“Atrocities without any fear of consequences.”
Israel’s targeting of journalists — in Gaza and beyond.
Monday marked a year since the Israeli military killed the prominent and beloved al-Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif, along with five other Palestinian journalists, in a targeted strike. Anas was reporting from within the depths of the Israeli starvation of Gaza, even as more than two hundred of his colleagues had been killed by the Israeli military in its assassination campaign of Palestinian journalists.
Intentionally targeting journalists is a war crime, and doing so on this scale is unprecedented. But over the last three years, as the world stood by, Israel has turned its war on the press into a hallmark of its genocidal strategy, expressly targeting and murdering Palestinian journalists in an attempt to silence their reporting from the depths of the genocide. In both 2025 and 2024, more than two-thirds of journalists killed globally were killed by Israel — and more journalists have been killed in the Gaza genocide, by far, than in any conflict in modern history.
The Israeli military’s pattern of targeting journalists also extends to their families — a strategy intended to intimidate Palestinians into silence. Before Anas and his colleagues were killed, Israeli forces called him to tell him to stop his reporting and leave Gaza, then murdered his 90-year-old father in a targeted strike on his home. Al-Jazeera’s bureau chief in Gaza, Wael al- Dahdouh, saw his wife, two children, and 18-month old grandson killed by an Israeli strike on their home in the first month of the genocide. His oldest son, Hamza al-Dahdouh, himself a journalist for al-Jazeera, was assassinated months later along with fellow journalist Mustafa Thuraya by an Israeli attack on the car they were traveling in.
Met with indifference by the U.S. and downplayed in the Western media, Israel has only expanded its strategy of targeting journalists. This past month, 108 individual violations were documented against Palestinian journalists — 90% of which occurred in the West Bank, as the Israeli state and settlers have further accelerated their war on Palestinians there.
The Israeli military also brought its war on the press to Lebanon, where Israeli forces targeted over 20 journalists — including killing Al Manar TV reporter Ali Shoeib and Al Mayadeen reporter Fatima Ftouni and cameraman Mohamed Ftouni in multiple strikes on the car they were driving in southern Lebanon. The Israeli military also tracked and repeatedly targeted Lebanese journalists Amal Khalil and Zeinab Faraj, first bombing the car they were in, then the building in which they sought refuge — then attacking the medics who came to rescue them from the rubble. Khalil was killed, dying as Israel blocked rescuers from saving her, and Faraj injured, in what Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch reporting has declared a war crime.
“Israeli forces’ continued killing of journalists shows a brazen willingness to commit atrocities without any fear of consequences,” said Ramzi Kaiss, a Lebanon researcher at HRW.
What got us here?
These crimes against Palestinian journalists are extensively well-documented, often reported on by the colleagues of slain and wounded journalists themselves, as well as recorded by major human rights organizations. Israel’s war on journalists isn’t new, either — the Israeli state has sought to silence Palestinian journalists for decades, enforcing military censorship of news media and murdering journalists in the field. So why does impunity persist for Israel’s crimes against the press?
In 2022, Israeli forces assassinated Shireen Abu-Akleh, one of the most prominent journalists in Palestine, then attacked mourners at her funeral, which drew hundreds of thousands of people. Following a massive international outcry against Israeli forces’ false claims that Shireen was killed by Palestinian fire, a Biden administration investigation found that she was killed by Israeli forces — but let the Israeli military completely off the hook, calling her death an accident and “the result of tragic circumstances.” No one was ever held accountable for her murder.
Facing a total lack of consequences from their most important ally for this crime, Israel massively escalated its war on the press after it began its genocide in Gaza. From the outset of the Israeli genocide, Palestinian journalists quickly became massively popular worldwide, exposing and documenting Israeli war crimes and showing the devastating aftermath of Israel’s carpet-bombing of Gaza. Israel responded to this popularity by relentlessly attacking Palestinian journalists and their families. The Israeli military also sought to smear and delegitimize Palestinian journalists, falsely claiming, often after assassinating them, that they were active combatants, in an attempt to counter accusations of Israeli war crimes and justify their illegal killings. After its murder of Anas al-Sharif and his colleagues, the Israeli military, with no evidence, called him the “head of a Hamas terrorist cell.”
The Biden administration, despite a massive international outcry and extensive internal reporting showing proof of Israeli war crimes, continued to back and fund the Israeli government, and the Trump administration has only emboldened Israeli atrocities further. Both the Biden and Trump administrations ignored the International Criminal Court warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders, further degrading the ability of international legal institutions to impose accountability for genocide and ensuring continued impunity for Israeli crimes.
Western media, too, has been alternately silent and complicit as its Palestinian and Lebanese colleagues are exterminated. When stories are published, they often repeat false Israeli claims, normalizing war crimes with indifference: The Reuters headline following Anas al-Sharif’s death claimed “Israel Kills Al Jazeera Journalist It Says Was Hamas Leader,” which it later changed with no comment. More recently, coverage of Israel’s brutal war on Lebanon barely broke the surface of major media outlets at all, to say nothing of Israel’s targeted assassination of Lebanese journalists.
What are we doing about it?
The only way to end impunity is to enforce accountability. Speaking to a reporter, Ramzi Kaiss, the HRW researcher, said that Israel’s crimes against journalists will end only “when there are consequences for these unlawful attacks. When states say, ‘This is not acceptable, we’re suspending arms sales, there’s an arms embargo, no military assistance.’”
Our movement knows this — and that’s why we’re continuing the fight to end U.S. support for Israeli genocide and apartheid, which allows these crimes against Palestinian and Lebanese journalists, their families, and the Palestinian and Lebanese people to continue unabated.
JVP members are in solidarity with the Palestinian Youth Movement, who held a week of action to honor the journalists of Palestine, resist the attempts to criminalize Palestinian journalists, and expose Western media complicity in Israel’s genocide. This work is our responsibility as members of the Palestine solidarity movement, as Anas al-Sharif wrote in his last will and testament:
“I entrust you with Palestine… I entrust you not to be silenced by chains, nor held back by borders. Be bridges toward the liberation of land and people, until the sun of dignity and freedom rises over our usurped homeland… Do not forget Gaza, and do not forget me in your righteous prayers for forgiveness and acceptance.”
Act now: Demand Western media recognize Israel’s war on the press.
Western media has long been either silent or complicit in the face of Israel’s murder of their Palestinian journalist colleagues.
Use this tool from the Palestinian Youth Movement to demand that newsrooms name Israel’s killing of journalists as murder meant to silence the truth.”
What we’re reading: “Remembering Anas, Mohammed and Gaza’s other slain journalists.”
“As we mark the first anniversary of their killings, we have to remember their deeds, virtues and qualities. We have to remember the extraordinary role they played alongside the rest of their colleagues in the Strip. We have to remember the new model they established in the world of journalism and media.”
Wael Al-Dahdouh, al-Jazeera‘s Gaza bureau chief, reflects on the murder of his colleagues, friends, and son during Israel’s systemic targeting of Palestinian journalists.
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