A dozen Palestinian journalists reporting from Gaza and being targeted by online Israeli smear campaigns are “in immediate danger”, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has warned.
The media watchdog described Israel’s targeted killings of reporters as a war crime and a “deliberate campaign to eliminate witnesses and suppress the truth”.
Israel celebrated its 10 August assassination of Anas al-Sharif, a Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent of the Al Jazeera network. He was killed in an airstrike on a hospital in Gaza City, which also killed four other Al Jazeera reporters, a freelance journalist and a passer-by.
The military had accused Mr Sharif, a father of two, of being a Hamas operative, a claim he vehemently denied, and which the UN special rapporteur on press freedom described as dangerous “unfounded accusations”.
The CPJ said the smear campaign was designed to “manufacture consent to kill Sharif” and is part of a pattern of falsely accusing journalists to justify deadly strikes on members of the press.
The warning comes as media outlets across the world black out their front pages and online sites to protest at the targeting of journalists trying to do their jobs.
In Gaza, journalists are terrified to work but continuing to report anyway.
One freelance journalist, whom The Independent has chosen not to name for their safety, says: “There are no measures we can take; danger pursues everyone wherever we are. Protective measures are insufficient.
“It is a fight against the truth and a fight to convey reality to this world.”
Now, the CPJ and Al Jazeera are deeply concerned about other Palestinian journalists inside Gaza who are facing similar unfounded accusations and are at imminent risk of injury or death.
Al Jazeera says several of its staffers and freelance reporters have either been named as targets in Israeli military statements or have faced threats on Israeli social media.
“By labelling journalists and media workers as Hamas operatives, it aimed to legitimise their murder. This is not only dangerous, it is a war crime unleashed through information warfare,” says Sara Qudah, CPJ’s Middle East and north Africa regional director.
“This pattern has emerged time and again to justify deadly strikes on members of the press. These accusations often coincide with journalists’ critical reporting on Israeli military actions, including the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
“If Israel can kill its most visible reporters without consequence, it signals that no journalist or their family is safe. This sustained targeting of the press is a grave threat to press freedom. The world must act to stop this massacre.”
Their family members have also become targets, according to CPJ.
“In the case of Anas al-Sharif, his father was targeted and killed before him, underscoring the broader scope of intimidation and lethal force aimed at silencing journalistic voices,” adds Ms Qudah.
According to Amnesty International, Israeli strikes have killed over 240 journalists and media workers since Israel launched its heaviest-ever bombardment of Gaza in October 2023, following Hamas militants’ deadly attacks in southern Israel.
The global rights group added that no conflict in modern history has seen a higher number of journalists killed.
Israeli strikes at the end of 2023 and beginning of 2024 also killed the wife, grandson, daughter and two sons of Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief Wael al-Dahdouh, including his elder son Hamza, also a journalist for Al Jazeera.
Mr Wael himself was badly injured in a strike in December 2023, which killed his cameraman, Samer Abudaqa, before he could be evacuated.
Tamer Almisshal, a senior presenter at Al Jazeera in Doha who has reported from Gaza for years, including for the BBC, says they are deeply concerned about their remaining reporters who risk their lives – and those of their families – to work.
In October last year, Israel accused six Al Jazeera staff reporters of being Hamas militants, despite multiple press freedom groups saying they had provided no evidence.
Two of the six, Mr Sharif and Hossam Shabat, have already been killed in Israeli airstrikes. A third, Ismail Abu Omar, was critically wounded in an Israeli strike and evacuated from Gaza in February 2024.
Mr Almisshal said Mr Sharif had received multiple threats from the military, who even called his mobile, warning him not to continue reporting from as early as November 2023.
Three of the remaining staff on that list are still in Gaza and under threat, while other reporters from Al Jazeera have faced a “campaign on social media against them”.
Other reporters have also been targeted: five journalists working for Al Quds TV channel were killed in December in an Israel-claimed strike on their vehicle, according to the CPJ.
“They are not allowing international journalists in and then are defaming local journalists and justifying ongoing assassinations,” says Mr Almisshal.
“What we are saying is very clear: they are trying to kill the only voices and eyes left in Gaza, and they are scaring the others not to work. They give the journalist one choice: if you work, you will be targeted.”
The Israeli military declined to comment on allegations that its actions amount to war crimes.
Instead, it pointed to an interview with spokesperson Nadav Shoshani on Sky News in which he maintained that the Israeli military does not target journalists and claimed it had “classified” material it could not release backing up its claims.
However, Israeli media outlet +972 reported that since the start of the conflict, Israel had created a special unit within the military called the “Legitimisation Cell”, tasked with gathering intelligence from Gaza that “can bolster Israel’s image in the international media”.
Among the duties of this unit, the publication reported, was to identify Gaza-based journalists it could portray as undercover Hamas operatives, in an effort to “blunt growing global outrage over Israel’s killing of reporters”.
Driven by anger that Gaza-based reporters were “smearing [Israel’s] name in front of the world”, its members were eager to find a journalist they could link to Hamas and mark as a target, one source told the publication.
Among the examples given was the case of Al Jazeera journalist Ismail al-Ghoul, who was killed in an Israeli military claimed targeted killing in July 2024, along with his cameraman, Rami al-Rifi, in Gaza City.
A month later, the army claimed he was a “military wing operative and Nukhba terrorist”, citing a 2021 document allegedly retrieved from a “Hamas computer”.
Yet the document the army publicly shared appears to contradict itself: it states he received his military rank in 2007, when he was just 10 years old, and seven years before he was supposedly recruited into Hamas.
An Israeli security official acknowledged to The Independent the presence of “various research teams” created since October 2023 within the intelligence directorate, who they claimed were tasked with identifying “Hamas operatives” reporting propaganda on networks.
They did not address the discrepancies of the alleged “evidence” or allegations of smear campaigns.
The CPJ, Amnesty International and the UN special rapporteur on freedom of expression have all repeatedly warned that this is part of a pattern of falsely accusing journalists to justify deadly strikes on members of the press.
And they are sounding the alarm for those now still in Gaza.
One journalist, also unnamed, said they live “in a state of constant anxiety and real fear that we might be next”.
They added that the targeting of journalists is no longer just exceptional but “a dangerous reality that threatens our lives and targets our message”.
“We call on the international community and journalist protection organisations to take urgent action to provide us with protection, hold those responsible for these crimes accountable, and guarantee our right to work freely and safely in accordance with international conventions,” the reporter said.
