OPT/Israel: PEN International joins international press rights groups call on Israel to protect Abraham and Szor’s fundamental rights

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“Under the International Court of Justice’s January 2024 order, the State of Israel is required to preserve evidence relating to the conduct of its forces in Gaza and to prevent its destruction. Rather than complying with their obligations under international law, Israeli authorities have persistently persecuted, defamed, intimidated and killed journalists investigating and reporting on grave human rights violations in Israel, Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon.

The campaign of intimidation against Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor is not an isolated case, but part of a broader pattern of hostility towards journalists, particularly Palestinian journalists exposing the conduct of Israeli forces.” said Romana Cacchioli Executive Director of PEN International

18 September 2026: PEN International joins 10 press freedom and writers' organisations in calling on Israeli authorities to end the campaign of intimidation against filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor and to guarantee their safety and that of their families.

Read the joint letter below.

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We, the undersigned, call on Israeli authorities to ensure the safety of investigative journalists and filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor and to protect their fundamental rights.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday that his government would seek legislation to revoke the citizenship of Israelis who “defame” Israeli soldiers abroad, explicitly citing the documentary “NAZA” and its filmmakers. Such threats to citizenship in response to journalistic or artistic expression raise concerns under Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which affirms that everyone has the right to a nationality and cannot be arbitrarily deprived of it. 

We are concerned that threats and inflammatory rhetoric by senior Israeli officials against the filmmakers are endangering them and their families. On Wednesday evening, dozens of individuals protested outside Szor’s family home, and vowed to do the same outside addresses associated with Abraham's family. In one video, protestors could be heard chanting “death sentence for traitors.” The demonstration followed days of increasingly hostile public rhetoric targeting the filmmakers, whose film, produced by The Guardian, won the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival earlier this month.

On Wednesday, a group of activists broke into the offices of Hebrew-language news site Sicha Mekomit (“Local Call”), and Israeli-Palestinian outlet +972 Magazine, which have published investigations by Abraham. Taken together, these incidents point to an alarming escalation from public threats and intimidation to actions directly targeting the filmmakers, their families, and the journalists who publish their work.

These incidents are part of a broader pattern of Israeli authorities and security forces attacking journalists, the majority of them are Palestinians.

Public threats against journalists, particularly when coupled with the prospect of legal retaliation for their work, are unacceptable. Journalists must be able to investigate and report freely on the conduct of the military, government officials, or other powerful institutions. 

Israeli authorities must immediately end the official campaign against Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor and ensure their safety and that of their families from the vigilante violence the government’s inflammatory rhetoric has unleashed. Governments are responsible for protecting their journalists, not exposing them to danger.

Signatory organisations:

1. Committee to Protect Journalists

2. Freedom of the Press Foundation 

3. Coalition For Women In Journalism 

4. World Association of News Publishers (WAN-IFRA)

5. The Simon and June Li Center for Global Journalism

6. Reporters Without Borders (RSF)

7. Index on Censorship

8. PEN America

9. Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ) 

10. PEN International

11. International Press Institute (IPI)

Note to editors:

• For more information, please contact Mina Thabet, Head of the MENA Region, email: [email protected]

•  For media interviews or queries, please contact Sabrina Tucci, Head of Communications and Campaigns of PEN International, [email protected]