Israel's targeted killings of Palestinian journalists

Since the Hamas attacks of October 7, the Israeli military has killed more than 130 Palestinian journalists in Gaza. That's more than in any other country in a single year since 1992. By comparison, six journalists have been killed in the entire Ukrainian war since 2014. In 2023, 75 percent of all journalists killed worldwide died in Israel's assault on Gaza. 73 percent of the victims were Palestinians. In many cases, the Israeli army deliberately targeted Palestinian journalists at home, with their families, or in the line of duty, using sniper fire, drones, and surgical air strikes. Many of these journalists had received direct and indirect threats prior to their targeted assassination. Israeli officials often claim that the journalists killed were terrorists or that they were caught in an ongoing crossfire. The systematic targeting of journalists is not limited to Gaza. Since October 7, the Israeli military has also killed three journalists in Lebanon. Violence against journalists is also on the rise in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem. Some 50 Palestinian journalists have been arrested since the Hamas attacks in early October. The Israeli government has used draconian methods to silence Palestinian journalists, such as administrative detention, which allows a military commander to imprison anyone without charge. Israel is one of the world's leading jailers of journalists. Despite the unprecedented number of Palestinian journalists killed in Gaza, few Western media outlets have spoken out against Israel's calculated assassination campaign and called for an investigation into Israeli war crimes. Those who dare to speak out are often fired or forced out of the profession. The Netanyahu government has prevented international journalists from entering Gaza. Palestinian journalists thus provide invaluable eyewitness accounts of the daily lives of a people under occupation that contradict the propagandistic narrative pushed by the Israeli and Western mainstream media. Israel's war on Palestinian journalists is an integral part of its larger war on Palestine. It is a central pillar of its decades-long regime of settler-colonial occupation, apartheid and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. The goal is to manufacture consent for genocide in Gaza. Aeschylus, the father of Greek tragedy, once wrote that “In war, truth is the first casualty.” By killing those who report, Israel seeks to prevent the transmission of its crimes and to shut down the coverage so that the truth will not be told and the world cannot see what is really happening.