When Gaza’s ‘dead journalists’ turn out to be terrorists, the media go quiet

The purpose was clear: to inspire others, to humiliate Israel, to rally supporters across the region, and to show that Israeli families could be slaughtered in their homes while the world watched.

From the earliest moments of that attack, so-called journalists were also present. Some were not innocent observers who happened upon a story. Some had access, equipment, guidance, and proximity that points at their true meaning in that space. Their role was to give terrorism the appearance of news, to dress the atrocity in the language of battlefield reporting.

Since then, the press vest has become one of the most powerful symbols of the war in Gaza. But in the hands of Hamas, it has also become a tool.

This should surprise no one. Hamas has long embedded itself inside civilian life. It has used schools, mosques, hospitals, ambulances, humanitarian facilities, and residential areas as cover for its military operations. Why should anyone believe that media infrastructure would be immune from the same exploitation?

Israel’s enemies are not crude or unsophisticated. They understand the Western media environment exceptionally well. They know how images travel. They know what editors will publish, what activists will amplify, and what audiences in London, New York, Paris, and Washington are prepared to believe.

They know that many people will struggle to accept that a hospital can also be a command centre, that a school can hide weapons, or that a man wearing a press vest can also be a member of a terrorist organisation.

That disbelief is precisely what makes the disguise so useful.

Throughout the war, international organisations repeatedly published alarming figures about the number of journalists killed. The Committee to Protect Journalists listed 229. The International Federation of Journalists put the number at 226. Reporters Without Borders gave an even higher figure, reportedly reaching 270.

These numbers were repeated across the world. They appeared in headlines, speeches, parliamentary debates, NGO statements, and social media campaigns. They shaped public opinion and contributed to the accusation that Israel was deliberately targeting journalists.

But serious questions were raised from the beginning.

In Gaza, independent journalism under Hamas rule is almost impossible. A reporter working there does not operate in a free press environment. He operates under a terrorist dictatorship. As former Associated Press reporter Matti Friedman has observed, in such a system a journalist is either aligned with Hamas, sympathetic to Hamas, afraid of Hamas, or silent. There is little space for anything else.

For months, Israel and others presented evidence that some of the names included in journalist casualty lists were not independent reporters at all. Some were affiliated with Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Some were members of terrorist organisations. Some were part of propaganda networks. Some were described as journalists in the West while being mourned as fighters by the organisations to which they belonged.

Much of this was dismissed.

Now, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad obituaries are beginning to reveal what Israel had warned all along. Some of those presented to the world as journalists were, in fact, terrorists or members of terrorist-linked propaganda apparatuses.

The Committee to Protect Journalists has reportedly begun removing names from its records. The number is still limited, but the significance is not. If even some of the names used to accuse Israel of killing journalists were actually combatants or terrorist operatives, then the public record has been badly distorted.

This should be a major media story. It is not.

When the claim was that Israel had killed journalists, the coverage was extensive. Major outlets devoted repeated attention to the subject. The deaths were presented as evidence of Israeli misconduct, as proof of a uniquely dangerous environment for the press, and often as part of a broader accusation against Israel’s conduct in Gaza.

But now, as the evidence changes, where are the corrections? Where are the follow-up investigations? Where are the front-page stories explaining that some individuals described as journalists may have been terrorists? Where are the editors asking how these figures were gathered, verified, published, and repeated?

The silence is revealing. A dead journalist was a headline. A dead terrorist misidentified as a journalist is treated as an inconvenience. This is not journalism.

No democracy should be above scrutiny in war. Israel is no exception. But scrutiny must be based on fact, not propaganda laundered through NGOs and repeated by newsrooms unwilling to ask basic questions. The press has every right to investigate Israel’s conduct. It also has a duty to investigate how Hamas manipulates the press.

For too long, parts of the international media treated the press vest as proof of innocence. In Gaza, under Hamas rule, that assumption was always dangerous. It allowed terrorist organisations to exploit the moral authority of journalism while waging war from behind its symbols.

The public was told a story about dead journalists. It now deserves the full story about who some of them really were.

Alex Gandler is the spokesperson of the Embassy of Israel in the United Kingdom