‘The grey zone’: how IDF views some journalists in Gaza as legitimate targets
Funeral ceremony for the Palestinian journalists Sari Mansour and Hasona Saliem, killed in Gaza in November 2023
Harry Davies, Manisha Ganguly, David Pegg, Hoda Osman, Yuval Abraham and Bethan McKernan report on 25 June 2024:
As Israel’s offensive in Gaza has become the deadliest conflict for journalists in recent history, its military has repeatedly said it is not deliberately targeting the media.
“There is no policy of targeting media personnel,” a senior official said, attributing the record number of journalists killed to the scale and intensity of a bombardment in which so many of Gaza’s civilians have died.
However, an investigation by the Guardian suggests that amid a loosening of the Israel Defense Force’s interpretation of the laws of war after the deadly Hamas-led attacks on 7 October, some within the IDF appear to have viewed journalists working in Gaza for outlets controlled by or affiliated with Hamas to be legitimate military targets.
The investigation is part of the Gaza project, a collaboration led by the Paris-based non-profit Forbidden Stories, which has analysed the deaths of journalists in Gaza since Israel began its offensive.
The US-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) records at least 103 Palestinian journalists and media workers killed in the war in Gaza. Other lists suggest that number is higher.
Since foreign media are blocked by Israel from entering Gaza, the work of documenting the war on the ground has fallen to Palestinian journalists in the territory, many of whom have continued to work despite grave risks to their safety.
In a war in which Israel has dropped tens of thousands of bombs on a densely populated territory, it is perhaps inevitable that so many journalists have been killed. Among the dead are also doctors, teachers, civil servants, aid workers, paramedics and poets.
That so many Palestinian journalists and media workers – working for a wide range of local and international outlets – have been killed, injured or detained by Israeli forces has raised concerns among press freedom organisations that the IDF has deliberately sought to silence critical reporting.
Among those listed by the CPJ as having been killed in Gaza since 7 October, approximately 30% worked for media outlets affiliated with or closely tied to Hamas.
Working with Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ), a Jordan-based non-profit, the Guardian identified at least 23 individuals killed since 7 October who worked for the largest Hamas-run outlet in Gaza, al-Aqsa media network.
Considered to be the Hamas movement’s official channel, al-Aqsa employed hundreds of people and operated a widely watched TV channel and numerous radio stations until the war curtailed its output. The outlet appears to have had the highest number of journalists killed during the current war.
Asked about the al-Aqsa network casualties, a senior IDF spokesperson told reporters in the Gaza project consortium that there was “no difference” between working for the media outlet and belonging to Hamas’s armed wing, a sweeping statement legal experts described as alarming.
“It’s a shocking statement,” Adil Haque, a law professor at Rutgers University in the US said, describing the position as showing “a complete misunderstanding or just a wilful disregard for international law”.