In the case of Hamas, a bloodthirsty mafia, it is absurd to uncritically believe their accounts.) Independent journalism, particularly from international media, serves as a crucial counterbalance, providing the unbiased reporting that is essential for the global community to form an informed opinion.

The Israeli government’s reasoning is based on security concerns, but journalists have a long history of entering dangerous conflict zones to report the truth. From Iraq to Afghanistan, Syria to Lebanon, foreign journalists have risked their lives to provide essential reporting. Gaza is no different.

The risks are real, but it should be the journalists’ decision. Unfortunately, the international media has a lot of experience with this: they have security specialists, they send reporters to security training, and they don’t want reporters to get hurt. When I was AP’s Middle East editor for the past decade, we covered wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, and of course Gaza. Security was paramount, but we sent reporters to all of these places (and several were killed and injured, and we did our best to learn).

(They are a strange and diminishing herd, these foreign correspondents. The business model of global media is broken, but the mission may be more important than ever. Read more about it here.)

What makes the argument even stronger is the fact that humanitarian workers have been given limited access to Gaza. Where does the security gap lie? Journalists do indeed play their own humanitarian role by drawing attention to the suffering of civilians and ensuring that the world is not blind to the horrors of war.

In previous conflicts, journalists were embedded with the Israel Defense Forces, a practice that continues in this war. However, the number of allowed embeds is severely limited, and many smaller media organizations are completely excluded. While embeds provide an important perspective, they also give the IDF control over the narrative, selecting who gets access and under what circumstances. And of course, there is no way to talk to Palestinians unchecked.

Moreover, the role of journalists in conflict zones is more than just reporting facts. They are witnesses to atrocities, chroniclers of human suffering, and sometimes their work influences the outcome of wars by shaping international opinion and policy. Without them, the world remains in the dark and human rights violations can go unnoticed and unpunished.

Israel’s security concerns are understandable, but the fact that journalists have been denied access for nearly a year suggests a deeper reluctance to allow oversight of actions in Gaza. The Israeli government must recognize that the global community depends on independent reporting, and the continued denial of access raises questions about what they may not want the world to see.

It’s time to let the journalists in.

The opinions and views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of J. or the Forward, which distributed this article.