At least five journalists were killed in Israeli strikes on Nasser Hospital in the southern Gaza Strip on Monday. The attack involved consecutive strikes in quick succession, which is often referred to as a double-tap strike—in which first responders, including medical workers and journalists, are targeted shortly after the initial strike. Double-tap strikes are widely considered a war crime and viewed as deliberate.
The journalists killed in the hospital attack included Mariam Abu Dagga, Mohammed Salama, Ahmad Abu Aziz, Hussam Al-Masri, and Moaz Abu Taha. They worked or freelanced for outlets including The Associated Press, Reuters, and Al Jazeera, among others.
Israel has offered inconsistent explanations for Monday’s strike, which reportedly killed at least 22 people, including calling it a “tragic mishap” and saying that it targeted a camera used by Hamas to surveil Israeli forces. Israel did not provide any evidence to support that claim, but media outlets were known to regularly film and operate cameras at the location that was hit.
This is a familiar story when it comes to the war in Gaza, which has been the deadliest conflict for reporters in modern history.
To get a better picture of why this war has been so lethal for reporters and what can be done moving forward, Foreign Policy spoke with Jodie Ginsberg, the CEO of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), which has closely monitored the situation for journalists in Gaza and tracked the death toll. At least 197 journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel, according to CPJ, though other tallies place the number killed even higher.
Ginsberg said there are two reasons why the war in Gaza has been so deadly for reporters: “The scale of the war itself, coupled with the direct targeting of journalists as journalists.”
“Human rights groups deem this to be a genocide,” Ginsberg said of the Israeli campaign in Gaza. “We have now had more than 63,000 Gazans killed, and journalists are civilians.” She added that CPJ is “investigating at least 26 cases where we believe Israel has deliberately targeted journalists as journalists, and that, in itself, is an unprecedented figure.”
Reuters and the AP wrote an urgent letter to Israeli officials over the deadly attack on Nasser Hospital.
“The IDF [Israel Defense Forces] has a duty under international law to protect journalists and civilians and to take all feasible precautions to prevent harm. Striking a hospital, followed by a second strike while journalists and rescuers were responding, raises urgent questions about whether these obligations were upheld,” the letter read.
The letter emphasized that the journalists killed were present at the hospital in “their professional capacity, doing critical work bearing witness,” adding that their “work is especially vital in light of Israel’s nearly two-year ban on foreign journalists entering Gaza.”
Israel has said it’s investigating the attack, which hit the last remaining partially functioning hospital in southern Gaza. The AP and Reuters in their letter demanded “urgent and transparent accountability” for the killings, expressing hope that Israel’s probe will be “quick, thorough and provide clear answers.”
But there are few reasons to believe that anyone will be held accountable based on the history of Israel’s handling of journalist killings—as much of the international community continues to express concern over Israel committing acts deemed to be illegal under international law with impunity in Gaza and the occupied West Bank more generally.
Along these lines, the AP and Reuters in their letter said they “found the IDF’s willingness and ability to investigate itself in past incidents to rarely result in clarity and action, raising serious questions including whether Israel is deliberately targeting live feeds in order to suppress information.”
Similarly, Ginsberg said she’s “not confident” that those responsible for the deaths of journalists in Gaza will be held accountable, pointing to a 2023 CPJ report that looked at every single case of journalist killings by the Israeli military during the more than 20 years prior. “Not in a single case has anyone ever been held accountable. The investigations are not transparent, they are not independent, and they have not resulted in accountability,” she said.
It has been only a few weeks since a separate high-profile instance of an Israeli strike killing journalists in Gaza. On Aug. 10, Israel killed multiple journalists—including Anas al-Sharif, a 28-year-old Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent for Al Jazeera—with a strike on a press tent in Gaza City. Israel claimed that Sharif was the head of a Hamas terrorist cell, though it has provided little evidence to back this up.
A few weeks before he was killed, CPJ called for the international community to protect Sharif as he expressed concerns that Israel was falsely smearing him as a terrorist as a precursor to his assassination.
“All of this is happening because my coverage of the crimes of the Israeli occupation in the Gaza Strip harms them and damages their image in the world. They accuse me of being a terrorist because the occupation wants to assassinate me morally,” Sharif told CPJ in late July.
What happened to Sharif is part of a broader trend. When Israeli forces kill journalists in Gaza, the official response typically fluctuates between leveling unverified allegations of terrorism and chalking it up as unfortunate collateral damage. But rights groups and monitors warn that Israel is intentionally targeting journalists in Gaza—a charge the Israeli government denies—and doing so without repercussions in a manner that sets a dangerous precedent for the entire world.
“If there are no consequences and no adherence to international humanitarian law and the rules don’t apply, why should they apply anywhere else? The repercussions from this, not just in the region but globally, will play out for generations to come,” Ginsberg said.
Meanwhile, Israel continues to impose a near-total ban on foreign journalists entering Gaza to report on the ground. This means that the responsibility of firsthand reporting on this war overwhelmingly falls on Palestinian journalists in the territory, who are living through the same hellish conditions as their fellow Gazans—including constant bombings, the deaths of loved ones, starvation, and continuous displacement.
“It’s almost impossible to put into words the strain of living through a war whilst also documenting it,” Ginsberg said. “The toll that takes on individuals is enormous. It’s remarkable to me that the journalists in Gaza have been able to continue to report in the way that they have because they are reporting not just on the deaths of loved ones but they are with increasing frequency having to report on the deaths of colleagues.”
On top of all of the risks journalists in Gaza face, Israel routinely takes steps to portray their reporting as unreliable—including by questioning their affiliations. Critics say this is one of many tactics that Israel employs to control the narrative surrounding the war.
Israel’s approach to the war has involved a “deliberate strategy to control the narrative and to censor information,” Ginsberg said, including “by targeting journalists, media facilities, banning news outlets, preventing journalists from getting into Gaza from outside of Gaza, controlling what the Israeli media can say, and punishing those who don’t toe the line, like Haaretz.” The Israeli government sanctioned Haaretz, the country’s oldest daily newspaper, late last year over the outlet’s critical coverage of the war in Gaza.
The Israeli government’s claims that Palestinian journalists can’t be trusted are “rather convenient,” Ginsberg said, particularly as foreign reporters continue to be blocked from entering Gaza—making it extremely difficult to verify information. “We never make the same claims about American journalists covering American politics or British journalists covering British politics, but somehow we can’t trust Gazan journalists to report on what’s happening to them in their own homes,” she added.
Israel has justified the near-blanket ban on foreign reporters entering Gaza by citing safety concerns. But journalists routinely report from conflict zones around the world. Though censorship and restrictions are not uncommon, the extent to which Israel has barred reporters from entering Gaza is highly unusual.
As things stand, Ginsberg said she’s not seeing the types of substantive changes in stances and actions from the international community, particularly Western countries, necessary to alter Israel’s approach. This includes taking bolder actions regarding trade and the provision of weapons. “It’s very easy to say you support the rights of Palestinians, but you’re not doing much to support those rights if you are continuing to supply the weapons that are being used to eliminate them,” she said.
Ginsberg also has a clear message for Western media covering the war in Gaza if they want to support their Palestinian colleagues on the ground: “Do your fucking job.”
“Report what’s happening. What we are seeing all too often is reporting what people are saying about what’s happening,” Ginsberg said. “Those in positions of power will always be trying to push their side of the story, whether it be Hamas or whether it be Israel.”
“Ask the questions. And don’t just simply then parrot the answers,” she said.
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