Yes, we kill journalists and the world can go to hell

The war in Gaza has become the deadliest conflict in modern history for its most vulnerable victims: children and journalists. The deliberate targeting of journalists is a grave breach of international humanitarian law, in direct violation of the protections afforded to all civilians under the Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocols. The killing of children is a brutal act aimed at erasing the future of the Palestinian people, who will one day carry on the struggle for freedom and independence. For journalists, they are the eyes and ears of the world, tasked with reporting on what Israel is doing in Gaza and beyond. By barring international media from independent access to Gaza, Israel ensures that the only ones left to document its actions are the local journalists it continues to kill. This is a deliberate strategy to create an information vacuum and operate with impunity, silencing the very voices that would expose the full extent of the truth.

Beyond the battlefield, Israel’s strategy of silencing the press is evident in its consistent, and often baseless, accusations of bias. The Israeli government has a documented pattern of targeting Al Jazeera, a network that has been a lifeline for on-the-ground reporting in Gaza. For example, in October 2024, the Israeli military accused six Al Jazeera journalists of being members of Hamas or Islamic Jihad, citing documents it claimed were found in Gaza. Al Jazeera immediately rejected the claim as “fabricated,” and press freedom organisations like the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) noted that Israel had produced similar documents with “contradictory information” in the past, often to retroactively justify the killing of a journalist.

The staggering number of journalists killed in this conflict shows that Israel’s military campaign is more than a war on a people; it is a systematic war on the free press. According to the United Nations Human Rights office, Spokesperson Thameen Al-Kheetan, at least 247 journalists have been killed by Israel since October 7, 2023. By barring foreign reporters from Gaza while simultaneously killing Palestinian journalists, Israel’s policy is not a tragic accident of war. It is a deliberate strategy of impunity, designed to control the narrative and silence the voices that would otherwise expose the full extent of the humanitarian catastrophe.

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The majority are Palestinian journalists simply working to report on the devastation of their communities. This is not a tragic by product of combat, but a chilling and calculated campaign to create an information vacuum. Reports from press freedom groups like the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and Reporters Without Borders (RSF) confirm a deliberate pattern of targeting journalists and their families in ways that defy all norms of war rendering the claim that these are unintended casualties as a myth.

Consider the attacks on Gaza’s Nasser Hospital on 25 August 2025, where Israeli forces killed journalists and civilians. According to multiple witnesses, a first bomb struck a designated media area. As journalists and first responders rushed to cover the aftermath, a second “double-tap” strike hit the exact same location. If this were truly an unintended “tragic mishap,” as Benjamin Netanyahu claimed, there would not have been a second strike on the same spot. The interval between the two strikes was ample time for the commander—whoever they may be—to recognise the error and halt further attacks. In spite of the Netanyahu claim the Israeli army tried to justify the attacks by another unfounded claim that the target was a Hamas camera on the building.  

When prominent Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif was killed in an airstrike on 10 August 2025, the Israeli military immediately claimed he was the “head of a terrorist cell.” The claim was widely repeated by military and government spokespeople but was never supported with any credible evidence. Al Jazeera and the CPJ were quick to reject the accusation as a transparent attempt to justify the killing of a journalist. This pattern of accusing journalists of being “terror operatives” without providing proof is a decades-old tactic, one designed to retroactively sanitise the killing of journalists and delegitimise their work.

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Meanwhile, Israel and its supportive media outlets—both local and international—have been caught red-handed lying and deliberately misrepresenting facts on the ground since the 7 October attacks. A notable example is the widely circulated but unsubstantiated claim that Hamas militants beheaded dozens of Israeli babies. This narrative was reported as a fact by Israeli prime minister himself in a phone call to President Joe Biden who further spread the lie before the White House was forced to retract his statement by clarifying that Biden had not seen photographic evidence of such atrocities. Despite the retraction, the false claim persisted, complicating the flow of accurate information and reinforcing the need for independent reporting. This also underscores the necessity for international independent media access to Gaza.

By consistently restricting access for foreign journalists, Israel ensures that the primary source of on-the-ground reporting comes from local Palestinian reporters. When those journalists are killed and then slandered with unsubstantiated claims, a clear message is sent to the entire profession: report on the truth, and you do so at your own peril. The world, however, is not blind to this strategy. A coalition of 28 governments, including key Western allies, has publicly called for Israel to “allow immediate independent foreign media access” into Gaza and to cease its attacks on the press, a damning acknowledgment that press freedom is being systematically suppressed.

In the past, Israeli leaders have expressed a disregard for international opinion, a sentiment captured by the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin who famously wished for Gaza to “sink into the sea.” This deliberate campaign to “kill the message by killing the messenger” is rooted in a long history of viewing the world through a lens of total control. This is a new kind of information warfare. By creating a near-total information blackout and then methodically eliminating the only reporters able to document the truth, Israel has created a space where it can operate with impunity. This is a strategy of calculated destruction, one that aims to deny the world an unfiltered view of the conflict. The war is being fought not just with bombs and tanks but with a deliberate, brutal, and unyielding campaign to silence the free press, a cost that includes a terrifying loss of life and a profound erosion of journalistic integrity.

While the world mourns the Palestinian journalists killed in Gaza, Israel continues its murderous policy unabated. The world must move beyond empty condolences for innocent victims and focus instead on holding Israel accountable.

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The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.