Israel has killed about 250 journalists since launching its genocidal war on Gaza on October 7, 2023. That is more than the number of journalists killed in all wars in the past 150 years combined. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) says Israel has engaged in “the deadliest and most deliberate effort to kill and silence journalists” that the media watchdog has ever documented.
Jonathan Dagher, the head of Reporters Without Borders’ Middle East desk, called the targeting of journalists “a tragedy for journalism”, while the United Nations human rights chief, Volker Turk, called Gaza “a ‘death trap’ for journalists”. Yet, beyond the statements and condolences, Israel has never been held accountable for its killing of Palestinian journalists – a practice that long predates the genocidal war on Gaza, but that took on an industrial scale over the past three years. Instead, the silence of the international community and lack of solidarity from Western media professionals emboldened Israel as it pursued the genocidal war and normalised journalists’ killings.
But despite trying to suppress the truth about its massacres and attempts at ethnic cleansing, Israel – historically an acknowledged master at propaganda – has largely failed in its efforts over the past three years, thanks to the bravery of the very voices it tried to silence. That too is the story of how journalism has changed since October 7, 2023. Western media outlets and their prominent faces often claimed to be “neutral” in their coverage of the genocidal war.
But the very concept of neutrality in journalism has come under question amid the genocide. The Western media were rarely neutral when viewed according to the basic tenets of journalism and professional standards. More than 74,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza so far.
But Western outlets often framed headlines in the passive tense when reporting on these killings, conveniently shielding Israel from blame. Palestinians were killed by Israel, mostly in circumstances that violated rules of war. These details were not highlighted, and the Israeli narrative that Hamas was using Palestinian civilians as a “human shield” was amplified.
When Al Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif was killed in a targeted attack in front of al-Shifa Hospital in August 2025, CNN carried the Israeli accusation that he worked for a Hamas cell in its second paragraph, an allegation Al Jazeera has rejected. Weeks before the killing, Irene Khan, the UN’s special rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression, had warned against “repeated threats and accusations” against al-Sharif by the Israeli army. Israel killed 22 people, including five journalists – one of whom worked for Al Jazeera – in a “double-tap” strike in September 2025.
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