Media groups pan Israel with accusations of Gaza journalist ‘massacre’
Reporters Without Borders tallies 16 deaths, accuses IDF of trying to ‘eliminate’ reporters; Int’l Federation of Journalists claims ‘massacre’; Israel denies targeting journalists
PARIS, France — Israel has been accused of carrying out a “massacre” of journalists during the Gaza war in two separate reports from media freedom organizations this week that analyzed the deaths of reporters worldwide this year.
According to calculations from Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF) published on Thursday, the Israeli army killed 18 journalists as they were working in 2024 — 16 in Gaza and two in Lebanon — around a third of the total worldwide of 54.
Israel denies that it intentionally harms journalists, but admits that some have been killed in air strikes on military targets. It has also been said that several members of terror groups were using their journalism activities as cover for their actions.
“Palestine is the most dangerous country for journalists, recording a higher death toll than any other country over the past five years,” RSF said in its annual report, which covers data up to December 1.
Listing “the main predators of press freedom in 2024,” it put Israeli armed forces at the top with 18. Next down were unidentified armed groups in Pakistan, Mexico, Sudan, Colombia, Honduras and Chad with 13.
Following the 16 deaths in Gaza, the deadliest countries for journalists in 2024 were Pakistan with seven deaths, followed by Bangladesh and Mexico with five each.
War in Gaza erupted on October 7, 2023, when the Palestinian terror group Hamas led a massive cross-border attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and saw 251 abducted to Gaza as hostages. Lebanese terror group Hezbollah began attacking northern Israel the following day eventually leading to a second front. While the Gaza war is still ongoing, the conflict with Hezbollah ended with a ceasefire last week.
The RSF report claimed “more than 155 journalists have been killed by the Israeli army since October 2023 in Gaza and Lebanon, an unprecedented massacre,” and asserted having “sufficient evidence that at least 40 of them were deliberately targeted for their journalism.”
Last year the RSF report listed 13 journalists as killed amid fighting in Gaza in the line of work, and 56 including all journalists killed in the territory that year. The 2024 report did not give an overall figure for the number of journalists killed in Gaza.
“Journalists don’t die — they’re killed,” wrote Reporters Without Borders Director-General Thibaut Bruttin in the report. “We must hold all those responsible for these murders to account. Starting with the Israeli armed forces who, since 7 October 2023, stopped hiding behind hollow investigations and now disguise their targeting of journalists as part of a fight against terrorism — discrediting journalists in addition to physically eliminating them.”
The organization has filed four complaints with the International Criminal Court (ICC) for “war crimes committed against journalists by the Israeli army.”
RSF said that a third of the journalists were killed in air strikes and further claimed that Israel “has turned into one of the world’s top five prisons for journalists.”
According to the report, there are 124 detained journalists in China, 61 in Myanmar and 41 in Israel.
It said there are 37 Palestinian journalists imprisoned in Israel and named two, Alaa al-Rimawi, a reporter for J Media news agency, and Diaa al-Kahlout, Gaza correspondent for The New Arab, claiming they were both tortured by Israel.
Hamas-linked Rimawi has been detained by both Israel and the Palestinian Authority security services on several occasions, while Kahlout was seen in a controversial photo of stripped and bound Palestinians detained by the Israel Defense Forces in Gaza.
In a separate report published Tuesday, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) said that 104 journalists were killed worldwide in 2024, with more than half of them in Gaza.
The IFJ and RSF figures vary because of different methodologies used to calculate the tolls, but the IFJ used similar language to condemn Israel’s military.
“The war in Gaza and Lebanon once again highlights the massacre suffered by Palestinian (55), Lebanese (6) and Syrian (1) media professionals, representing 60 percent of all journalists killed in 2024,” the IFJ said.
“We don’t accept these figures. We don’t believe they are correct,” Israeli government spokesman David Mercer told a press conference on Wednesday of the IFJ report.
“We know that probably most journalists inside Gaza are operating under the auspices of Hamas, and until Hamas is destroyed, they will not be allowed to report freely,” he said.
In some cases, Israel has accused reporters of being “terror operatives,” such as when it killed a Gaza-based Al Jazeera staff journalist and freelancer in January — allegations condemned by the Qatari news network. Israel said Ismail al-Ghoul, was a member of Hamas’s elite Nukhba force who participated in the October 7 onslaught. He was killed in an airstrike on a car that also killed Al Jazeera cameraman Ramy El-Rify.
Al Jazeera, which has been banned in Israel, says the Israeli military has been deliberately targeting its staff since the start of the war because of the channel’s coverage.
In October, the IDF said it had retrieved documents from Gaza that showed six Al-Jazeera reporters were terror group operatives.
‘Under review’
In Lebanon, the two deaths counted this year by RSF were caused by an October 25 Israeli strike on a complex in the southern town of Hasbaya where more than a dozen journalists working for Lebanese and Arab media outlets were sleeping.
Human Rights Watch condemned it as an “apparent war crime.” The Israeli army said it had targeted Hezbollah terrorists but said the strike was “under review.”
No results have been published from a review promised over the killing of a Reuters journalist and the wounding of six other reporters, including two AFP staff in Lebanon in October 2023, the Committee to Protect Journalists highlighted on the one-year anniversary of the attack.
An investigation by AFP and Reuters over that incident concluded that the journalists, who were all wearing helmets and bulletproof vests marked “Press” in an area without obvious militant activity, were targeted by Israeli tank fire.
The IDF said in a statement at the time that it responded with tank and artillery fire after a missile was fired from Lebanon by Hezbollah. The incident is under review, the IDF said.
In 2023, the number of journalists killed worldwide stood at 45 in the same January-December period.
