When Israeli missiles struck Nasser Hospital in the southern Gaza Strip on August 25, 2025, they left behind more than rubble, shattered wards, and grieving families. They extinguished 22 lives — including those of five Palestinian journalists.
The deaths marked a grim milestone. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), nearly 200 reporters, photographers, and media workers have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched its full-scale war on October 7, 2023. That makes this war not just one of the deadliest for civilians in the modern Middle East, but the single deadliest conflict for journalists anywhere in the world since systematic tracking began.
Following a wave of international condemnation, the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a statement saying Israel “values the work of journalists.” But the figures tell another story — one of systematic silencing.
“Palestinian journalists are being threatened, directly targeted and murdered by Israeli forces, and are arbitrarily detained and tortured in retaliation for their work,” CPJ said in a searing statement this week.
As a scholar of Palestinian history would point out, what is happening today is not an aberration. It is the culmination of decades of deliberate policies designed to muzzle Palestinian voices.
Israel’s war on Palestinian journalism did not begin in 2023. It traces back to the aftermath of the Six-Day War in 1967, when Israel seized the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza. Alongside military occupation came a military bureaucracy bent on controlling not just land, but narratives.
In August 1967, Military Order 101 criminalized “political” assembly and “propagandistic” publications. Palestinian newspapers, magazines, and even cultural bulletins had to submit all material — down to weather reports and crossword puzzles — to Israeli censors. Anything deemed “politically significant” was excised. Editors who resisted faced jail or deportation.
Despite the chokehold, Palestinian journalism flourished underground and in fragments. By the 1980s, local dailies and weeklies circulated widely, carrying stories of dispossession, protests, and occupation. But every page had to run the gauntlet of censorship.
This systematic effort to control the story laid the foundation for today’s lethal targeting. The suspicion remains constant: journalists are not independent actors, but “militants in disguise.” The accusation recurs every time a press vest is stained with blood.
When Palestinians launched the first intifada in December 1987, the reporting of their struggle became intolerable to Israel’s military authorities. The crackdown was swift and sweeping:
47 Palestinian reporters jailed in the first year.
At least 8 newspapers temporarily banned.
Two magazines shut down permanently.
Four press offices shuttered.
The aim was clear: silence the chroniclers of uprising.
But the harder Israel squeezed, the more Palestinian journalists saw their role not as neutral chroniclers but as defenders of their people’s right to be seen and heard. The camera, the notebook, the broadcast — all became weapons in a battle over truth.
The early 1990s Oslo Accords kindled hope of greater press freedom. But those hopes were dashed.
Israel continued enforcing military censorship, revoking press cards and harassing reporters deemed sympathetic to Palestinian resistance. Meanwhile, the new Palestinian Authority built its own apparatus of repression, arresting critical journalists and shuttering outlets.
Caught between two authorities, Palestinian reporters walked a perilous line. And when the second intifada erupted in 2000, the dangers escalated dramatically.
In 2002, photojournalist Imad Abu Zahra was shot dead by Israeli forces in Jenin. A year later, British filmmaker James Miller was killed in Rafah. In 2008, Reuters cameraman Fadel Shana was targeted in Gaza — even though his vehicle was clearly marked “Press.”
These deaths were not aberrations. They set a pattern: Israeli forces killing journalists, often under circumstances that contradicted international law, then avoiding accountability.
The Great March of Return protests in 2018 confirmed the pattern. Journalists Yaser Murtaja and Ahmed Abu Hussein, both wearing visible “PRESS” vests, were shot and killed by Israeli snipers. Over 115 others were wounded while covering largely peaceful demonstrations.
The May 2022 killing of Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was another flashpoint. A veteran correspondent for Al Jazeera, Abu Akleh was fatally shot while reporting in Jenin. Despite overwhelming evidence of deliberate targeting, Israel claimed her death was an “accident.” A recent documentary has since alleged otherwise, naming the soldier who fired the shot.
Each time, international outrage was fierce, but accountability never followed.
Since October 2023, when Hamas-led fighters launched their attack on Israel, the situation has grown catastrophic. Israel has barred international media from Gaza, creating what human rights groups call a “media blackout.”
That leaves local Palestinian journalists as the only eyes and ears documenting the destruction. They record airstrikes on schools, hospitals, and refugee camps. They livestream mass funerals. They rush toward burning neighborhoods when others flee.
And they are killed at staggering rates.
CPJ data shows that of the 192 journalists killed since October 2023, nearly all were Palestinian. Many died in “double-tap” strikes, where drones return to bomb the same site minutes later, killing first responders and journalists on the scene.
The toll has been intensely personal. On October 25, 2023, Al Jazeera bureau chief Wael al-Dahdouh was broadcasting live when he learned that his wife, children, and grandson had been killed in an airstrike. The next day, he was back on air, his grief public yet inseparable from his duty.
On August 10, 2025, his colleague Anas al-Sharif was killed in Gaza City alongside five other journalists. Al-Sharif had become one of the war’s most prominent chroniclers, known for walking through bombed-out streets with only his phone and his voice as shields.
The August 25 attack on Nasser Hospital fits the broader pattern but has struck a particularly raw nerve. Among the five journalists killed were freelancers for Reuters and the Associated Press — global outlets that have been urging Israel for nearly two years to grant their own staff access to Gaza.
Their deaths underscore the cruel paradox: international news agencies depend on Palestinian freelancers because their own correspondents are banned. Yet those freelancers bear the highest risks, with no protections.
The Israeli government has defended the strike by claiming that militants were hiding in the hospital, but has not provided evidence that the journalists killed were combatants. International law is clear: journalists are civilians. Their deliberate killing is a war crime.
Israeli officials maintain that they do not target journalists. They argue that Hamas embeds itself among civilians, turning hospitals, mosques, and press offices into legitimate military targets.
But rights groups note that these claims are rarely substantiated. In the case of Yaser Murtaja, Israel alleged he was a Hamas operative but never provided proof. In Shireen Abu Akleh’s case, Israel first blamed Palestinian fire, then admitted its forces may have been responsible but insisted it was accidental.
CPJ’s May 2023 report concluded that Israel has established a “deadly pattern” of targeting journalists without accountability. The absence of prosecutions, even in high-profile cases, has bred impunity.
For analysts, the motive is clear. Journalists shape the world’s understanding of war. In Gaza, where foreign correspondents are barred, Palestinian reporters are not just storytellers — they are the only witnesses.
Silencing them means silencing Gaza itself. Without their voices, the war is reduced to military communiqués, casualty statistics, and government talking points.
“Israel fears the image of its actions more than the actions themselves,” says one Palestinian media scholar. “That is why cameras are as dangerous as rockets in the eyes of the occupation.”
The Nasser Hospital strike has drawn widespread condemnation. A coalition of 27 countries has formally demanded that Israel allow independent media into Gaza. Major outlets like Reuters, AP, and the BBC have echoed the call.
Yet Israel continues to refuse. Western governments, while expressing concern, have not imposed consequences. U.S. military aid flows uninterrupted.
Human rights groups warn that failure to hold Israel accountable risks normalizing the killing of journalists worldwide. If one state can kill nearly 200 reporters in less than two years without repercussions, they argue, press freedom everywhere is endangered.
For the Palestinian journalists still alive in Gaza, the work continues under impossible conditions: electricity cutoffs, bombed-out newsrooms, no protective gear, and the constant fear that their families will be next.
Many know they may not survive the war. But they keep filming, photographing, writing — documenting not just destruction, but resilience.
As Wael al-Dahdouh said after burying his family: “The world must see. If we are gone, the truth will be buried with us.”
