Report-Israel Targeted And Killed 700 Family Members Of Journalists In Gaza Since 2023.
A Report From The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate Revealed That Israel Targeted And Killed 700 Members Of Journalist's Families Since The Start Of The Genocide.
Israel’s targeted murders of journalists in Gaza is well known.
The Committee to Protect Journalists has documented that Israel has targeted and killed 250 journalists in Gaza since the start of the genocide in 2023, and Reporters Without Borders documented that last year alone, 43% of journalists killed worldwide were killed by Israel in Gaza.
What is less well known is the fact that Israel’s targeting and killing of journalists in Gaza has often included targeted killings of their family members as well.
This fact is underscored in a new report released by the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, which notes that, “the targeting of the Palestinian journalistic situation by the Israeli occupation army was not limited to direct killing, injury, arrest or preventing coverage, but developed to take a more dangerous and brutal dimension represented by targeting the families of journalists and their relatives, in a clear attempt to turn journalistic work into an existential burden paid for by children, wives and parents.”
The report added, “Based on the monitoring and documentation of the Freedoms Committee in the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, the targeting of journalists' families has become a systematic and repeated pattern during 2023, 2024 and 2025, killing about 706 families of journalists in the Gaza Strip. All indicators prove that the targeting is not accidental incidents resulting from the conditions of war.”
The report noted, “the last in this field was days ago and about two years after the Israeli aircraft bombed their home west of Khan Yunis, the body of fellow journalist Heba Al-Abadala, her mother and about 15 of the Al-Astal family was recovered.”
According to the report, Israel killed 436 members of journalists’ families in 2023, 203 members of journalists’ families in 2024, and 67 members of journalists’ families this year.
The report noted, “these figures mean that hundreds of children, women, and the elderly have been killed because of a family member’s professional connection to journalism, in flagrant violation of all humanitarian and legal norms.”
It added:
The documented facts show that the targeting took multiple forms, most notably: the bombing of journalists’ homes directly, which led to the martyrdom of a large number of their family members, the killing of the entire family in some cases, turning the journalist into a living witness to his family’s courtyard, targeting displacement places and tents resorted to by the families of journalists after destroying their homes, and repeating the bombing of areas known
“Turning journalism into a danger to private life: The occupation seeks to convey a message that journalistic work is no longer dangerous only to its owner” the report added.
The repot noted that the killing of journalist’s families in Gaza was done to intimidate and silence journalists reporting on the Genocide in Gaza, writing, “The effects of these crimes are not limited to human losses, but extend to deep psychological traumas among journalists who lost their children, wives or parents, the disintegration of families and the loss of a sense of security, the forcing of journalists to flee or temporarily stop working, the journalist with a harsh sense of guilt, within the framework of an organized psychological war, and the Freedoms Committee confirms that this psychological dimension is an integral part of the system of repression”.
In April of 2024, the Israeli magazine 972 reported on Israeli military software called “Where’s Daddy?” which, “used specifically to track the targeted individuals and carry out bombings when they had entered their family’s residences”.
Presumably, the “targeted individuals” also included the many Palestinian journalists on Israel’s kill list, and this genocidal tactic was used to kill their families along with them in targeted strikes.
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You are so full of shit Bay Area ignoramus!!!
This article is straight-up garbage and blatant propaganda.
The so-called “journalists” in Gaza whose families are being counted aren’t neutral reporters—they’re often Hamas militants or operatives doubling as propagandists for Hamas/PIJ media arms. Israeli investigations, including from the Meir Amit Center, show around 60% of those killed while labeled as journalists had direct ties to terror groups like Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad, sometimes even participating in military actions or the October 7 attacks under the guise of press credentials.
The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate (a Hamas-aligned outfit) pushes unverified, inflated claims of “targeted” family killings to frame civilian deaths as deliberate anti-journalism crimes, ignoring the reality of urban warfare where Hamas embeds in civilian areas. This is classic one-sided agitprop designed to demonize Israel while whitewashing militant affiliations.