Board member removed from CPJ after criticizing exclusion of some Gaza journalists from its death toll

Journalist and activist Dr. Nika Soon-Shiong, announced on Monday, June 29, on X that she was sacked from the board of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

Dr. Soon-Shiong, currently working as the publisher of Drop Site News, attached an email, sent to the board a day earlier, which she believes caused CPJ to dismiss her. The strongly-worded correspondence contained a protest against the latest review of the organization’s database of journalists killed during Israel’s genocidal aggression on the Gaza Strip.

The CPJ said that it conducted the review after resistance groups Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) published “obituaries” identifying a number of journalists killed by Israel as “combatants.” Consequently, the CPJ removed the names of eight Palestinian journalists from its lists.

Read more: Israel kills six Palestinian journalists including Al Jazeera correspondents Anas al-Sharif and Mohammad Qreiqe

“CPJ has always been clear that we do not include anyone in our data sets if there is evidence that they were engaging in combat or inciting imminent violence,” the organization’s CEO, Jodie Ginsberg, stated.

“This is consistent with international humanitarian law, which considers journalists affiliated with non-state actors to be civilians, provided they do not directly participate in hostilities,” Ginsberg continued. 

While CPJ’s CEO cited international humanitarian law as the guideline for the action taken against the eight murdered Palestinian journalists, critics questioned the neutrality and impartiality of applying it to journalists from different nationalities and backgrounds. 

The big question here is: does resisting a military that has committed genocide in full view of the world for around three years constitute a hostility?

Nika accuses CPJ of justifying Israel’s targeted assassination of Palestinian journalists

Nika slammed the CPJ’s review for its vagueness as it stipulates the exclusion of journalists, “who exhibit certain behaviors or activities or who work for state-backed propaganda outlets, militant-and designated terror-affiliated organizations”. 

According to Nika, the proposal does not specify what kind of “behaviors or activities” these would be, making it prone to misuse against particular journalists rather than others.

Regarding institutional affiliations, Nika slammed the CPJ for excluding Palestinian journalists allegedly affiliated with resistance groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Meanwhile, this exclusion does not apply to journalists working for corporate media outlets who have children serving in the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF), which has committed a genocide in Gaza, killing over 73,000 people. 

She added that some editors of these outlets served in the IOF directly, or now mentor journalists who have contributed to Israel’s “information war.”

Nika also cautioned that by placing scrutiny on the assassinated Palestinian journalists, CPJ is implicitly indicating that “they were somehow responsible for their own deaths.” This in turn consolidates the pretext Israel has used to target Palestinian journalists.

“Permanent reputational damage of doing so might undermine the impartiality and credibility on which CPJ’s work rests,” she warned.

It is worth noting that Israel has killed at least 236 Palestinian journalists and media workers in Gaza since October 7, 2023.