(JNS.org) Following Israel’s military withdrawal from Gaza, foreign journalists who have left the area are reporting on Hamas tactics they could not reveal while stationed there.

“We saw the Hamas men. But had we dared point the cameras at them, they would have opened fire at us and killed us,” a Spanish reporter said, according to Yedioth Ahronoth. Indian reporter Sreenivasan Jain revealed that Hamas terrorists were launching rockets just outside of his hotel in Gaza. He said it is “important to report on how Hamas places those very civilians at risk by firing rockets deep from the heart of civilian zones.” Italian journalist Gabriele Barbati tweeted after leaving Gaza, “Out of #Gaza far from #Hamasretaliation: misfired rocket killed children yday [yesterday] in Shati [refugee camp].” Sudarsan Raghavan, a reporter for the Washington Post, said he was asked to photograph a bombed mosque, a scene he called clearly “prepared.”

In response, the Foreign Press Association in Israel, including almost 500 members from all parts of the media from 32 countries, issued a statement protesting “in the strongest terms the blatant, incessant, forceful and unorthodox methods employed by the Hamas authorities and their representatives against visiting international journalists in Gaza over the past month.”  Noting the increasing reports by foreign journalists of the threats made against them by Hamas, the FPA said, noted, in many cases, journalists would depend on Hamas sources for information and be subject to strict restrictions as the FPA noted, “thereby denying their readers and viewers an objective picture from the ground.”