A small delegation of journalists from the Caribbean, including Jamaica Observer staff reporter Jason Cross, arrived in Israel on Sunday and will spend the next five days visiting specific sites impacted by war, as well as locations that have great historical significance and biblical connections.

The purpose of the visit to the Middle East by the journalists will be to capture some of the happenings on the ground in Israel, a country that has been in armed conflict with Hamas-led Palestinian militant groups in the Gaza Strip and Israel since October 7, 2023.

As a result of the conflicts, the International Criminal Court (ICC) in November this year, issued three arrest warrants for Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant as well as a senior Hamas official. The three are accused of war crimes during and after the October 7 attacks on Israel last year which led to hundreds of people being tortured and killed.

The ICC said in a statement on November 21 that it found reasonable grounds that Netanyahu is criminally responsible for war crimes such as “starvation as a method of warfare”, murder, persecution and other inhumane acts.

Jamaica Observer staff reporter, Jason Cross, in Israel.

The prime minister’s office has since denied the accusations, labelling them as absurd and antisemitic. It also styled the ICC as a discriminatory body that has political bias and defended Israel’s participation in the conflict as being just, following a murderous attack by Hamas. The attack was described by the PM’s office as the largest massacre against Jewish people since the Holocaust, a genocide of European Jews during World War 2 which began in 1941 and ended in 1945.

The Holocaust was carried out by Adolf Hitler’s Nazi German forces and their collaborators, which were said to have claimed the lives of six million Jews.

An Israeli official told the Jamaica Observer that the government is happy to host the delegation because it provides the opportunity to show reporters from the Caribbean, “the things from our point of view”.

“We really wish that after you see and experience Israel, your opinion would reflect more of how we see things and we would be happy if you could share it with your readers. We see Jamaica as a very important place in the Caribbean. It is one of the most important islands in the Caribbean and also worldwide. Jamaica is a place of international culture that affects the world. It is small but is a very important island and everybody knows Jamaica,” the official said.

The official source told the Observer that the situation involving Israel did not spring up overnight and described it as complicated.

“It has history. From the press you will read about two sides of the story. From our side, you will hear the Israeli side of the story. A lot of people follow the news but you can see there is a lot of ignorance about the details, the challenges and complexities. They don’t know what is the ideology of Hamas, what is Israel and why Hamas attacked Israel on the 7th of October.

“I meet a lot of people who have a lot of interest in the situation in Israel, in Gaza and Lebanon. It is mainly because it is the Holy Land. At the same time, when you try to go deeper you see that they only know the surface news and they don’t really know the details of the story. I think you being in Israel, you will hear a lot of details and go deeper into the issues, to show what you see to your audience in Jamaica,” the official pointed out.

While in Israel, the delegation of Caribbean journalists will visit the south of Israel and tour various areas around the Gaza strip which stretches 41 kilometres from north to south. The journalists will meet with a Bedouin leader in the south of Israel and will visit the car cemetery and the site of the Nova Festival where more than 380 people were killed. There was to have been roughly 3,500 people at the Festival on October 7 last year. Many of them were raped before they were killed and some were abducted.

The delegation will also sit in on roundtable talks at the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, during which discussions regarding relations between Israel, Latin America and the Caribbean will be discussed. A visit will also be made to the Holocaust Museum, among other sites of historical significance.

On October 7 last year, roughly 3,000 Hamas-led terrorists reportedly forced their way across the Israeli border from Gaza, killing roughly 1,800 people and taking scores of civilians as hostages, exacting on them many acts of brutality including sexual assault.

The attack on Israel led to ongoing war against Hamas as well as Hezbollah which is an Iran-backed Lebanese Shia Islamist political party that has a paramilitary arm and several other allied groups of Hamas.

There appears to be some form of peace at the moment after a ceasefire agreement reached between Israel and Hezbollah. The ceasefire which was brokered by the United States and France took effect on Wednesday November 27, clearing the way for an end to conflict across the Israel-Lebanese border. The conflict killed thousands of people since being sparked by the Gaza war which started in October last year.