Israel’s block on international journalists in Gaza should not be allowed to stand
On Sky News this week we’re showing a film about Israel’s war in Gaza which has now been going on for more than 620 days.
It is a chastening watch.
Swathes of Gaza’s medical infrastructure have been razed, many of the territory’s buildings have been destroyed, and tens of thousands of Gazans have been killed, maimed and left hungry and malnourished in a war fought mainly from the air with heavy ordinance dropped on crowded civilian areas.
These extraordinary eyewitness accounts are not brought to our screens by experienced international war correspondents – they are barred from entering Gaza – but by two British medics whose mission was to save lives not to report on the horrors of war.
That visiting surgeons Victoria Rose and Tom Potokar felt compelled to do just that, speaks not only to the tragedy unfolding in Gaza, but to the swingeing restrictions imposed on reporting what is happening there.
In the history of modern warfare, the presence of journalists on the battlefield has been essential in holding the combatants to account and ensuring that war crimes and atrocities are uncovered and prevented.
And Israel stands accused of egregious crimes in Gaza.
Since it launched its war there in response to the Hamas terror attacks of October 7th 2023, in which around 1,200 Israelis and other nationals were murdered and a further 250 taken hostage, more than 55,000 Palestinians have been killed according to the Gazan health authorities. Many of the dead have been women and children.
Earlier this month, former US State Department official Matt Miller told the Sky News Trump100 podcast that Israel had committed war crimes in Gaza. Ex-UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths went further, telling Sky News presenter Yalda Hakim that Israel is responsible for genocide there.
It’s an accusation supported by Ireland, Spain, and South Africa which is pursuing Israel for genocide at the International Court of Justice – the UN’s highest court.
Jonathan Levy. Pic: Sky News
Israel rejects the case against it, claiming that many of the dead are Hamas fighters who have been hiding in tunnels under the hospitals that it has the right to attack in self-defence.
Israeli officials and diplomats deny that its military targets women and children and react with outrage to the suggestion that it is responsible for ethnic cleansing or genocide – accusations of crimes against humanity that are taken as particularly loaded given the dark resonance they have for the Jewish people.
But Israel’s confidence in the integrity of its wartime conduct is not matched by a willingness to allow international journalists into Gaza to witness what is going on there for themselves.
Military-organised ’embeds’ fall well short of independent journalism
For the course of its longest war, no reporters have been permitted entry to Gaza other than on organised and controlled ’embeds’ of a few hours alongside Israeli soldiers.
These managed opportunities fall well short of independent journalism, for which Sky News and other global news organisations must rely on trusted and heroic local reporting teams who lack the support and infrastructure to provide a complete picture of what is going on.
And these Palestinian journalists have paid a heavy price for their work; according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 185 of them have been killed during the war and 86 imprisoned.
The Foreign Press Association, which represents the interests of international journalists operating in Israel, has been petitioning its High Court of Justice to lift the ban on reporting independently from Gaza.
So far, that legal action has been unsuccessful and last month the court again postponed a hearing in the case without reason or setting a new date.
Israeli officials push back on the need and suitability of allowing journalists to operate independently in Gaza. They say that their military’s priority is the rescue of the remaining hostages and the fight against Hamas and that the safety of reporters could not be ensured.
But journalists from Sky News and fellow news organisations have operated in Gaza in previous conflicts, providing details of their location and movements to the Israel Defence Forces.
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‘We accept the risks’
Moreover, we have decades of experience of covering conflict zones and our reporters are highly trained at doing so. The risks are real, for sure. But they’re risks that we accept. It’s what we do.
The ongoing denial of access to Gaza feels much less about the safety of journalists and more about preventing proper scrutiny and accountability of the desperate situation there.
Medics treating patients in Gaza
The barring of international journalists is accompanied by the active delegitimisation of what reporting on the war has been possible which is often shamefully labelled as anti-Semitic and compared to the darkest periods in Jewish history.
All together this constitutes a war on truth that is at odds with Israel’s proud and oft-repeated claim to be the Middle East’s only democracy and it should not be allowed to stand.
Gaza: Doctors On The Frontline will air on Sky News at 9pm on 19 June
Donald Trump has agreed to send “top of the line weapons” to NATO to support Ukraine – and threatened Russia with “severe” tariffs if it doesn’t agree to end the war.
Speaking with NATO secretary general Mark Rutte during a meeting at the White House, the US president said: “We’ve made a deal today where we are going to be sending them weapons, and they’re going to be paying for them.
“This is billions of dollars worth of military equipment which is going to be purchased from the United States,” he added, “going to NATO, and that’s going to be quickly distributed to the battlefield.”
Weapons being sent include surface-to-air Patriot missile systems and batteries, which Ukraine has asked for to defend itself from Russian air strikes.
Pic: Reuters
Mr Trump also said he was “very unhappy” with Russia, and threatened “severe tariffs” of “about 100%” if there isn’t a deal to end the war in Ukraine within 50 days.
The White House added that the US would put “secondary sanctions” on countries that buy oil from Russia if an agreement was not reached.
It comes after weeks of frustration from Mr Trump against Vladimir Putin’s refusal to agree to an end to the conflict, with the Russian leader telling the US president he would “not back down” from Moscow’s goals in Ukraine at the start of the month.
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Trump says Putin ‘talks nice and then bombs everybody’
During the briefing on Monday, Mr Trump said he had held calls with Mr Putin where he would think “that was a nice phone call,” but then “missiles are launched into Kyiv or some other city, and that happens three or four times”.
“I don’t want to say he’s an assassin, but he’s a tough guy,” he added.
Earlier this year, Mr Trump told Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy “you’re gambling with World War Three” in a fiery White House meeting, and suggested Ukraine started the war against Russia as he sought to negotiate an end to the conflict.
After Mr Trump’s briefing, Russian senator Konstantin Kosachev said on Telegram: “If this is all that Trump had in mind to say about Ukraine today, then all the steam has gone out.”
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Meanwhile, Mr Zelenskyy met with US special envoy Keith Kellogg in Kyiv, where they “discussed the path to peace” by “strengthening Ukraine’s air defence, joint production, and procurement of defence weapons in collaboration with Europe”.
He thanked both the envoy for the visit and Mr Trump “for the important signals of support and the positive decisions for both our countries”.
At least 30 people have been killed in the Syrian city of Sweida in clashes between local military groups and tribes, according to Syria’s interior ministry.
Officials say initial figures suggest around 100 people have also been injured in the city, where the Druze faith is one of the major religious groups.
The interior ministry said its forces will directly intervene to resolve the conflict, which the Reuters news agency said involved fighting between Druze gunmen and Bedouin Sunni tribes.
It marks the latest episode of sectarian violence in Syria, where fears among minority groups have increased since Islamist-led rebels toppled President Bashar al Assad in December, installing their own government and security forces.
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In March, Sky’s Stuart Ramsay described escalating violence within Syria
The violence reportedly erupted after a wave of kidnappings, including the abduction of a Druze merchant on Friday on the highway linking Damascus to Sweida.
Last April, Sunni militia clashed with armed Druze residents of Jaramana, southeast of Damascus, and fighting later spread to another district near the capital.
But this is the first time the fighting has been reported inside the city of Sweida itself, the provincial capital of the mostly Druze province.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reports the fighting was centred in the Maqwas neighbourhood east of Sweida and villages on the western and northern outskirts of the city.
It adds that Syria’s Ministry of Defence has deployed military convoys to the area.
Western nations, including the US and UK, have been increasingly moving towards normalising relations with Syria.
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UK aims to build relationship with Syria
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Read more from Sky News:
UK restores diplomatic ties with Syria
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Concerns among minority groups have intensified following the killing of hundreds of Alawites in March, in apparent retaliation for an earlier attack carried out by Assad loyalists.
That was the deadliest sectarian flare-up in years in Syria, where a 14-year civil war ended with Assad fleeing to Russia after his government was overthrown by rebel forces.
The city of Sweida is in southern Syria, about 24 miles (38km) north of the border with Jordan.
The man convicted of the murder of British student Meredith Kercher has been charged with sexual assault against an ex-girlfriend.
Rudy Guede, 38, was the only person who was definitively convicted of the murder of 21-year-old Ms Kercher in Perugia, Italy, back in 2007.
He will be standing trial again in November after an ex-girlfriend filed a police report in the summer of 2023 accusing Guede of mistreatment, personal injury and sexual violence.
Guede, from the Ivory Coast, was released from prison for the murder of Leeds University student Ms Kercher in 2021, after having served about 13 years of a 16-year sentence.
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Since last year – when this investigation was still ongoing – Guede has been under a “special surveillance” regime, Sky News understands, meaning he was banned from having any contact with the woman behind the sexual assault allegations, including via social media, and had to inform police any time he left his city of residence, Viterbo, as ruled by a Rome court.
Guede has been serving a restraining order and fitted with an electronic ankle tag.
The Kercher murder case, in the university city of Perugia, was the subject of international attention.
Ms Kercher, a 21-year-old British exchange student, was found murdered in the flat she shared with her American roommate, Amanda Knox.
The Briton’s throat had been cut and she had been stabbed 47 times.
(L-R) Raffaele Sollecito, Meredith Kercher and Amanda Knox. File pic: AP
Ms Knox and her then-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, were placed under suspicion.
Both were initially convicted of murder, but Italy’s highest court overturned their convictions, acquitting them in 2015.
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