Israeli forces killed at least 217 journalists and media workers in the first 15 months of the genocide in Gaza. The attacks on those who risked their lives to tell Palestinian stories included drone strikes, sniper fire, strikes on shelters, the bombing of a camp in a hospital complex, and airstrikes on journalists at home with their families. While Israel has escalated these assaults to unprecedented levels, its military has killed journalists with impunity for decades.
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On October 13, 2023, seven journalists with Reuters, Agence France-Presse, and Al Jazeera reported from southern Lebanon. They wore vests marked “PRESS” and worked near a car with “TV” in large print on its hood. From about 5 p.m., the group was stationary in an open area, around one kilometer from Israel’s border.
Reporting on cross-border fire while “between one and two kilometers” from the hostilities, the Reuters crew broadcast about 45 minutes of live footage, and the Al Jazeera team taped two live reports. An Israeli Apache helicopter hovered overhead “for more than 40 minutes,” and the group’s footage shows a line of sight to an Israeli observation tower.
Issam Abdallah, a Reuters journalist who had covered fighting in Lebanon, the war against ISIS, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, was with the crew that day. Despite their press markings, a visible location, and the Israeli observation equipment, they were targeted. At 6:02 p.m., an Israeli tank fired a 120 mm round at Abdallah, killing him instantly. AFP photographer Christina Assi was severely injured, her leg severed by the blast.
“I see Christina and I see Issam. And then I run in the other direction,” Al Jazeera’s Carmen Joukhadar told Human Rights Watch. “I sit next to [the Al Jazeera vehicle] for a little bit. But then I told myself no, cars are targets.” Thirty-seven seconds after the first blast, as she ran from the car, a second round struck the vehicle and set it ablaze.
Investigations by Reuters, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch (HRW) all concluded that Israeli forces carried out the strikes and that the team was identifiable as journalists.
“The evidence we now have, and have published today, shows that an Israeli tank crew killed our colleague Issam Abdallah,” Reuters Editor-in-Chief Alessandra Galloni said. “We condemn Issam’s killing. We call on Israel to explain how this could have happened and to hold to account those responsible for his death and the wounding of Christina Assi of the AFP, our colleagues Thaier Al-Sudani and Maher Nazeh, and the three other journalists.”
After verifying “over 100 videos and photographs,” analyzing weapons fragments, and interviewing witnesses, Amnesty International concluded that “the group was visibly identifiable as journalists and that the Israeli military knew or should have known that they were civilians yet attacked them anyway in two separate strikes 37 seconds apart.” Amnesty called for the attack to “be investigated as a war crime.”
Human Rights Watch reached a similar conclusion: “Visual evidence suggests that Israeli Forces targeted the journalists, who were filming at a known live position far from military targets. The attacks were likely deliberate and an apparent war crime.”
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Decades of Impunity
Abdallah’s death was among the first of more than 217 journalist and media worker killings since October 2023, most while clearly marked as press or at home with their families. Yet by then, the Israeli military had been killing journalists with impunity for decades.
In May 2023, months before the offensive in Gaza, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) published a report on 20 journalists killed by Israeli forces since 2001: 18 Palestinians and two European correspondents. “No one has ever been charged or held accountable for these deaths,” the report states, adding that “Israeli forces have failed to respect press insignia,” “Israeli officials respond [to these killings] by pushing false narratives,” and “Israel discounts evidence and witness claims.”
The CPJ is an independent nonprofit that “promotes press freedom worldwide and defends the right of journalists to report the news safely and without fear of reprisal.” Founded in 1981 with Walter Cronkite as honorary co-chairman, and with current board members from The New York Times, The Associated Press, and Bloomberg, it cannot be offhandedly dismissed as an “anti-Israel” organization — as is often done to marginalize inconvenient reporting.
“Israel has failed to fully investigate these killings, launching deeper probes only when the victim is foreign or has a high-profile employer. Even then, inquiries drag on for months or years and end with the exoneration of those who opened fire,” according to the CPJ report. “In at least 13 cases, witness testimonies and independent reports were discounted. Conflicts of interest in the chain of command are overlooked. The military’s probes are classified and the army makes no evidence for its conclusions public. In some cases, Israel labels journalists as terrorists, or appears not to have looked into journalist killings at all. The result is always the same – no one is held responsible.”
Killing One of Palestine’s Most Prominent Voices (2022)
The CPJ highlighted the 2022 death of Shireen Abu Akleh, killed by Israeli forces in a targeted shooting as she reported on an operation “to arrest members of the Al-Hosari family.” Her death received more Western attention than is typically afforded to Palestinians, in part because she was also an American citizen. The U.S. State Department described the veteran Al Jazeera journalist as “a fearless reporter whose journalism and pursuit of truth earned her the respect of audiences around the world.”
“Shireen set countless young women on their paths in journalism, girls who grew up emulating her . . . holding a hairbrush meant to be a microphone and repeating her famous closing lines,” wrote Abu Akleh’s colleague, Dalia Hatuqa. “When the Second Intifada broke out towards the end of 2000, she was the face of war and peace; a fixture in every Palestinian living room as she told stories of Israel’s invasion of the West Bank, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s demise, the senseless killings and the home demolitions. So much so, that when Israeli forces slapped curfews on us in 2002, they would go around in their jeeps and mimic her through a bullhorn: ‘Stay inside. This is Shireen Abu Akleh, Al Jazeera, Ramallah.’”
During her funeral procession at St Joseph Hospital in East Jerusalem, Israeli police attacked pallbearers with batons. According to the BBC, officers also “fired stun grenades into the crowd of mourners” and “stormed” the hospital, injuring medical staff.
The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs claimed, “Palestinian terrorists, firing indiscriminately, are likely to have hit Al-Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Aqla [sic].” Later that year, Prime Minister Yair Lapid responded to Al Jazeera’s appeal for an International Criminal Court investigation, declaring, “No one will investigate IDF soldiers and no one will preach to us about morals in warfare.” Beyond the high-handed rhetoric, referring to the day’s events as “warfare” was a notable distortion.
Despite these protestations, an independent U.N. commission investigated Abu Akleh’s death:
The Commission has collected, analysed and preserved information relevant to the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh . . . The Commission has conducted open-source investigations; collected and preserved videos, photographs, reports and social media posts; and reviewed the investigations conducted by Bellingcat, the Associated Press, CNN, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Forensic Architecture and Al-Haq, Al-Jazeera and the Committee to Protect Journalists. In addition, eight individuals testified at the Commission’s public hearings in November 2022 and March 2023. The Commission sent formal requests for information to the Governments of Israel, the State of Palestine and the United States and did not receive responses from the Governments of Israel or the United States.
The investigation determined that, before the shooting, “the area in and around” her location was “calm,” without “clashes or gunfire,” and “there were no visibly armed Palestinians.” According to the Commission, the journalists had gathered at a roundabout to cover the arrest operation, about 200 meters from an Israeli forces convoy. They wore blue protective vests marked “press” and were “clearly identifiable as journalists.”
At 6:31 a.m., they began walking toward the convoy, and within seconds, six shots were fired. “Witnesses heard Abu Akleh screaming, ‘Ali’s been hit! Ali’s been hit!’”
“Approximately 10 seconds later, another seven gunshots were heard. Hanaysha [a journalist with the crew] took cover next to a concrete wall and behind a tree near Abu Akleh. She saw Abu Akleh fall to the ground.” As she “remained on the ground, face-down and motionless, the man who attempted to retrieve her was shot at.” After multiple attempts to move her, Abu Akleh was taken to Ibn Sina Hospital, where she was pronounced dead.
“The Commission was informed that normally, if the Israeli security forces did not want the journalists to approach, soldiers would respond by throwing tear gas or stun grenades or by shooting the ground near the journalists as a warning,” the report notes. “There was no warning to these journalists that morning.”
The investigation determined that “the gunfire came from the area where the Israeli security forces convoy was located” and “the gunfire targeted the upper bodies of the journalists.” Furthermore, “The Commission concludes on reasonable grounds that the Israeli security forces used lethal force without justification under international human rights law.”
As with all cases of journalists killed by Israeli forces, no one has been charged.
According to the International Federation of Journalists, on October 27, 2023, the site of Abu Akleh’s killing was “bulldozed and her shrine desecrated,” with locals reporting that Israeli soldiers were responsible.
A British Filmmaker’s Murder (2003)
The CPJ report also examined the 2003 killing of British documentary filmmaker James Miller — an incident, like Abu Akleh’s, that drew more attention due to the journalist’s nationality.
Miller, 34, was working on an HBO documentary in Gaza and, on the night of his shooting, was filming Israeli army demolitions of houses in Rafah with his crew. According to the crew’s translator, who testified to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, they were “blocked inside [a] house and Israeli tanks were very close.” As three of them exited, the translator carried a white flag. “We were all wearing helmets and [bulletproof] suits, on which ‘TV’ was written. We walked about 20m towards the tanks. We called on Israeli soldiers saying that we were British journalists who wanted to leave the area, but they did not reply. Suddenly, they fired at us, wounding James.”
Two armored carriers approached. “When they were 10m away from us, Israeli soldiers ordered us to put James on the front of the carrier. I told them that he was in bad condition and should be put inside the vehicles, but they insisted to put him on the front of the carrier. We tried more than once, but we failed . . . James fell more than once, but Israeli soldiers did not help us. After several failed attempts, Israeli soldiers got out of the carrier and put him on its front.”
In 2005, the Israeli army closed its investigation of the incident without pressing charges. That April, The Observer (published by The Guardian) reported on a leaked “79-page report by the chief lawyer of the Israeli army’s southern command.” According to The Observer, the document noted that “soldiers questioned over the killing changed earlier testimonies,” “the barrel of the rifle understood to have been used in the shooting two years ago was changed,” and that “videotapes that would have been recorded by the army’s observation system” were never found.
In 2006, a British inquest jury unanimously concluded that Miller was shot intentionally. The following year, the British government called for the soldiers to be indicted for murder. According to Haaretz, the British Attorney General sent his Israeli counterpart a letter with a six-week deadline to respond. If the deadline lapsed, Britain would launch legal proceedings against the soldiers.
Haaretz noted that such proceedings would require extraditing the soldiers and warned that a refusal “may result in a crisis between the two countries.” Israel eventually paid damages to Miller’s family. The British government took no legal action, though Israel did not charge any soldier for the shooting.
“Only because the victim had British nationality and strong journalistic entities behind him, the Ministry of Defense went as far as to meet with us, to talk with us, to negotiate with us,” Michael Sfard, a lawyer for the Miller family, told the CPJ. Miller’s mother echoed this sentiment after the British inquest: “We’ve managed to rally enough resources to fight this, but Palestinians can’t fight this, and there’s been hundreds of Palestinian deaths.”
Press Insignia and a Reuters Cameraman’s Final Frame (2008)
In its report, the CPJ highlighted a pattern of Israeli forces failing to respect press insignia, noting that “not only did journalists’ efforts to identify themselves fail to protect them, at times officials have cast suspicion on journalists because of their apparel.” One such case was the killing of 24-year-old Reuters cameraman Fadel Shana.
On April 16, 2008, Shana wore “blue body armour marked ‘PRESS’ and stood next to a car bearing ‘TV’ and ‘PRESS’ signs.” According to Reuters, he was about a mile from two Israeli tanks, and “an Israeli observation drone was circling over the area.” Reuters also reported that “in the preceding half hour, [the crew] had driven past a point 700 metres from the tanks, filmed the aftermath of an Israeli air strike that killed several children and returned by the same route.”
“Fadel set up his camera and the tripod and asked me to push away some children who had gathered around us,” Shana’s soundman, Wafa Abu Mizyed, told Human Rights Watch. “While I was doing so, I heard a sound like ‘boof.’”
Shana’s camera captured the muzzle flash of the “tank that sent a dart-scattering shell above his head.” These flechette shells typically contain 5,000 metal darts, and “their purpose is to kill over an area 300 metres wide.” Shana was hit in the chest and legs.
“I looked towards Fadel and found him lying on the ground and repeating the Shehada [the Muslim declaration of faith],” Abu Mizyed said. Shana and three other civilians (two of them children) were killed, while Abu Mizyed and 12 others were wounded.
Human Rights Watch called on Israel to conduct an independent investigation, stating it “found evidence suggesting that an Israeli tank crew fired recklessly or deliberately at the journalist’s team.” Three eyewitnesses told the organization, “there were no hostilities at the time in the immediate area where the cameraman was filming, although there had been fighting earlier that day . . . about 1.5 kilometers from the site of the attack.” Shana’s footage also showed “no military activity by Palestinian militants at the scene.” Indeed, it would be surprising for a journalist to have to shoo children away in an active combat zone.
Following the strike with lethal darts fired over a wide area, the Israeli military claimed that “not only does it [not] deliberately target uninvolved civilians, it also uses means to avoid such incidents.” The same New York Times article that relayed this assurance falsely headlined that Shana was killed “in [a] clash,” adding that it was a “day of fighting between Israeli troops and Gaza militants.” It did not describe any fighting at the scene, specify that the shell was a flechette round, nor mention the other civilian casualties. Notably, while the article was based on an Associated Press wire, the Times omitted a passage that reported five others killed, including two teenagers.
Nearly four months later, Military Advocate General Avihai Mendelblit wrote to Reuters, concluding that while “Fadel Shana’s death is a tragedy,” the “decision to fire at him” was “sound.” He claimed the soldiers were “unable to determine the nature of the object mounted on the tripod” — that is, the camera. Although the crew had traveled well within range of modern tank scopes in a vehicle marked with ‘TV’ and ‘PRESS,’ and despite the presence of an observation drone, the army said the soldiers could not see the press insignia. Notably, after killing Shana, the tanks fired another shell, which destroyed the apparently invisible press vehicle.
Mendelblit also claimed that wearing body armor — standard practice for journalists in conflict zones — was “common [among] Palestinian terrorists.”
“Reuters believes the soldiers did not have reasonable grounds to use lethal force without warning,” the press organization stated, asserting that the army “was in clear breach of its duty under international law to avoid harm to civilians.” “They would appear to take the view that any raising of a camera into position could garner a deadly response,” said Reuters Editor-in-Chief David Schlesinger. CPJ deputy director Robert Mahoney echoed this warning: “In the Gaza Strip, anyone with a camera is fair game. That’s the inescapable conclusion from the Israeli army’s investigation.”
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Journalists Covering Protests, and Snipers Keeping Score (2018-2019)
Two other journalists named in the CPJ report, Yasser Murtaja and Ahmed Abu Hussein, were killed while covering the Great March of Return protests. Held mostly on Fridays, these demonstrations ran from March 2018 to December 2019. Campsites were set up “in all five Gaza governorates,” each about 700 to 1,000 meters from Israel’s separation fence. In response, the IDF “deployed more than 100 sharpshooters” along the border. According to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Israeli forces killed “214 Palestinians, including 46 children,” and injured more than 8,000 with live ammunition.
In an interview with Haaretz, one Israeli sniper compared his experience at the protests to a sports game: “Group versus group, with a line down the middle and an audience of fans on both sides. You can totally tell a story of a sports encounter here.” Another described how he and his partner broke the “knee record”: “On that day, our pair had the largest number of hits, 42 in all. My locator wasn’t supposed to shoot, but I gave him a break, because we were getting close to the end of our stint, and he didn’t have knees . . . So, after I had a few hits, I suggested to him that we switch. He got around 28 knees there.”
By the end of 2018, 39 journalists had been injured with live ammunition and five with shrapnel, according to a U.N. commission that investigated the demonstrations and “the response of Israeli security forces.” The Commission’s 251-page report concluded there were “reasonable grounds to believe that Israeli snipers shot journalists intentionally, despite seeing that they were clearly marked as such.” One journalist told the Commission that the press considered themselves so at risk, they would say goodbye to one another when leaving their tents to cover the protests.
Murtaja was shot in the abdomen with live ammunition on April 6, 2018, and died the following morning. The Commission noted that he wore a blue vest “clearly marked with the word ‘PRESS,’” that “there were no other shots fired in the vicinity at the time,” that “visibility was good,” and that he “was standing approximately 300 [meters] from the separation fence.” Abu Hussein was shot the following week and “died of his injuries twelve days later.” He also wore “a blue vest marked ‘PRESS.’”
Ynetnews, the English-language site of Israel’s largest news publisher, reported on a panel assigned to investigate the army’s response to the protests, including Murtaja’s killing: “IDF officials stressed that the panel was formed to help IDF soldiers avoid prosecution in the International Criminal Court at The Hague and should not be interpreted to mean that their actions were in some way unwarranted. ‘The investigation will work to back the troops,’ emphasized an IDF officer.”
When later asked about the probes into the deaths of the two journalists, the IDF told the CPJ that “no suspicion was found which would justify the opening of a criminal investigation” and did not provide the complete reports.
“I [knew] him since we were children . . . we both wanted to be filmmakers,” said Murtaja’s colleague Rushdi Al-Sarraj. “This is why we started a media company together in 2012, and we worked with [many] people, both locally and internationally. He was more than a brother to me.”
Al-Sarraj continued to report on Gaza and run Ain Media, the company he co-founded with Murtaja, until he was killed in an Israeli airstrike on October 22, 2023, while at home with his family. “I am one of the only journalists who are still alive from Ain Media . . . I know that I am alive just because I’m outside Gaza,” journalist Yara Eid said in a video after Al-Sarraj’s death. “He was one of the strongest, bravest people I’ve ever met. He wanted to carry Yasser [Murtaja]’s message to the rest of the world . . . They are not numbers. They had dreams. They had visions. They had so many loved ones.”
Part II of this piece — currently in review — investigates the attacks on journalists in Gaza since October 2023. As Israeli forces killed media workers in the field and in airstrikes on their homes, these reporters risked their lives to broadcast stories from Gaza to the world. Subscribe below to be notified when Part II is published.