A Palestinian man carries away an injured child from a home that was hit in an Israeli strike on the Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip, on November 7, 2024.    (AFP)

New York, November 10 (RHC)-- Israel’s systematic attack on journalists in northern Gaza is a “deliberate tactic” aimed at preventing the media from documenting the regime’s campaign of ethnic cleansing in the besieged territory, says a U.S.-based media group.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said Saturday that Israel has adopted a “starve or leave” policy to force Palestinians out of northern Gaza.

But, it said, there are almost no professional journalists left in the area “to document what several international institutions have described as an ethnic cleansing campaign.”  The Israeli regime, it said, “has not allowed international media independent access to Gaza in the 13 months since the war began.”

In October, the regime’s airstrikes killed at least five journalists, according to CPJ Program Director Carlos Martinez de la Serna. He said Israeli forces also began a smear campaign against six Al Jazeera journalists reporting in the north.

“It seems clear that the systematic attacks on the media and campaign to discredit those few journalists who remain is a deliberate tactic to prevent the world from seeing what Israel is doing there,” he said.  “Reporters are crucial in bearing witness during a war,” he said, “without them the world won’t be able to write history.”

Israeli forces have also prevented reporters from approaching sites that have been bombed or attacked, further suppressing documentation of alleged crimes, Osama Al Ashi, a freelance documentary producer told CPJ. 

According to reports from northern Gaza, Israeli forces have burned schools and attacked hospitals and medical staff. They have killed scores of people and forced tens of thousands of people to flee their homes.