Israeli forces responsible for third of 54 journalists killed in 2024: Reporters Without Borders

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) says the Israeli military forces have carried out a “massacre” of Palestinian journalists in the Gaza Strip, killing an unprecedented number of media professionals.

An annual report published by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) on Thursday discovered that the Israeli army killed 18 journalists – two in Lebanon and 16 in Gaza – as they were working this year.

The toll, equivalent to around a third of the total worldwide of 54, was described by RSF as “an unprecedented massacre”.

“Palestine is the most dangerous country for journalists, recording a higher death toll than any other country over the past five years,” the organization said in its report, which covers data up to December 1.

In total, “more than 145” journalists have been killed by the Israeli army in Gaza since the start of the war there in October 2023, with 35 of them working at the time of their deaths, the report found.

RSF said it has compelling evidence that dozens of journalists in Gaza and Lebanon were targeted due to their profession, adding that it has submitted four war crime complaints against the Israeli army to the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Israel has also emerged as the world’s third-largest jailer of journalists this year, according to the report.

“Most of these reporters’ identities were easily verifiable, and their status should have offered them protection. Yet, they were killed in deliberate attacks by Israel, ignoring international conventions,” RSF Director-General Thibaut Bruttin commented on the killings.

Bruttin also criticized the ban on foreign media entering Gaza, describing it as a critical blow to press freedom.

“In 2024, Gaza became the most dangerous place for journalists, where even the practice of journalism faces the threat of extinction,” he said.

Another journalist killed by Israeli forces in Gaza

Israeli forces have killed yet another Palestinian journalist in Gaza Strip as the regime pushes on with its onslaught on the territory.

This comes as a local organization says another Palestinian journalist has been killed in an Israeli attack in the Gaza Strip, taking the overall death toll since last year to 193.

The Palestinian Journalists’ Forum identified the new victim as Eman Shanti, a broadcaster for the local Al-Aqsa Voice Radio station, after an Israeli strike on her family’s home in Gaza City.

The forum condemned “international silence and the failure to protect Palestinian journalists to allow them to carry out their professional duties in accordance with international laws and humanitarian conventions.”

Figures from the government media office in the Gaza Strip and RSF vary because they use different methodologies to calculate the tolls. 

RSF only records journalist deaths in its report if they have been “proven to be directly related to their professional activity”.

Journalists working within the Gaza Strip encounter heightened risks while covering the genocidal war, particularly in light of Israeli ground offensives and airstrikes, as well as challenges such as disrupted communications, shortages of supplies, and power outages.

Backed by the United States and its Western allies, Israel launched the war on Gaza on October 7, 2023, after the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas carried out Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against the Israeli regime in response to its decades-long campaign of oppression against Palestinians.

The regime’s bloody onslaught on Gaza has so far killed 44,835 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured 106,356 others. Thousands more are also missing and presumed dead under rubble.

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