Today (August 11) marks the 674th day of Israel's massacre in Gaza.
As of yesterday, Israel has killed 61,430 people.
More than 1,50,000 people are injured and 11,000 people are missing.
The entire world is watching the horror unfold on a big screen, owing to brave journalists who are risking it all to document an unfolding genocide in modern times.
Risking their lives daily, sometimes on an empty stomach or sometimes half-fed, they continue to run toward threat.
So far, Israel has killed 200 journalists. Not only the journalist, but their family members are also paying the price, as they too have become the targets of Israeli attacks.
Even on Sunday, five Al Jazeera journalists were murdered by Israel in yet another targeted killing.
Rights organisations advocating for the media have said Israel is desperately targeting and killing journalists.
Palestine: The most dangerous place for journalists
According to a 2024 report by the Reporters Without Borders (RSF) – an international organisation working on the rights of journalists around the world – war-torn Palestine is at the top of the nine most dangerous countries for journalists.
The report compiled using available data up to December 1, 2024, said in the last year, 54 journalists were killed while carrying out their professional responsibilities or because of their profession.
Of these, 18 were killed by Israeli forces. Of these, 16 were killed in Gaza, and two more in Lebanon.
According to the report, since Israel began the war in Palestine in October 2023, more than 145 journalists have been killed by Israeli forces.
The RSF report further mentioned that over the past five years, Palestine has recorded the highest number of journalist deaths. In 2024, Israel further imprisoned 41 journalists.
Al Jazeera reports that the number of journalists killed by Israeli forces in Palestine has exceeded 200 a long time before.
As a response to the killing of journalists in Gaza, RSF filed a complaint with the International Criminal Court (ICC) last year. The organisation had previously filed similar complaints with the ICC several times.
Upon filing the complaint, RSF Director Antoine Bernard said that Israel is essentially attacking the public's right to information by killing journalists. This right becomes even more crucial during times of conflict.
In 2025, RSF published "World Press Freedom Index" where they also said the Gaza Strip in Palestine is currently the most dangerous place in the world for journalists.
Attack targeting Al-Jazeera Arabic's bureau chief in Gaza
Since 7 October, 2023 – when the Palestinian resistance group Hamas launched an attack on Israel – the IDF has repeatedly targeted journalists.
The most notable of these attacks was against the Gaza bureau chief of Al-Jazeera Arabic.
On 25 October, 2023, Hamza al-Dahdouh was killed in an Israeli attack on Gaza. He was the son of Al-Jazeera's Gaza Bureau Chief Wael Al-Dahdouh.
On that day, Israeli forces killed Wael Dahdouh's wife, two children, and a grandson. Eight members of his family, including his son, were injured in the incident.
Israel carried out the attack during nighttime on the Nuseirat refugee camp in southern Gaza. According to the Israeli army, the family of the Gaza bureau chief had fled their home from northern Gaza and sought shelter in the south.
However, they have become victims of the targeted killings – Dahdouh's wife, his 15-year-old son Mahmoud, who wanted to be a journalist like his father, his 7-year-old daughter Sham, and his grandson Adam.
When Israeli forces struck Wael Dahdouh's family, he was live on air with Al Jazeera from Gaza, covering another Israeli attack.
As he sobbed and touched his son's body in the hospital morgue, looking at his daughter's bloodied face, Dahdouh said, "This attack shows that Israel has targeted every child, woman and civilian in Palestine. No part of Gaza is safe anymore."
In early April 2024, Netanyahu ordered the shutdown of Al-Jazeera's broadcasts from Israel. Regarding the move to ban Al-Jazeera's broadcasts, Netanyahu said, "Al-Jazeera will no longer be able to broadcast from Israel."
He also called the broadcast network a "terrorist channel."
No justice despite evidence of war crimes
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) – another international organisation that works worldwide to protect journalists' rights – published a special report on 10 October last year where it said although there was explicit evidence that Israel was committing war crimes by targeting and killing journalists, no justice had been served.
The report states a pattern of how journalists are deliberately targeted and killed.
It said less than a week after the Israel-Gaza war began, the Israeli military fired two tank shells within just 37 seconds in southern Lebanon on the evening of 13 October 2023.
The target of this IDF attack was seven journalists.
The journalists were standing on a hilltop about a mile away from the nearest battlefield. All were wearing vests clearly marked with the word "PRESS." They were reporting next to a vehicle labelled "TV."
In that attack, Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah was killed, and six other media personnel were grievously injured.
Issam Abdallah was an experienced and senior video journalist who had worked in conflict zones such as Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Ukraine.
AFP Photojournalist Christina Assi was seriously injured in that attack, leading to the amputation of her right leg. Moreover, AFP's Dylan Collins; Al Jazeera's Carmen Joukhadar and Eli Brawkha; and Reuters' Thaier Al-Sudani and Maher Najeh were severely injured.
The CPJ said in its special report that this incident was an early example of journalists being targeted. CPJ's further investigation revealed that four more Palestinian journalists were deliberately targeted and killed because of their reporting.
The CPJ report further added that it is investigating at least 10 more suspicious targeting cases, including the killings of Hamza Al-Dahdouh, Mustafa Thuraya, Ismail Al-Ghoul, and Rami Al-Rifai.
In the report, CPJ stated that the total number of targeted journalists has always underreported.
It is an extremely challenging task to document those killed by Israeli attacks.
The number and pace of journalist killings, the widespread destruction of media infrastructure, the ongoing power outages, and the lack of free access to Gaza for foreign media outlets all provide ample evidence that journalists are being deliberately targeted and killed for their work. CPJ reported that there is even evidence that journalists' families are being targeted.
CPJ reported that in not a single case did Israel hold its military accountable after investigating 20 cases of journalist killings over the past 22 years.
CPJ's CEO Jodie Ginsberg stated that despite having enough evidence of war crimes and the deliberate targeting of journalists, Israel has faced no accountability. She added that the deadly pattern of targeting journalists for more than two decades without consequences has effectively enabled the Israeli military to continue this brutal trend.
IDF considers targeted killing of journalists to be legitimate
The ongoing war in Gaza has become the deadliest conflict in history for journalists. But the IDF has repeatedly claimed that it does not intentionally kill journalists.
A senior IDF official told the Guardian that the military has no policy of targeting media personnel. He attributed the record number of journalist deaths to the scale and intensity of the bombings, not deliberate attacks on journalists.
However, an investigation by the Guardian confirmed that since 7 October, some individuals within the IDF have come to view journalists as legitimate military targets.
This investigation was part of the "Gaza Project," a joint initiative led by Paris-based nonprofit organisation Forbidden Stories in collaboration with The Guardian.
The project analysed the deaths of journalists in Gaza since the beginning of Israel's assault. In the report published on June 25 of last year, The Guardian stated that their investigation confirmed Israel is deliberately targeting and killing journalists.
The Guardian reported that the IDF deliberately targeted journalists to stop critical reporting. Citing an IDF lawyer, The Guardian states that before 7 October, there had to be "clear evidence" to target someone's home in a strike. And the target had to be confirmed as a direct enemy before an attack was authorised. However, this regulation is not effective anymore. The scale of destruction has now reached an entirely different level.
What the IDF says to justify killing journalists
On Sunday, an Israeli strike targeted a journalists' tent near Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza, killing seven people, including five journalists from Al Jazeera. Among the deceased was 28-year-old Anas Al-Sharif, a prominent journalist for Al Jazeera Arabic.
After killing Anas Al-Sharif, the Israeli military issued a statement accusing him of leading a branch of Hamas.
They claimed that they possessed documents containing "specific evidence" of his affiliation with the Palestinian group.
Basically, the IDF has been using the accusation that journalists are members of the Palestinian liberation organisation Hamas as justification for the targeted killing of the journalists.
The falsehood of these allegations against Anas Al-Sharif is evident from the statement of Muhammad Shehadah, an analyst at Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor.
Speaking to Al Jazeera, the human rights activist said there is "no evidence whatsoever" of Al-Sharif's involvement in any violent activities.
In his words, "His daily routine was simply standing in front of the camera from morning till evening."
Last month, Israeli military spokesperson Avichay Adraee shared a video on social media in which he accused Anas Al-Sharif of being a member of Hamas's military wing. Following this incident, Irene Khan, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression, expressed deep concern over the repeated threats and accusations made by the Israeli military against Al-Sharif.
Irene Khan further said, "Concerns about Al-Sharif's safety are justified, as there is evidence that journalists have been deliberately targeted and killed by the Israeli military based on these unsolicited claims by Hamas terrorists."
Last month, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) expressed deep concern for the safety of Al-Sharif, as a member of the Israeli military spread misinformation that turned him into a target.
Since the start of war in Gaza in October 2023, Israel has been regularly accusing Palestinian journalists in Gaza of being members of Hamas.
In a small city like Gaza, the number of professional journalists is limited. If over two hundred journalists have been killed by the IDF, then there should be no so-called neutral media workers left in that city.
In a statement regarding Sunday's incident, Al Jazeera Media Network said that the killings of Gaza's courageous journalists aim to silence the voices exposing preparations for the occupation and control of Gaza. Journalists are being killed to continuously kill civilians, forcibly create famine, and erase witnesses to the destruction of Palestinians.
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