Firas Al-Taweel, Huda Osman and Farah Jallad
“We are victims live on air”
These were the words of journalist Salman Bashir after he threw his press vest to the ground while reporting the killing of his Palestine TV colleague Mohammed Abu Hatab in an Israeli strike on his home in Khan Younis in early November 2023.
“We will not leave… we will leave Gaza for the sky, and only for the sky”
So wrote journalist Roshdi Sarraj before he was killed in an Israeli strike on his home in Tal al-Hawa, west of Gaza, in late October 2023, joining an open-ended list of journalist victims.
When Israel launched its war on 7 October 2023, following the “Hamas” attack on the Gaza envelope area, the lives of journalists in the Strip were turned upside down, beginning a phase that no one expected at the time would be so historic and so painful, in a way they had never imagined.
“The Deadliest” in History
Although the statistics issued by several bodies on the number of Palestinian journalists killed vary, even the lowest documented figures are record-breaking. The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate counted 140 journalists and media workers killed from the start of the war until the publication of this investigation.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) documented the killing of 103 Palestinian journalists and media workers during the recent war in the Gaza Strip. This makes it the deadliest period for journalists in the world since 1992, when the committee began collecting data.
These figures appear horrifying when compared with the number of journalists killed during the Second World War, 69 journalists over six years, or the 63 journalists killed over 14 years in the Vietnam War. Carlos Martínez de la Serna, programme director at the Committee to Protect Journalists, says of the Palestinian journalists killed: “They were killed while preparing food, while resting in a tent, or while covering the aftermath of bombing.”
Shorouq Asaad, a member of the general secretariat of the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate and its spokesperson, points out that the death toll represents ten per cent of all journalists in the Gaza Strip. She added that the syndicate is preparing legal files to submit to the International Criminal Court. Asaad said that “journalists everywhere must be protected, regardless of the country they work in”.
From Every Direction
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists’ list, 12 Palestinian women journalists were among those killed. The vast majority (89 journalists) were killed in air strikes. According to the data analysis, 56 journalists were killed while in their homes, 49 of them together with members of their families, while 16 journalists were killed while working.
According to an analysis by our partners at Forbidden Stories, 17 journalists and media workers were killed or injured while wearing press vests in Gaza, the West Bank or southern Lebanon, while another 20 were killed or injured by drones in Gaza.
The largest number of journalists killed, 19, worked for the Al-Aqsa Media Network, affiliated with Hamas, according to CPJ figures. The Israeli army responded to this figure by saying that it “targets only military targets”, and claimed that the Al-Aqsa network often employs “terrorists” as journalists.
In response, the Committee to Protect Journalists, through de la Serna, said it is completely confident that every name on its list of those killed is a journalist: “We consider that as long as a journalist is not engaged in incitement or acts of violence, he is doing journalistic work.”
De la Serna added that the Israeli army is known for using “propaganda” that casts doubt on journalists’ credibility without providing any evidence, explaining that over the committee’s 30 years of work, it has never had to remove a name from its documented list of those killed on the basis of information or responses provided by the Israeli army.
Irene Khan, the UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, says Israel has failed to provide any evidence regarding the journalists’ identities. She adds: “The Israelis have not only spread misinformation about journalists’ links to militants, but have also failed to provide sufficient evidence of the precautions they take.”
“Why Do You Make Us Wear Vests?”
Dozens of journalists we interviewed told us they are being targeted. Many of them are afraid to wear the vest and helmet. Not only that, but people around them have become afraid to approach them, fearing that they too will be targeted by the Israeli army. Some cannot rent a house or a room, or use transport, already scarce, for the same reason.
Photojournalist Motaz Azaiza recounts that to get internet access he had to go to a café to upload his footage, and once the owner told him: “Please don’t come here”, fearing the café would be targeted because a journalist was inside: “We don’t want to be killed because of you.”
Sami Barhoum, correspondent for TRT Arabi, says: “We were on an assignment, my cameraman colleague and I, covering… they hit us directly with an artillery shell.” He said this after the channel’s crew was shelled in the Nuseirat camp in April 2024. From his hospital bed, before his leg was amputated, cameraman Sami Shehadeh said: “Why do you make us wear vests? Why do you make us wear helmets? They target us anyway!”
In another incident, Al Jazeera correspondent Anas Al-Sharif says: “We were targeted directly by reconnaissance drones”, in the Tal al-Zaatar area north of the Gaza Strip, while he was working. He told ARIJ that he had received threats by phone from the Israeli army.
“Believe me, the press vest does not protect; it is only there to let our people know that we are journalists,” says Motaz Azaiza, who also received telephone threats from the Israeli army.
Reporters Without Borders filed three complaints with the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court “regarding Israeli war crimes against journalists”. The complaints included the files of more than 20 Palestinian journalists killed by the Israeli army during the recent war. A statement by the organisation said: “RSF has reasonable grounds to believe that some of these journalists were deliberately killed, and that the others were victims of deliberate attacks by the Israel Defense Forces against civilians.”
The Committee to Protect Journalists says it is investigating more than 500 incidents involving the targeting of journalists in Palestine. De la Serna adds that the committee has evidence that at least three journalists were targeted, and “strong evidence” of targeting in ten more cases.
Five months before the war on Gaza, on the anniversary of the killing of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, the committee issued a report titled “Deadly Pattern”, documenting the killing of at least 18 journalists by Israeli forces over more than 22 years. Yet no one has been charged or held accountable for these killings, according to the committee’s statement.
| “The protective vest itself has become a means of targeting you more than a means of protecting you,” says journalist Imad Ghaboun, after being injured in the Tal al-Zaatar area. |
Israel Knows Everything in Gaza
The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate counted 73 media offices and headquarters in the Gaza Strip destroyed by Israel, wholly or partially.
De la Serna of the Committee to Protect Journalists says this is not the first time Israel has bombed media institutions during a war. In 2021, Israel bombed a tower housing the Associated Press and Al Jazeera.
De la Serna also sees this as a systematic pattern of targeting journalists by the Israeli army, adding that it is not easy to believe Israel’s justifications that attacks on media institutions happened by mistake: “Israel knows everything in Gaza.”
In the same context, an investigation by ARIJ and its partners documented “Israel’s lies” about the artillery shelling of the Agence France-Presse office in Gaza on 2 November 2023. We also obtained video footage documenting the shelling of the office of the “Palestinian Media Group” on the same day, noting that both offices had cameras broadcasting live images around the clock. In February 2024, the headquarters of the Press House, supported by the governments of Norway and Switzerland, was destroyed, even though the donors had sent the site’s coordinates to the Israeli army. Before the headquarters was destroyed, at the end of January 2024, a former director of the Press House, who had been living at the organisation’s premises after his home was destroyed, reported seeing an Israeli tank firing directly at the building.
Drones: They See, Hear and Kill
Around the clock, and even before the latest war, Israeli drones (the “zanana”, as residents call them) never leave the skies of the Gaza Strip, carrying out surveillance and intelligence gathering. The assumption that the killing of journalists is a natural and expected result of war is refuted by facts, gathered in this investigation from experts and testimonies, that confirm the Israeli army’s enormous technological capabilities, which enable it to know precisely the identity of those it targets.
Khalil Dewan, a lawyer and researcher on the use of drones at the University of London, says the Israeli army “strikes its targets with a high degree of knowledge of who it is killing”. He added that drones identify their targets precisely, based on information gathered from mobile phones, social media, live broadcasts and location services, if enabled on phones.
Much like human senses, drones can hear and see; they contain sensors that can identify targets by transmitting collected data to a ground station. Infrared cameras and electro-optical sensors also allow visual confirmation of the target, provided weather conditions are favourable or the drone flies low enough.
Three experts we spoke with agree that visibility is clear enough for a drone operator to see a press vest. Asa Kasher, who drafted the Israeli army’s 1994 code of ethics, says: “I think that if the press marking is clearly placed on the journalist’s body, the drone operator will see it.”
Meanwhile, an investigation published by The New York Times in March 2024 revealed that at the end of 2023 Israel deployed a facial recognition programme in the Gaza Strip to conduct mass surveillance there, collecting and cataloguing Palestinians’ faces without their knowledge or consent.
Another investigation by +972 Magazine revealed that the Israeli army used artificial intelligence techniques to identify targets and generate a kill list of thousands of people.
| “There is a history of Israeli impunity in the occupied territories,” says Irene Khan, UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression. |
The Israeli Army Responds
For its part, the Israeli army rejected what it described as “false accusations of deliberately killing journalists”. It added that it takes all possible measures to minimise any harm to civilians, including journalists.
The Israeli army claimed that “harm that may befall journalists occurs during air strikes or operational activities that strike military targets”.
Those Who Survived
As the war continued, Israeli bombing turned entire residential communities into rubble, and famine spread, especially in the north of the Strip. Palestinian journalists, besieged alongside Gaza’s residents, became the window that showed the world what was happening, especially as Israel barred foreign media from entering the Gaza Strip.
Despite the scale of what befell the press sector, ARIJ was able to collect data from 213 journalists in the Gaza Strip. The survey revealed that 72 of the 213 respondents had lost family members, 49 of whom lost first-degree relatives, while 11 lost one or more of their children. Five journalists each lost 40 or more family members. In total, the journalists who responded to the survey lost about 661 members of their immediate and extended families.
In addition, 59 of the 213 journalists (28 per cent) were injured.
The survey also showed that the vast majority of the journalists surveyed (98 per cent) had been displaced. According to the results, half of the journalists were displaced five times or more, while four were displaced 20 times or more. Almost half of the journalists (101) live in tents. The homes of 183 journalists (86 per cent) were partially or completely destroyed. 195 of them lost equipment they use for reporting, and a hundred of those surveyed lost their jobs.
The Gaza Project
Over four months, ARIJ and its partners, through 50 journalists representing 13 organisations, worked on the “Gaza Project” to investigate the circumstances in which Palestinian journalists in the Strip were killed, injured and arrested and media offices destroyed, as well as to monitor the ongoing risks to journalists’ work in the West Bank. Despite communications blackouts and the lack of access to the Strip, we spoke to 120 witnesses in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, verifying findings with two or more independent sources wherever possible.
We analysed more than a hundred killings of journalists and media workers in Gaza, in addition to other cases in which media workers were threatened or injured since the start of the war.
Our investigations revealed Israeli disinformation about the targeting of the Agence France-Presse office in Gaza, and we obtained a video documenting the moment the office of a local media organisation on the same street was bombed, half an hour before the French agency’s office was targeted. Irene Khan says: “When there is a strong likelihood that a war crime has been committed, live broadcasting clearly becomes crucial evidence.”
In another investigation, we traced the killing of three journalists after the Israeli army warned the residents of a building housing press offices to evacuate, while a nearby building, in front of which the journalists were standing to cover events, was bombed.
A third investigation documented the circumstances of the targeting of the Press House headquarters and the killing of its founder, Bilal Jadallah, after two of his colleagues had been killed within a week.
Another investigation focuses on the Israeli army’s use of drones to kill 20 journalists, seven of whom were wearing press vests.
In the West Bank, our investigation revealed conclusive evidence of the deliberate targeting of two journalists by Israeli army forces in Tulkarm, based on analysis of shrapnel found inside a camera, eyewitnesses and experts, and analysis of visual evidence (about 60 videos, including exclusive footage).
The project includes a set of reports produced by Forbidden Stories, which sought to complete stories that journalists were unable to finish for various reasons.
Contributed to this investigation:
additional reporting by Ethar AlAzem (ARIJ), Léa Peruchon, Mariana Abreu (Forbidden Stories), Frederik Obermaier (Paper Trail Media) and Madjid Zerrouky (Le Monde)
