DRAD to US Embassy in Israel: Advocate for Journalist Jeremy Loffredo
October 11, 2024
Gaza First Amendment Alert (October 16, 2024)
October 16, 2024DRAD Appears on Project Censored to Discuss Arms Embargo Letter
On October 7, 2024, Policy Director Chip Gibbons appeared on the Project Censored Show to discuss Defending Rights & Dissent’s letter to the State Department calling for an arms embargo against Israel. Signed by over 100 journalists, 20 news outlets, and seven press freedom organizations, the letter concerns Israel’s killing of journalists in Gaza.
On the show, Chip discussed the devastation of Israel’s murder of Palestinian journalists, along with its ramifications for information emerging from Gaza. Since the war’s outset, Israel has killed 168 journalists (as of October 17, 2024), often in targeted missile strikes or with sniper fire. Talking about the reluctance of American press freedom organizations to speak out on the killing of Palestinian journalists, Chip noted the remarks of murdered journalist Wael al-Dahdouh, who said, “We feel that we are being killed twice: once by the bombs and once by the silence.” The letter was an attempt to break that silence; to stand in solidarity with journalists in Palestine.
Project Censored summarized the interview as follows:
“Chip highlights the vehement hypocrisy with which the US pretends to uphold freedom of the press, while not only ignoring the murder of journalists, but also while pushing for a media blackout and censorship of reports from Gaza.”
In the interview, Chip examined the purpose of Israel’s targeted killing of journalists:
“[Israel is] murdering the people on the ground who are reporting because they don’t want us to see the images of mass graves, doctors in handcuffs in their scrubs, or women and children tortured and shot at point-blank range, execution style…Israel doesn’t want there to be any acknowledgement of Palestinians or Palestinian life…That’s part of the genocide, wiping this people’s memory from the earth.”
Listen to the interview here.
Defending Rights & Dissent previously won Project Censored’s Media in Democracy Award for reporting on FBI surveillance and harassment of environmental activists in Idaho.
