Israel: IPI and 10 partners call on authorities to protect NAZA filmmakers

Desk file · IPI / CPJ

Eleven organisations, one letter, no invented famous names.

ipi.media, Sep 18, 2026 — one clip in this file. The note was written for the file, not from the headline.

On 18 September 2026 the International Press Institute posted a joint letter with ten partners. CPJ posted the same morning. PEN International published the full text. The ask is three parts: end the official campaign against Abraham and Szor; protect them and their families from the vigilante violence the letter says the rhetoric unleashed; keep journalists free to scrutinise the army. That is a press-freedom filing, not a festival recap.

The signatories are on that page, in this order: Committee to Protect Journalists; Freedom of the Press Foundation; Coalition For Women In Journalism; WAN-IFRA; the Simon and June Li Center for Global Journalism; Reporters Without Borders; Index on Censorship; PEN America; Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism; PEN International; International Press Institute. If a celebrity is not in that list, this desk will not type the name. Ynet’s later industry count is a different document and stays on its own line.

The letter is more specific than “backlash.” It records a Wednesday evening protest outside Szor’s family home, a promise to repeat that at addresses tied to Abraham’s family, and a chant — “death sentence for traitors” — on a video the letter cites. It records activists breaking into Local Call and +972 Magazine, outlets that have published Abraham’s investigations. It cites Article 15 of the Universal Declaration: a nationality that cannot be arbitrarily taken. Netanyahu’s bills, named in the letter, are the legal half of that sentence.

CPJ placed the case in a wider pattern of attacks on journalists, most of them Palestinian. PEN’s Romana Cacchioli said the same: not an isolated storm, a habit. This desk agrees with the protection ask. It does not treat the letter as a substitute for watching the film, and it does not open a legal-defence PayPal in anyone’s name because a PDF exists.

When a briefing in the clip-file is this letter, read the letter. The original URLs are ipi.media, cpj.org, and pen-international.org. Our job here is the stand: the couple should be able to live, report, and show NAZA. The state’s job, as the letter writes it, is to stop pointing at them.

Who has publicly defended them →