{"id":23044,"date":"2025-09-26T02:44:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-26T08:44:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sensorialsunsets.com\/reporting-to-the-world-from-gaza-and-the-press-the-persistent-siege-that-israel-has-been-trying-to-maintain-for-23-months-analyzed-from-an-inaudible-costa-rica\/"},"modified":"2025-09-26T02:44:20","modified_gmt":"2025-09-26T08:44:20","slug":"reporting-to-the-world-from-gaza-and-the-press-the-persistent-siege-that-israel-has-been-trying-to-maintain-for-23-months-analyzed-from-an-inaudible-costa-rica","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sensorialsunsets.com\/en\/reporting-to-the-world-from-gaza-and-the-press-the-persistent-siege-that-israel-has-been-trying-to-maintain-for-23-months-analyzed-from-an-inaudible-costa-rica\/","title":{"rendered":"Reporting to the world from Gaza and the press: the persistent siege that Israel has been trying to maintain for 23 months, analyzed from an inaudible Costa Rica."},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Why is Israel targeting Palestinian journalists in Gaza? Simple. We are the only ones able to document and transmit what is actually happening on the ground. Every image, every testimony, every broadcast we produce pierces through the wall of Israel\u2019s official narrative. That makes us dangerous: by recording the displacement, the starvation, and the relentless bombardment, we expose Israel\u2019s actions to the world<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Testimony of a Palestinian journalist from Gaza, Ruwaida Amer, published in the Israeli digital media outlet Magazine+972 (see article<\/a><\/strong> titled “Maryam was my friend. Israel killed her and four other Gaza journalists,” published on August 27, 2025).<\/p>\n\n

Reporting to the world from Gaza and the press: the persistent siege that Israel has been trying to maintain for 23 months, analyzed from an inaudible Costa Rica<\/em><\/strong><\/h3>\n\n

Nicolas Boeglin, Professor of Public International Law, Faculty of Law, University of Costa Rica (UCR): contact: nboeglin(a)gmail.com<\/p>\n\n

Introduction<\/em><\/strong><\/h5>\n\n

Israel’s deliberate killing of six journalists in Gaza on August 10 sparked condemnation from various countries and international organizations around the world.<\/p>\n\n

The total silence on the part of Costa Rica’s diplomatic apparatus can be compared to Chile’s official statement condemning Israel for killing these media professionals in Gaza (see text<\/a><\/strong>), or to Spain’s statement (see official statement<\/a><\/strong>) or Norway (see text<\/a><\/strong>), among many others.<\/p>\n\n

On September 7, it was 23 months since the afternoon\/evening when Israel launched its senseless military offensive against the Palestinian civilian population in Gaza, which we warned about, along with many others, back in October 2023 (Note 1) as it was a true reprisal against civilians in response to the attack suffered by Israel on the same day perpetrated by Hamas, it is more than striking to observe the relentlessness with which Israel has attempted to physically eliminate those who seek to inform the world about what is happening in Gaza.<\/p>\n\n

This relentless pursuit is linked to a deliberate intention: to control at all costs the information coming out of Gaza, so that it does not affect the official narrative of Israeli diplomacy. The latter has a network of active networks around the world, called \u201cHasbara\u201d in Hebrew (Note 2), which includes political and academic circles, journalists, columnists, various analysts, and \u201cexperts.\u201d This network seeks to guide public opinion and discredit criticism of Israel, in an effort to ensure that Israel is always perceived positively abroad. A publication available online entitled \u201cIsrael’s Hasbara Toolkit\u201d (75 pages, published in the United Kingdom) details the range of semantic games to be applied: a specialist in international law will immediately recognize the semantic game that has been applied to his discipline in countless articles and columns published in Costa Rica, as well as in many other parts of the world, since October 7, 2023 (pp. 56-58).<\/p>\n\n

Regarding the generous allocation of resources to Hasbara, this note from the Israeli media outlet TimesofIsrael, dated December 29, 2024, indicates that Israel has scheduled a major effort for 2025 to \u201cpromote Israel’s image abroad.\u201d >article<\/strong> from the Israeli media outlet TimesofIsrael,<\/em> dated December 29, 2024, indicates that Israel has planned a rather unusual budgetary effort for 2025, detailing that:<\/p>\n\n

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Under the new budget, the Foreign Ministry will receive $150 million, on top of what it gets for its existing activities, for what\u2019s officially known as public diplomacy, or\u00a0hasbara\u00a0in Hebrew. That sum is more than 20 times what such efforts have typically been allotted in past years<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

On September 5, ahead of the upcoming United Nations General Assembly to be held later this month, a large group of experts and United Nations human rights mechanisms issued a passionate appeal to the international community to intensify pressure on Israel, given the famine spreading across Gaza and the unspeakable suffering of the civilian population of Gaza, which is being bombed day and night.<\/p>\n\n

In their press release (see text<\/a><\/strong>), it states that:<\/p>\n\n

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The horrors of death by starvation will intensify if Israel is not stopped. Already, half a million people in Gaza are starving. Have State authorities become so numb to these numbers \u2014 so desensitised, once again, to the systematic breaches of our collective moral and legal obligations?\u201d the experts said.\u00a0The famine in Gaza, deliberately engineered and perpetuated by Israel \u2013 and enabled by private and security actors \u2013 is an affront to humanity, the experts said.\u201cA State responsible for creating genocidal conditions aimed at destroying Palestinians in Gaza as a group by also starving them cannot and shall not be entrusted to control access, distribution, or supervision of humanitarian aid,\u201d they said.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Some of our esteemed readers may discover, upon reading this, the existence of this United Nations press release, which has received very little coverage in the major international media outlets.<\/p>\n\n

Similarly, it is likely that this press release<\/a><\/strong> from the United Nations on September 8 and this other press release<\/a><\/strong> from the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child on September 9, condemning Israel for using children’s hunger as a weapon of war, will meet with exactly the same fate in terms of their dissemination and coverage by the mainstream media.<\/p>\n\n

\"\"\/<\/a><\/figure>\n\n

Photo of downtown Gaza City, September 8, 2025, taken from article<\/a><\/strong> published in Israel, “I’m in Gaza City, my bag is packed, but I refuse to leave my home,” Magazine+972, September 9, 2025 edition, recommended reading.<\/em><\/p>\n\n

Maintain the information blockade at all costs<\/em><\/strong><\/h3>\n\n

Beyond the exceptional budgetary generosity for 2025 granted to the vast network of influence that Israel maintains throughout the world, it is noteworthy that days before that fateful August 10, it was from the very site of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights that an official statement from this entity pointed out the strategy behind the repeated deaths of Palestinian media professionals in Gaza (see text<\/a><\/strong> of its statement of July 31, 2025): to erase the truth at all costs.<\/p>\n\n

In fact, this statement reads as follows:<\/p>\n\n

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Killings, attacks, arbitrary detention and harassment of Palestinian journalists and the destruction of press facilities and equipment in Gaza and the West Bank are part of a deliberate strategy of Israel to suppress the truth, obstruct the documentation of international crimes and bury any possibility of future accountability<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Since it seems that in Costa Rica some policy makers (and also trade union leaders, as we will see below) do not appear to have much knowledge (interest?) in what the United Nations has repeatedly warned about regarding the repeated and sustained killing of Palestinian journalists in Gaza and the West Bank, it is worth recalling what was read from that same site of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in February 2024. Five United Nations human rights experts (see press release<\/a><\/strong> of February 1, 2024) stated very emphatically that:<\/p>\n\n

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We have received disturbing reports that, despite being clearly identifiable in jackets and helmets marked \u201cpress\u201d or travelling in well-marked press vehicles, journalists have come under attack, which would seem to indicate that the killings, injury, and detention are a deliberate strategy by Israeli forces to obstruct the media and silence critical reporting,\u201d the UN experts said.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

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In times of conflict, the right to information is a \u2018survival right\u2019 on which the very lives of civilians depend, and journalists play an indispensable role as a vital source of information, and as human rights defenders and witnesses to atrocities, reporting on violations and abuses of international humanitarian law and human rights.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Considering the aforementioned lack of interest (knowledge?) among some in Costa Rica, it is worth pointing out to our esteemed readers that, as Israel is preventing the international press from entering Gaza, despite insistent requests made since October 7, 2023, the only ones able to inform the world about what is really happening there are the Palestinian journalists and communicators who live in Gaza.<\/p>\n\n

Six information professionals out of many more<\/em><\/strong><\/h3>\n\n

We are talking about six Palestinian media professionals who were deliberately and intentionally killed by Israel, whose names have been added to a long list of journalists who have been repeatedly murdered since the afternoon\/evening of October 7, 2023: according to the CPJ, the death toll now stands at 197 (see link<\/a><\/strong> to the Committee for the Protection of Journalists’ record of Israeli attacks on journalists in Gaza).<\/p>\n\n

With regard to our esteemed Costa Rican readers, particularly communications professionals, we invite you to compare, by way of example:<\/h5>\n\n