Save the journalists Ammar and Hassan and their colleagues!!

Writer: Imad Al-Afranji

The Palestinian journalist, who suffers from persecution, displacement, and starvation, and the loss of work equipment and protective gear, has never allowed the image of the victims of the genocidal war on Gaza, which the Israeli occupation has been committing for three years, to disappear. This journalist, who wrote with his blood for Palestine, today does not find anyone to write about him, raise his voice to save him, or even stand in solidarity with him!!

The risks that journalists face are no longer limited to assassination, injury, persecution, arrest, and death threats against them and their families by the occupation; There are dozens of them suffering from serious injuries and severe diseases, and others need urgent surgeries and specialized care, in a health situation that is the most disastrous in the Gaza Strip.

Ammar Qadeeh, a distinguished journalist, suffers from a difficult health condition following a fracture in his back. He underwent surgery, but his condition deteriorated. He could barely catch his breath and needed a respirator. Then he gradually began to lose feeling until his health condition became very serious, requiring medical support and urgent care.

As for his colleague, the senior journalist Hassan Jabr, he is still suffering from a critical and extremely deteriorating health condition as a result of repeated clots that made him unable to move and made him confined to a wheelchair. His ability to see has declined, and he speaks with difficulty, which requires urgent treatment.

Both colleagues sided with truth, professionalism, and the issues of their people; Their concerns, their pain, their hopes, and they did not stop for a moment to stand by the Palestinian wherever he was. Their pens did not break, their resolve did not decline, and their voices did not fade.

Journalists who never skimped on writing for their people, their homeland, and their sanctities, about the martyrs, prisoners, and wounded, about children, women, youth, justice, and human rights.Those who wrote to help people are waiting today for someone to stand by them and help them!!

Ammar and Hassan, who have spent more than half of their lives of more than 50 years in the profession of searching for trouble, are examples of journalists who need special medical care, and many others, such as the great academic and journalist Dr. Hassan Abu Hashish, journalist Muhammad Fayek Abu Mustafa, and Muhammad Naeem, and they must not be dealt with - with the philosophy of indifference and lack of resourcefulness - by trade union and health authorities and international institutions!!

Medical evacuation is “not a privilege” for journalists, but rather it is an inherent right for them and for every patient, and a humanitarian and medical necessity after the occupation, with its war machine, destroyed the health system in Gaza, as there are about 40 journalists who need urgent medical evacuation and treatment abroad.

The evacuation of sick and injured journalists is an urgent humanitarian, legal and professional issue, especially for those suffering from serious diseases and injuries, or in need of surgical operations or prosthetic limbs. Any delay in their treatment leads to a deterioration in their conditions and the loss of opportunities for treatment, or even life!!, and the occupation’s continued procrastination and delaying the travel of journalists for treatment is practically a pre-sentence to death in front of a world that does not care about values, morals and humanity!!

Where is the World Health Organization, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the Federation of Arab Journalists, the International Federation of Journalists, and Reporters Without Borders? Why are you silent? Where is your turn? Do what you can! Translate your statements, sit-ins and statements into actions and do not let journalists die while you watch!

I also do not absolve journalists at home and abroad from their responsibilities towards their colleagues - and we are all vulnerable to what befalls them - and everyone should rise upIn turn, in raising their case with all the arts of media work, launching media and legal advocacy campaigns, and investing in their Arab and international relations - governments, organizations, unions and others - in order to immediately work to travel them outside Gaza for treatment, and provide health care and a decent life for them and their families. If something bad befalls them, then we are all guilty of them, and then there is no meaning to fellowship, brotherhood, or expressions of solidarity!!