How International Press Groups Are Reacting to Israel’s Labeling Six Gaza Journalists as ‘Terrorists’

In the deadliest period for journalists in modern history, at least 131 media workers have been killed in the Gaza Strip since the start of Israel’s retaliation for the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, 2023. In almost all cases, Israel has maintained that the killings journalists were unintentional. But international media groups are alarmed by Israel’s naming six Al Jazeera journalists as terrorists.

The Israeli Defense Force (IDF) this week claimed the six are fighters for Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The IDF says its allegations are based on documents seized in Gaza detailing the names, ID numbers, and ranks of members of the armed wings of the militant groups. TIME could not independently confirm the authenticity and accuracy of the documents. Al Jazeera has rejected the allegations, and described the documents as fabricated.

“The fear is that these six will now possibly be targeted,” says Rebecca Vincent, director of campaigns at Paris-based Reporters Without Borders, known by its French acronym RSF. “We repeat, again, that journalists are not terrorists and the mere publication of these documents doesn’t constitute proof of their affiliation nor does it give Israel the license to kill.” Earlier this year, RSF examined Israel’s targeted killing of two other Al Jazeera correspondents–Ismail al-Ghoul and Rami al-Rifi, killed by a drone strike on their car shortly after reporting live from a location near the family home of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh, who had been assassinated in Iran earlier that day. Israel asserted that al-Ghoul was a “Hamas military wing operative and Nukhba terrorist,” referring to the group’s elite Nukhba Brigade. The RSF investigation noted “numerous inconsistencies” in Israel’s evidence, including the assertion that al-Ghoul received a military rank in 2007, when he would have been 10 years old.

In a war where international journalists have not been allowed to report from the ground, Al Jazeera and international press groups say Israel appears intent on stifling reporting from its latest front.

“What they are trying to do is to conceal what is happening in north Gaza,” says Mohamad Moawad, the managing editor of Al Jazeera’s Arabic channel, noting that the Israeli military’s allegations named all but one of the network’s seven remaining journalists in the north, where Israel’s intensifying offensive has produced scores of deaths. “The aim is to silence Al Jazeera’s coverage from north Gaza … to justify the possible targeting of our colleague Anas Al Sharif and other colleagues in northern Gaza.”

Israel v. Al Jazeera

When the war first broke out after the Oct. 7 attack, which killed 1,200 people inside Israel, many of Al Jazeera’s approximately 50 journalists in Gaza were displaced to the south following Israel’s unprecedented evacuation order of the northern part of the Strip. Only a handful opted to remain, among them the six named by the IDF. “They’ve been very resilient,” Moawad says. “The journalistic community in Palestine feels that they have a commitment to continue the coverage because otherwise they are going to fail their society.”

Read More: A Palestinian Photographer Reflects on One Year of Life and Death in Gaza

Al Jazeera is the most popular news channel in the Arab world, but is regarded with particular scrutiny within Israel over what its critics say is the broadcaster’s willingness to present commentary from Hamas officials with little critical pushback. The channel is headquartered in and funded by Qatar, where Hamas political leaders are allowed to live and operate; the kingdom has historical ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, the movement Hamas grew out of. Qatar is also home to a massive U.S. military air base, and has functioned as the primary mediator in efforts to negotiate a ceasefire in Gaza, and the return of Israeli hostages still held there.

Israel’s government nonetheless regards Al Jazeera as a hostile force, passing a new security law that it used to shutter its operations in the country, a move blasted by press associations both within and outside Israel, who fear the effect on the remaining reporters in Gaza. All are Palestinians, and consequently more vulnerable than the international press that has been barred from covering the war first-hand.

A War Without International Press

“I think it's really important for people to understand how unprecedented that is,” says Jodie Ginsberg, CEO of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). “I have been working as a journalist for more than two decades. I have spoken to many war correspondents in that time, and none of them—having covered some of the most atrocious wars and genocides—can recall having been excluded entirely from a territory so completely and for such a long time.”

Dozens of U.S. lawmakers have renewed calls this week to allow American and other international journalists unimpeded access to Gaza. Those calls have largely gone unheeded by the Biden administration. The State Department did not respond to a request for comment.

The Israeli military has long decried claims that it threatens journalists in Gaza, a spokesperson telling TIME last year that “the IDF has never, and will never, deliberately target journalists.” Still, numerous independent investigations concluded that an Israeli soldier deliberately killed Al Jazeera correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh as she reported in the West Bank in 2022. In Gaza, Samer Abudaqa, a longtime cameraman for the network, was killed by an Israeli airstrike on a school in Khan Younis in December. The next month, Hamza al-Dahdouh, an Al Jazeera journalist and cameraman, was killed while driving between Khan Younis and Rafah with two other journalists when their car was hit by an Israeli airstrike. Al-Ghoul and al-Rifi were killed in July. At least two other Al Jazeera journalists, Fadi Al Wahidi and Ali Al-Attar, have suffered life-threatening injuries; the network says Israeli authorities have denied permission for them to evacuate the Strip to receive needed medical care.

CPJ, which monitors attacks on journalists around the world, has documented what it describes as a well-established pattern of Israel accusing journalists of being terrorists without providing any credible evidence to substantiate its claims. (Israel also has applied the label to Palestinian human rights organizations, six of which it designated “terrorist” in 2021, to international outcry). CPJ chief Ginsberg noted the timing of the IDF’s accusation of the six Al Jazeera journalists in Gaza's north. “We don’t have access to the physical documents—we are entirely reliant on what the IDF says it’s found—but it seems to me rather convenient that it suddenly found these documents just as it’s embarking on what [the Israeli human rights organization] B'Tselem calls ‘the ethnic cleansing of northern Gaza,’ and these are the very few journalists still left to report it,” she says.

“That’s a tactic that we see governments, particularly authoritarian governments, use all the time,” Ginsberg adds. “If you accuse a journalist of being a criminal or a terrorist, you cast doubt on the information they’re providing, and that’s a deliberate tactic to make readers and listeners and viewers question the validity of what that person is saying or showing. I think that’s what we’re seeing here … a form of gaslighting.”

Read More: Palestinian Journalists Offer a Rare Glimpse Into Life in Gaza. But for How Long?

“It’s all created this perfect storm of censorship,” says Vincent, from RSF. “I have to believe that that’s deliberate. We condemn it. And it’s not just in Gaza, either.” On Friday, three Lebanese journalists were killed in an Israeli airstrike.