The killing of journalists in Gaza is the subject of investigation by Media Part. It has never happened before that such a large number of journalists have been killed in such a short time, not even during the World Wars, nor during the wars in Vietnam, Bosnia, Iraq, and Afghanistan, not even in Ukraine. The conflict has never been so deadly for the reporting profession. Media Part conducted an investigation into the tragedy of the 81 journalists killed in Gaza and southern Lebanon since the start of the Israeli war on Gaza on October 7, 2023, with the total number of journalist martyrs exceeding 120 so far.
The website, in a joint investigation by Younes Abzouz and Rashida Al Azouzi, highlighted that 81 journalists were killed by the Israeli army since October 7, 2023, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, an independent organization based in the United States that advocates for press freedom and journalists’ rights to report the news safely and without fear of reprisal.
These losses are the largest for journalists in modern war history, to the extent that it dehumanizes the dead by turning them into mere numbers. Gaza, as Palestinian writer Kareem Qatan says, “is not just an idea, but places and lives and people disappearing under bombs.” We owe it to the victims not to reduce them to mere numbers, to restore their names, faces, and histories, and to showcase the unprecedented scale of the fight for the right to report news and knowledge.
Therefore, Media Part pledged to reveal the identities of the journalists who have been killed so far, despite the difficulty of the task due to the magnitude of the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza and the media blockade imposed by Israel, banning international media access to the region.
The only journalists who have been able to document what is happening in Gaza are Palestinians working in horrific conditions under bombs and total blockade. They do not see journalism as just a profession but as their weapon to alert the world to the ongoing massacre, break the indifference, and draw attention to the plight of their people.
Digital Space: Ayat Khudura, a podcast creator, was killed on November 20, 2023, during an airstrike on her home in Beit Lahia in northern Gaza, becoming the 48th journalist to die, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. How can you rebuild the life of someone whose entire family was killed in the same bombing with no one left to tell the story? How do you connect with your remaining loved ones when communications in Gaza are regularly cut off? In such cases, when fieldwork becomes impossible, only the digital space remains, where the investigation found the last messages of the slain journalists on social media networks.
The website attempted to contact more than 100 people, mostly from Gaza, who shared their grief on social media and knew one or more of the victims. Journalists stranded in the region shared parts of their missing colleagues’ lives and expressed a desire to honor the memory of the fallen reporters.
Fadi Jad Lafi, a journalist at Palestine TV, helped in reconstructing the stories of many of his colleagues, speaking candidly about his living conditions since the evacuation of Gaza City, as he now lives in the border area with Egypt, on the street, without shelter or food. This is the situation of journalists in Gaza as they convey their personal tragedies, as the investigative authors comment.
Except for Wael al-Dahdouh, an Al Jazeera reporter who learned live on air about the death of his wife and two sons, whose story shook the world, and photojournalist Muataz Azayza with 18 million subscribers, only a few journalists managed to leave Gaza.
Eight reporters from Agence France-Presse’s office remain stranded in Gaza with their families, with Israel using the veto right against their exit.
Israel has repeatedly described some Palestinian journalists as terrorists. Defense Minister Benny Gantz stated, “Journalists who were aware in advance of the massacres on October 7 are no different from terrorists and should be treated as such.” The Israeli army justified the killing of Al Jazeera journalists Hamza al-Dahdouh and Mustafa Thirya by accusing them of being “terrorist collaborators” linked to the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and its ally the Islamic Jihad Movement.
Initiatives were adopted by the investigators, relying on collective and individual efforts to gather information. Sometimes, they could only find the date and place of death but not photos of several victims, relying on the statistics compiled by the Committee to Protect Journalists, reporting the deaths of 85 journalists and media workers since October 7, including 78 Palestinians, 4 Israelis, and 3 Lebanese.
Other organizations have reported different figures due to varying counting methods. The International Federation of Journalists, which provides protective vests, helmets, food, and clean clothes to Palestinian journalists, listed 99 killed journalists and media workers because they do not count former reporters.
The investigation pointed out that the killing of journalists is one of the most dangerous weapons to suppress truth, deliberately targeting them is a war crime. Reporters Without Borders NGO filed a complaint with the International Criminal Court for “war crimes committed against Palestinian journalists in Gaza and an Israeli journalist.”
This is not the first time Israel has deliberately targeted journalists in Gaza. In 2018, Reporters Without Borders filed the first complaint after Israeli snipers fired on Palestinian journalists during the “Great Return March” in Gaza. The Committee to Protect Journalists has documented over the past two decades at least 20 journalist killings by Israeli soldiers, with perpetrators consistently evading punishment.
