Journalists Under Fire in Gaza, Israel’s Deadly War on Reporters

The ongoing conflict in Gaza has emerged as the deadliest war for journalists in modern history. Two Palestinian journalists were killed in Israeli attacks just this week, underscoring the extreme risks faced by reporters in the region. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, at least 165 journalists have been killed since October 2023 - a staggering number that surpasses the total journalist fatalities during the entire span of World War II.

The conflict has escalated to a critical point, with Israel resuming strikes on Gaza after breaking a ceasefire with Hamas. Amid this humanitarian catastrophe, journalists persist in their crucial role, risking their lives to document the unfolding events and bring critical information to the world.

Related Gaza Journalist Fadi al-Wahidi Avoided Israel's Red" Zone. Israel Shot Him Anyway.

In response to attacks on Palestinian journalists, Forbidden Stories launched the Gaza Project - a collaboration bringing together over 40 journalists from 12 organizations, including the Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism and The Intercept. Their mission: investigate and expose the unprecedented threats facing journalists in Gaza and the West Bank.

On this week's episode of The Intercept Briefing, Hoda Osman, the executive editor of Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism, says the killings have become hauntingly familiar: A repeated scene seeing a journalist is being killed, and you get the news, and then you see their bodies with a bloodied press vest. And then you see the mourning of their colleagues and their families."

They're all starting to become extremely weak because of the lack of food."

In addition to this extreme risk, Osman says the daily realities confronting Palestinian reporters are difficult to imagine. I was speaking to a journalist there and she's telling me how hard it is because it's Ramadan and they fast, and at the end of the day at sunset, they're supposed to break fast, but there is no food. And how they're all starting to become extremely weak because of the lack of food. And that was before even the strikes began again," she says.

Related Israel Leveled Gaza - Then Killed the Drone Journalists Who Showed it to the World

Most of them are living in tents," Osman adds. A few weeks ago when the weather was really cold, one of the journalists was texting me how they don't know what to do to be warm. They're constantly cold. And then she sent me videos of - it had rained - the whole tent just completely flooding."

But despite all these personal challenges, they keep going.

Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

TRANSCRIPT

Jessica Washington: Welcome to The Intercept Briefing. I'm Jessica Washington.

Amy Goodman: On Monday, Israeli strikes killed two Palestinian journalists, Mohammed Mansour and Hossam Shabat.

France 24: Hossam Shabat was one of the best known journalists in Gaza. Gaza Civil Defense Agency said that Shabat was killed when an Israeli drone struck his car.

JW: Separate Israeli attacks killed two journalists working in the Gaza Strip this week. Israel's war has become the deadliest for journalists ever recorded by the Committee to Protect Journalists. As of this recording, at least 165 journalists have been killed since October 2023, more than the number killed in all six years of World War II.

As Israel resumed strikes on Gaza, breaking its ceasefire with Hamas, the death toll has surged past 50,000. Journalists documenting the war remain under fire, a direct attack on press freedom.

Hamdan Ballal: They came, the soldiers. With the settlers attacking me and beating me and destroyed me.

JW: This week, one of the Palestinian directors of the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land" was also attacked by Israeli settlers in the West Bank and then detained by soldiers before being freed a day later.

The Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism and The Intercept partnered with a wider consortium of journalists as a part of the Gaza Project, a collaborative effort to address the crisis of attacks on Palestinian journalists.

Joining me now to talk about the latest investigation from the Gaza Project is Hoda Osman, a journalist and executive editor of Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism, who, as a part of the Gaza Project, has worked on investigations into the killing and targeting of journalists in Gaza and the West Bank since October 7, 2023.

Welcome to The Intercept Briefing, Hoda.

Hoda Osman: Thank you, Jessica. Thank you for having me.

JW: I want to start here. As Israel has resumed attacks on Gaza, two additional journalists were killed this week. In a little over a year, Gaza has become the deadliest place on earth for journalists. Can you tell us about the Gaza Project and some of the patterns the consortium has found in the targeting and killing of journalists?

HO: First, I'd like to thank you for having me on this podcast and giving this attention. One of the issues is that the attacks on journalists and the conditions under which journalists have been reporting in Gaza, which are horrific by any standard, have not gotten attention, especially in the Western media.

The Gaza Project is a collaborative investigative effort. It's led by Forbidden Stories, a Paris-based organization whose mission it is to continue the work of journalists who can't do it for one reason or another, including for being killed or injured. We got together over 40 journalists from over 12 organizations to investigate those killings.

It's unprecedented, as you mentioned. Never before in history has there been this number of journalists killed in such a period of time. So this is the second part of the project. The first part we worked on for months, and then we published at the end of June of last year. We decided to get together, pull our resources, and gather evidence, talk to eyewitnesses, to colleagues, to families, dig through documents and find out what happened.

At the time that we did the Gaza Project one, there were over a hundred journalists that had already been killed. So even for a group of journalists, who are seasoned investigative journalists in this large number, over 40 journalists, it was beyond our capacity, so we had to pick some cases to investigate.

When we realized fully well that each and every case deserves to be investigated, the result was over 20 investigations, whether they were investigations about individual cases. Like for example, the case of Bilal Jadallah, who was considered the godfather of investigative journalists in Gaza, was killed while traveling on a road designated clearly by the Israeli military as being a safe road.

Or also recognizing some patterns. So we did stories on the attacks on press infrastructure. We also looked at the numbers and found that most of the journalists were actually killed at home. So they were not in clashes, they were not- The notion that they were in dangerous areas. Most of the journalists are actually reporting out of hospitals.

So as far as part two, part two is a continuation. We had to continue not just because the killings didn't stop, but because the impunity didn't stop either. So we couldn't stop, especially as our colleagues in Gaza have continued to report. Since we published at the end of June, over 50 journalists have been killed, including the two journalists you have just mentioned, Mohammed Mansour and Hossam Shabat.

It was shocking to so many that this has begun again because during the ceasefire, there was a pause in the killing of journalists, which has become such a repeated scene seeing a journalist being killed, and you get the news and then you see their bodies with a bloodied press vest and then you see the mourning of their colleagues and their families.

So we started actually months ago working on this project, and you will find that we did again, we focused on some individual cases, including the case of Fadi al-Wahidi, who is now paralyzed. He was shot right above his flak jacket, his press vest on October 9, in the neck, and we do a 3D reconstruction of that incident and speak to many witnesses who were at the scene.

We also have a story just about drone journalists and the risks that they take when they report with a drone filming in Gaza.

JW: I want to ask a little bit more about Fadi al-Wahidi. The footage that you captured shows him clearly in his press vest, as you mentioned, lying motionless on the pavement. Can you tell us about this journalist, this cameraman, a little bit more and what happened to him on that day?

HO: Fadi al-Wahidi is 25. He is a cameraman for Al Jazeera, and he was reporting in the north of Gaza in Jabalia. When Gaza was separated before the cease fire, Israel separated Gaza between the north and the south, and there were much fewer journalists in the north than in the south. And Fadi was one of them.

He was reporting in an area that was a so-called yellow zone, because Israel designates areas on maps with colors. They're color-coded to tell people where they should be and which areas are going to be evacuated. So the day before Israel released this map showing these different areas, Fadi and his colleagues were clearly in the yellow zone.

We actually geolocated their location and we show - in our 3D reconstruction and images - how they were outside of the red zone. He was wearing, as he said, a clearly marked press vest and standing in broad daylight with the other journalists and he was still shot.

What happened is that there was a fire. And they tried to hide from the fire and then they tried to, you know, get out and run to a safe place. But as you see in the videos, there was more firing and he was shot right above his press vest. The witnesses we spoke to, we've interviewed six journalists, including Fadi, and we've interviewed Fadi twice, who were at the scene, and their testimonies all aligned.

We spoke to them separately and each one of them told us the same thing. And they all refer to the use of what they refer to as a quadcopter, which is some sort of a sniper drone. A drone that fires bullets, which until today, there's no visual. We don't have any photos of it, but there are so many widespread testimonies of people saying that these sniper drones appear sometimes and just shoot at people.

Fadi was injured and immediately fell down. He was motionless on the pavement. This picture of him lying down like this reminded a lot of people of the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh, a Palestinian-American journalist, in 2022 in the occupied West Bank. His colleagues were calling for him to move if he can hear them, and it was too dangerous to get to him immediately.

Eventually, they moved him to the hospital. He's paralyzed, he can't walk. He was in Gaza for over 100 days. Israel refused to evacuate him even though he desperately needed medical attention, medical treatment that was not available in Gaza because of the destruction of the health system and the hospitals over there. Eventually, Fadi was evacuated to Cairo and recently he was transferred to Qatar where he's hoping to get better medical treatment.

JW: I wanted to ask. It's our understanding that there have been Palestinian journalists killed during the ceasefire, as well. Can you tell us about them?

HO: Yes. This actually hit close because on March 15, there was a strike, this was during the ceasefire. It was before Israel broke the ceasefire by killing hundreds of Palestinians on March 18. So on March 15, it was a Saturday. I remember it clearly because I remember, you know, getting this message.

So one of our stories, as I mentioned, is about journalists who film with drones. And for our project, Forbidden Stories, who's coordinating the whole project, had hired a journalist, a drone journalist in Gaza to film in some of the areas where we wanted to do something called photogrammetry reconstruction, 3D models, to show the level of the destruction. Because Forbidden Stories believes in continuing the work of journalists who can't continue doing this work and our story was about drone journalists who've been killed or injured, we set out to film in those areas and to include them as part of our report. And tragically, the drone journalist who was killed on that day, he was filming for a British charity organization, the opening of an expansion of displacement tents, a number of tents for displaced people.

That journalist was the journalist who had a few days earlier shot and filmed for us, for our project, Mahmoud Isleem al-Basos. It was shocking. There was still a ceasefire. It was away, far from the Israeli military presence. Our colleagues at Bellingcat, who are part of our project, geolocated where he was, and it was not close, it was not presenting any danger to the Israeli military Israeli soldiers.

Right after, Israel issued a statement accusing those people it had killed of being connected to militants. It did not actually include the drone journalists in its statement. It included the name of an individual that had a similar name to Mahmoud, but not him specifically, nor his picture.

You know, it was just a complete shock. This is a drone journalist who was a few days earlier filming for us for a story about the targeting of drone journalists, who's been targeted and killed himself. A young guy I talked to, his colleague, Shadi al-Tabatiby, he is devastated. He describes him as being very eager to learn. Very, very funny guy. He used to be the one who's always joking within their group.

So extremely, extremely sad for this to happen and for this to have happened. I also have to comment on these accusations because they happen over and over and over again in our Gaza Project. The part one in this project, Hossam Shabat, who's been killed recently, was accused by Israel in the last year of being connected to militants.

So it seems more and more that these are targeted assassinations, you know, and Israel issues these accusations without really giving concrete evidence. We asked the Israeli military to elaborate on these accusations, especially because Mahmoud had filmed for us, and they said that they will not elaborate or issue any further statements.

JW: I want to dig into Israel's response a little bit more. I mean, broadly, when you have brought the killing of journalists to their attention, I mean, obviously they are aware of these killings as well, but what has the response been in general from Israel?

HO: The response is always the same: We do not target journalists. We refute any accusation that we do. We only target combatants and quote unquote terrorists," and then they usually don't give an answer to specific questions or to detailed cases, or if we do get an answer, it is often, to be honest, confusing, and it creates more confusion than it gives answers.

So denials continuously that the journalists are being targeted.

JW: We'll be right back after a short break. Before we go, we want to hear from you. If you're taking political action in your community or you have a story to share, leave us a voicemail at (530) POD-CAST. That's (530)763-2278. After the break, more from Hoda Osman, a journalist and executive editor of Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism, who as a part of the Gaza Project, which has worked on investigations into the killing and targeting of journalists in Gaza and the West Bank since October 7, 2023.

And I want to get into the important work that these journalists have done. Can you talk about how, particularly, journalists have used drones to document the war and kind of how that work has impacted coverage more broadly?

HO: So, it's important to recognize that it is extremely difficult to appreciate or get an idea of the level of devastation and the destruction from the ground.

So these aerial images with drones are extremely, extremely important to show. So they are journalism, they are part of, you know, part of being a journalist in Gaza. This is not a new thing, or new technology. It's existed since around 2014 for coverage. It was used to show the devastation and the destruction after the 2014 war.

I think it's important, and I'm glad that you asked this question, Jessica, to be honest, because I think it's important. People, when they think of a drone and they think of a journalist flying a drone during this war, they're like, well, you know, that's, you know, they're surprised by it, but it's quite common practice. It was used before. They were, they were used to it. There was a handful of them there. It isn't that there are so many drone journalists. Estimates, based on like our interviews, is that there were about like 10 journalists who were working with drones to film, like right at the beginning of the war.

Several of them decided that it was too dangerous and stopped, including Shadi al-Tabatiby, who's the main, you know, interviewee for our story. And others, unfortunately, you know, they used it in places where we, like, we geolocated and we knew was not posing any danger to the Israeli military, and yet they were targeted and they were killed.

And it's important here to mention the case of Mustafa Thuraya. Mustafa was the first drone journalist to be killed in January of 2024, and the Washington Post did an important investigation. They were able to get the footage that he had shot right before he was killed, and to show using, you know, forensic and visual investigative techniques, to show that the claims by the Israeli military about this filming posing any kind of threat were unfounded.

JW: I think it's important to remind people that during the whole duration of the war and the brief ceasefire, Israel has largely blocked foreign journalists from entering Gaza. How does that policy compare to other conflicts, and in your view, what impact has that had on how the war has been reported?

HO: I mean, it's outrageous.

We, our consortium has submitted, by the way, a request for our journalists to enter Gaza to report, and it's constantly denied by Israel. They don't even give good reasons. We're seeing doctors and aid workers being allowed into Gaza. So why aren't journalists allowed in, especially if the journalists themselves and their news organizations, if they accept to take on the risk? The only way that a journalist can go to Gaza is through being embedded with the military. A lot of journalists have ethical issues with that to begin with, but also, you're restricted with what you're going to see because it's all going to be controlled by the Israeli army.

So, I want to also clarify here that I'm not saying that the Palestinian journalists are not doing a good job covering their own story. They're doing an exceptional job, but they themselves are asking us to, they're asking for support. I was speaking to a journalist in the north just two days ago and he, himself, brought this up and he told me, We want them to be let in. We want foreign journalists to be let in and we will support you. If you, you know, if you want us to, whatever it is. But we want foreign journalists in." It doesn't seem, to be honest, like any pressures work. There have been statements, there have been like, you know, organizations pushing for this. So I do hope that we are allowed to go to Gaza soon and to be able to report there.

JW: And can you talk about the challenges in trying to document and investigate how Israel is targeting journalists and the implications for making a war crimes case?

HO: It's extremely hard because of what we just talked about because you are not there physically. And, of course, today there are a lot more tools to do things like use OSINT or, you know, you do the visual investigations.

We even did, you know, audio, audio forensic analysis for the previous project. But still, when you're not there, it's not as easy. We depend a lot on our colleagues in Gaza. We talk to them a lot. I, you know, for this project and for the previous one, I was every single day talking to colleagues who were helping us.

I have to really give them credit for being such professional journalists. They understand the need to document and verify. So sometimes, for example, if I'm asking for a picture, but I need the picture in a way that will allow me to see the metadata so I can verify where it was taken and what time, et cetera. And they know that. They are very helpful in giving us whatever we need.

One challenge that we face is that you have to have a lot of patience. There's a lot of connectivity issues. They're disconnected from the internet. So their phone is not connected at all, so you have to wait and you also have to be sensitive to what is going on.

They can't find food. They lose family members, they lose their colleagues. And how do you, you know, work and talk and communicate with them in a way that is completely appreciative of what is going on in their life, because they're reporting on this, but they're also living it, you know?

But in spite of the challenges, as you can see, if you check the investigations we did for the first part, and as you see in the investigations that were published as part of this phase of the Gaza Project, we were still able to document clearly that there's been targeting of journalists. So you can only imagine the kind of stories and investigations we can do if we were actually there.

As far as documenting this as war crimes for courts or legally, you know, it is not our job as journalists, but I do know that Reporters Without Borders, for example, has filed at least four cases in which it is accusing Israel of directly targeting a number of journalists.

I know that the Committee to Protect Journalists is also investigating a number of cases in addition to 12 cases that it classifies as murder, which means that there was deliberate targeting.

JW: You so eloquently described the situation that these reporters are under while trying to work, as well, but can you go into a little bit more detail about what these Palestinian journalists have been going through in Gaza over the last almost two years?

HO: I don't even know where to begin, Jessica, to be honest. I recognize that I'm speaking on their behalf. They're describing what's happening to them so well, there are such incredible storytellers that I am, you know, in touch with that tell me about what's happening in their life every day.

But I mean, you see the images and you see the videos, and you see the news and they're telling us that this is happening, but they're also experiencing it. So food, you know, there's no food. It's been, I don't know how many days that no aid has entered Gaza.

So the day that the cease fire was broken and hundreds of Palestinians were killed, a few hours before, I was speaking to a journalist there, and she's telling me how hard it is because it's Ramadan and they fast, and at the end of the day at sunset, they're supposed to break fast, but there is no food. And how they're all starting to become extremely weak because of the lack of food. And that was before even the strikes began again.

As far as where they're staying, like where are they living? Most of them are living in tents. We did a survey actually of Palestinian journalists to find out about their conditions and the numbers, the statistics were just harrowing. A few weeks ago when the weather was really cold, one of the journalists was texting me, telling me how they don't know what to do to be warm.

They're just constantly, constantly cold. And then she sent me videos of - it had rained - and of the whole tent just completely flooding. And they have to go through this and then figure out a way to rebuild the tent or just rebuild their lives or whatever, and then start over again.

And in the meantime, they're reporting on everything that is going on. So these are just a few examples of just how horrifying life is for them right now.

JW: Lastly, do you have any final thoughts, anything that's giving you hope right now?

HO: The day that Hossam Shabat was killed... I had interviewed Hossam a few weeks ago and we spent over an hour talking.

So it's, it was really hard to, you know, get the news and I felt like we were in the midst of our Gaza Project, we were about to publish, but suddenly for a moment I felt like, OK, what, you know- Because the reality is that nothing comes out of when we publish, like the lack of accountability continues.

It's not like there are investigations by Israel into this after we've published. If anything, you know, the killing of the journalists not just continued, but it seemed like it was happening at a faster pace. So it was like a kind of a moment of despair, and then I texted a journalist in Gaza and I was, you know, trying to write something about Hossam and I was asking for quotes from colleagues, and I told him, I'm like, You know what? Earlier today I was a little bit thinking that it's all for nothing." And he told me, We have to continue reporting. We cannot stop." And it made me like, if this person, a very respected journalist, that I have a lot of respect for, in Gaza, amidst everything that's going on is telling me, We have to continue reporting, we can't stop." Then how can I stop?

JW: Thank you so much for sharing that with us and with the audience. It's definitely a difficult time to be a journalist and in Gaza in particular. It's a very difficult time, so thank you so much for sharing their stories and for your wonderful reporting.

HO: Thank you so much, Jessica. Thank you very much for having me and for giving this attention.

JW: The Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism and The Intercept partnered with a wider consortium of journalists as a part of the Gaza Project, a collaborative effort to address the crisis of attacks on Palestinian journalists.

To see the latest investigation, visit theintercept.com, and for the full series, head to forbiddenstories.org. Thank you for listening. We want to hear from you. What do you want to see more coverage of? Are you taking political action? Are there organizing efforts in your community you want to shout out?

Shoot us an email at podcast@theintercept.com or leave us voicemail at (530)POD-CAST. That's (530)763-2278.

This episode was produced by Laura Flynn. Sumi Aggarwal is our executive producer, Ben Muessig is our editor-in-chief. Chelsey B. Coombs is our social and video producer. Fei Liu is our product and design manager. Nara Shin is our copy editor. Will Stanton mixed our show. Legal Review by David Bralow and Shawn Musgrave. Slipstream provided our theme music.

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Until next time, I'm Jessica Washington.

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