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Israel hates journalists enough to kill them. For 45 years, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) was supposed to fight against that. Called "journalism's Red Cross," CPJ was founded by Americans who refused to stand by while journalists were jailed, beaten, or killed.

Its mandate is to defend any journalist under threat "without regard to political ideology" and count the dead so the world can't look away. But in June, CPJ cut 20 Palestinian journalists from its Gaza list after their names appeared in Hamas and Islamic Jihad obituaries.

Now-former CPJ board member Nika Soon-Shiong of Drop Site News said it went much deeper than that. According to Soon-Shiong, CPJ was redefining who qualifies as a journalist, broad enough to strip protections from Palestinian and Lebanese reporters based on where they worked.

Only after Soon-Shiong and Drop Site exposed the removals did CPJ's full board step in and restore its original definitions. Israel decides who gets to see Gaza and the atrocities committed there.

We will never allow CPJ or any other organization to erase brave journalists for keeping the record, because to lose the record would be to lose our humanity.

The world must know about heroes like Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, the Kamal Adwan Hospital director seized by Israeli forces on December 27, 2024, after refusing to abandon his patients.