Israel's killing of journalists follows a pattern of silencing Palestinian media that stretches back to 1967

Five journalists were among the 22 people killed on Aug. 25, 2025, in Israeli strikes on the Nasser Hospital in the Gaza Strip.

- MAHA NASSAR

Following global condemnation, the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a statement saying Israel “values the work of journalists.” But the numbers tell a different story.

Those deaths bring the total number of journalists killed in Gaza in almost two years of war to 197. The Committee to Protect Journalists, which collates that data, accuses Israel of “engaging in the deadliest and most deliberate effort to kill and silence journalists” that the US-based nonprofit has ever seen. “Palestinian journalists are being threatened, directly targeted and murdered by Israeli forces, and are arbitrarily detained and tortured in retaliation for their work,” the committee added.

As a scholar of modern Palestinian history, I see the current killing of reporters, photographers, and other media professionals in Gaza as part of a longer history of Israeli attempts to silence Palestinian journalists. This history stretches back to at least 1967, when Israel militarily occupied the Palestinian territories of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip following the Six-Day War.

Beyond the humanitarian toll, what makes matters even more drastic now is that, with Israeli restrictions on foreign media entering Gaza, local Palestinian journalists are the only people who can bear witness to the death and destruction taking place — and report it to a wider world. Indeed, nearly all of the nearly 200 journalists killed since Oct. 7, 2023, have been Palestinian.

A DECADES-LONG PROCESS IN THE MAKING

From the first days of the occupation in 1967, Israel has tried to keep a tight grip on media reporting, building a legal and military architecture that aimed to control and censor Palestinian journalism.

In August 1967, the army issued Military Order 101, effectively criminalizing “political” assembly and “propagandistic” publications in the occupied territories.