Moroccan trade unions and professional associations have condemned the “campaign of assassinations of journalists by the Israeli occupation forces,” considering that “this systematic targeting, which has been ongoing for years, reached its peak during the recent military operations that followed October 7, 2023, and the outbreak of a war of ethnic cleansing and genocide that international organizations have now confirmed based on objective data, not speculation or rhetoric.”

Targeting journalists, according to the same frameworks, is “an aggression against the truth and a declared war on journalism as a living witness and professional conscience of what is happening,” emphasizing that “the purpose of assassinating journalists is not only to silence their voices, but also to uproot the crime of genocide from the bosom of the profession and strip the world of its tools for understanding reality and seeing the facts as they are in the Gaza Strip.”

The National Union of Moroccan Journalists"strongly condemned the systematic assassinations perpetrated by the occupation authorities against witnesses to the truth," considering them "a crime against humanity and a flagrant violation of international conventions aimed at silencing the voices of the remaining journalists, preventing them from reporting on the crimes being committed against civilians in Gaza, and preventing the rest of the world from accessing the truth about the humanitarian situation in the Strip."

The director of Al-Shifa Medical Complex in Gaza reported on Sunday that the Israeli army assassinated Anas al-Sharif and Mohammed Qreiqea, Al Jazeera correspondents, following a shelling that targeted the tent where they were covering the incident. The same shelling also killed three other people, while another journalist died Monday morning from injuries sustained in the same attack.

The Moroccan National Press Syndicate joined its colleagues in the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, which, in a statement, called on the Prosecutor General of the International Criminal Court to swiftly begin investigations into the occupation's crimes against Palestinian journalists. The Syndicate also emphasized its support for"all steps that lead to exposing this unprecedented massacre of journalists in conflict zones."

systematic campaign

Abdelkebir Akhchichin, president of the National Union of Moroccan Journalists, condemned the systematic assassination of journalists in the Gaza Strip, which has been witnessing a genocidal war for nearly two years. He described it as “one of the most heinous crimes targeting the media in conflict zones and war zones,” emphasizing that “the premeditated intent to target journalists, both male and female, is no longer hidden, but is confirmed by the course of events and daily data.”

“The National Union of Moroccan Journalists has emphasized, since the beginning of the aggression, that this ongoing massacre reflects a clear insistence on killing the truth and obliterating it by assassinating its bearers,” Akhchichin added in a statement to the electronic newspaper Hespress. He pointed out that “the number of martyred journalists exceeded 230 as of last month, in a shocking indicator that confirms the targeting of the media as one of the most prominent headlines of the crime committed in this small area.”

The union leader regretted the continuation of this aggression against “messengers of truth” in an area “without a single stone or human being posing any real threat, as the Israeli occupation authorities claim,” stressing that “the world today faces a real test to save what remains of humanity in this area and to regain the initiative in defending human values, after the international community has become a false witness to a genocide being committed in cold blood.”

The spokesman emphasized that"the insane Israeli war machine is targeting everything that moves, including those searching for water and food," amid a systematic war of starvation. He added that"the National Union of Moroccan Journalists, along with other regional, continental, and international professional bodies, has called for a loud voice to take action, because this ongoing crime is damning evidence of humanity's cowardice" and its complicity through silence.

Assassination of the truth

Mohammed Al-Aouni, head of the Freedom of Media and Expression Organization (HATM), said that what happened yesterday, Sunday, was “a new and very serious crime, no less heinous than the crimes committed by the Zionist occupation against children, women, the elderly, and doctors, in addition to the targeting of journalists, both male and female, in an attempt to extinguish the light of truth and expose the dangerous incursion that the Israeli entity is planning into its genocide project.”

Al-Aouni stated in his statement to Hespress that “undermining the truth is one of the Zionist government’s primary goals in this ongoing aggression,” noting that “this brutality is unparalleled in human history.”

The head of the Media Freedoms and Expression Organization continued:"The truth will catch up with the occupation's criminals, and the number of journalists killed during the aggression is a cry to the world."

The spokesman emphasized that “the martyrs of truth are pursuing the criminals of the Zionist entity,” considering that silence regarding what is happening signifies a kind of complicity on the part of this brutal and aggressive entity. He called for a moment of moral decisiveness for the global media and for taking sides with humanity and truth, by emphasizing that the time has come “to take urgent action and not remain silent in the face of an entity that kills the truth and its people in cold blood.”