Your Primer on the Killing of Journalists in Gaza

The number killed so far has smashed previous global records — by a lot.

Fearless reporting, a behind-the-curtains look at how journalism is made — and an unabashed point of view. Welcome to Chills.

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A funeral ceremony for Palestine TV correspondent Mohammed Abu Hatab, who was killed along with 11 family members in an airstrike on his home in Khan Yunis, Gaza, in November. (Photo by Abed Zagout/Anadolu via Getty Images)

As a journalist who has made war and trauma reporting her focus for decades, I can say that I have risked my life at times to get important stories. As a former senior editor at the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), I can also tell you that I have written and edited a tremendous number of stories about media workers beaten, jailed, killed and censored around the world on dangerous assignments. So I speak from experience when I say that the Gaza/Israel war has broken sacred boundaries in its killing of at least 69 journalists and media workers (as of December 23) — boundaries sacred to those of us who do this work, but also, hopefully, sacred to the people who consume our reports.

“Journalists across the region are making great sacrifices to cover this heart-breaking conflict,” Sherif Mansour, CPJ’s Middle East and North Africa program coordinator, eloquently writes. “Those in Gaza, in particular, have paid, and continue to pay, an unprecedented toll and face exponential threats.”

The total number of journalists killed in the Israel-Gaza war since October 7 is more than the entire number of journalists killed around the world most years since the organization began keeping records in 1992.

When considering the record-smashing number of journalists dead in the Israel-Gaza war — mainly Palestinians; just four of the killed have been Israeli and three Lebanese — there are a number of questions that necessarily enter the room when we discuss the extraordinary death toll of the war so far, although one looms above the rest: Is Israel specifically trying to silence journalists who report on atrocities in Gaza?

Last week, CPJ released a report condemning what it says is a pattern of the Israeli military targeting journalists and their families — an extraordinary claim, but one that is backed up by decades of cases.

Still, while it will take time to untangle whether many of the dead journalists were purposely targeted or have been “just” “collateral damage” of Israel’s indiscriminate bombardment in Gaza, it’s important to note that the organization says that even before the war started in October, there was already a legacy of total impunity for deadly crimes committed by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) against journalists in the Palestinian territories.

This legacy, unfortunately, means that there is little reason to think that there will ever be justice for any of the 69 newly dead journalists and media workers.  

How the count of dead is tallied

First, a few important facts about the role of journalists in war:

1. Journalists are classified as civilians by the Geneva Conventions and Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. “As such, [we] enjoy the full scope of protection granted to civilians under international humanitarian law,” writes the International Committee of the Red Cross.

2. As long as journalists do not take part in hostilities (there’s a reason we don’t ever carry weapons), intentionally targeting us, as with any civilian, is a war crime.

3. A protocol added to the Geneva Conventions in 1978 stipulates that “all parties to a conflict must protect journalists, avoid deliberate attacks against them and uphold their rights in case they are captured.” [Bold mine.]

4. Not every journalist killed in a war zone is killed because of their job. Unlike some other press freedom organizations, we worked diligently at CPJ to verify whether each case of a killed journalist died as a result of their journalism, and to be exacting in our labeling of their death.

While it may seem obvious from the outside that a journalist was murdered because of their reporting, sometimes it’s less clear when scrutinized. For instance, I remember a couple cases in Mexico where we paused on listing them as “confirmed” (aka killed because of their work), and rightfully so — it turned out that they’d been killed for other reasons, including their associations with drug cartels.

CPJ, in its own words, “considers a case ‘confirmed’ as work-related only when it appears certain that a journalist was murdered in direct reprisal for their work; in combat or crossfire; or while carrying out a dangerous assignment.” Cases “involving unclear motives, but with a potential link to journalism, are classified as ‘unconfirmed’ and CPJ continues to investigate.” This group, the unconfirmed, may have died in accidents or while not on assignment, or even while on assignment but unrelated to their work.

Asking whether Israel is deliberately targeting journalists right now is question with a hollow echo. Clearly, many have died simply because of the immense danger of working in Gaza. Others — it will take time and investigation to understand what happened. The work of open-source intelligence experts and witnesses may eventually add to whatever evidence exists, but the 69 journalists — aka civilians — died along with nearly 20,000 Palestinian civilians and counting. Determining intent is a complex endeavor, especially in a war in which nearly half the killing has been estimated to have been accomplished by “dumb” bombs, meaning they have no precision guidance.

Difficult though it may be, it is important to uncover whether journalists were killed in more than just what armies consider “collateral damage.” This is the stuff of international war crimes trials.

Justice matters. Our eyes and ears on the ground matter. The safety of our messengers matters.

Embed or don’t report

The Israeli Army has restricted the entrance of international journalists into the Gaza Strip, only allowing such reporters in if they embed with IDF soldiers.

Even so, the IDF told Reuters and Agence France-Presse in a letter that it could not guarantee the safety of their journalists in Gaza. “The IDF is targeting all Hamas military activity throughout Gaza,” the letter reads, according to Reuters. It specifies that Hamas has deliberately put military operations “in the vicinity of journalists and civilians” as an explanation for why they cannot guarantee the security of the press.

But embedding with the IDF means giving the army prior review of what reporters plan to publish.

This kind of oversight is a huge NO in our profession. You do not give governments (or anyone) free rein to review and change your work before publication. Allowing state approval over entire articles is tantamount working for state media. It is, however, Kosher to send quotes to sources for confirmation (although you rarely, if ever, do so with politicians because what they said is what they said and, as public servants, they shouldn’t get a chance to revoke it). You can also read aloud sections of your story to sources for clarity.

The IDF restrictions mean that the vast majority of the journalists working and dying in Gaza are local. This jibes with what we always said at CPJ in the five years I was there: It’s the local journalists who suffer most.

Impunity for decades

While the jury remains out on whether Palestinian journalists’ deaths are targeted, as the killing continues, it’s crucial to consider the impunity that has followed in the wake of attacks against journalists in the territories over decades.

In a May report by CPJ, the organization said that it had documented 20 IDF killings of journalists — 18 of them Palestinian, two European — in the territories in the past 22 years. But not a single person has been held accountable, CPJ says. The group wrote that it had found “a pattern of Israeli response that appears designed to evade responsibility.”

“Israel has failed to fully investigate these killings, launching deeper probes only when the victim is foreign or has a high-profile employer,” the report continues. “Even then, inquiries drag on for months or years and end with the exoneration of those who opened fire.”

This is the kind of non-effort, “we’re doing something” lip service I’ve witnessed from the Russians or, say, the Congolese. In reality, globally, only 14 percent of the cases of killed journalists have ever been resolved in court, according to UNESCO.

It’s not hard to argue that there is a hostile relationship between the non-Israeli media and the Israeli government. Just look at what happened on Dec. 15 in the West Bank. That day, Israeli border police severely beat Mustafa Alkharouf, a photojournalist with the Turkish state-owned Anadolu Agency. While Alkharouf was working in the West Bank, seemingly wearing press credentials, covering the Friday prayers near the Al-Aqsa Mosque in East Jerusalem, soldiers surrounded him, hit him in the head — one with his gun — and knocked him to the ground, then kicking him viciously, repeatedly in the head. The soldiers also assaulted Andalou camera operator Faiz Abu Ramila.

“The physical attack on Mustafa Alkharouf is not a singular incident,” said CPJ Program Director Carlos Martínez de la Serna in a statement. “It belongs to a pattern of physical attacks, assaults, and threats by Israeli soldiers and settlers on journalists reporting from the West Bank and Israel that have dramatically increased since October 7.”

There’s a reason I was told by fellow reporters to remove my Velcro “Press” badges from my body armor when I was in Ukraine. We are now considered legitimate targets in war — as are medical professionals — despite an array of international laws that says we are not.

As I wrote last year in the Washington Monthly, the biggest impediment to justice in both the semi-sanctioned killing of journalists and the prosecution of those who hurt us has long been — and is still — the lack of enforcement of existing international laws.

It wasn’t always like this.

Right now, with the war raging and the Gazan streets running with blood, the fog of war is thick. Only time and intention will — and must — sort through the war crimes committed against journalists, and all civilians, in this terrible war.

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