An Israeli strike killing five Palestinian journalists in Gaza on Monday marked one of the deadliest events for media officials working in the war, adding to the toll of nearly 200 reporters killed in nearly two years of fighting.
Two Israeli strikes on the Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, a southern city in the Gaza Strip, killed at least 20 people, including health care workers and journalists; some were killed when responding to the scene of the first strike in what appeared to be a “double tap” attack.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the hospital attack a “tragic mishap” and the Israeli military launched an investigation, claiming Hamas militants were killed in the strike. But critics and press freedom advocates accuse Israel of failing to provide accountability, at best, and in some cases intentionally targeting journalists.
The reporters killed Monday were Mohammed Salama, who worked for Qatar-based broadcaster Al Jazeera; Mariam Abu Dagga, a contributor for The Associated Press; Hussam Al Masri, a contractor for Reuters; Moaz Abu Taha, a freelance journalist who contributed to Reuters and NBC; and Ahmed Abu Aziz, a correspondent for the U.K.-based Middle East Eye.
“When does the supposed bug in the system become its feature?” asked Dion Nissenbaum, executive producer and lead investigator on the documentary “Who killed Shireen?” which investigated the killing of American-Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in May 2022 in the West Bank.
“There’s so many incidents where there are direct assaults and nothing changes in how Israel is fighting a war.”
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has documented 189 Palestinian journalists killed by Israeli forces in Gaza over the course of the war. The CPJ said in total 197 journalists and media workers were killed over the course of the war, including Israeli journalists killed by Hamas when the U.S.-designated terrorist group launched its attack against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Even at this scale, the Nasser Hospital strike was particularly shocking for press freedom advocates and audiences who watched in real time as rescue workers and journalists, responding to an initial strike on the hospital, were bombarded a second time.
Clayton Weimers, executive director of Reporters Without Borders (RSF) USA, said it was notable that Netanyahu came out calling the strike a “mishap,” but he criticized the remarks as being “as disingenuous as you can get.”
“I don’t know how you can call it a mishap when you have one strike on a hospital, and then aid workers and journalists go in to survey the situation and help people, and then eight minutes later, another strike directly where all of those aid workers and journalists are, that looks like a targeted attack to me,” he said.
In an initial investigation, the Israeli military said its troops identified a camera that they say was positioned by Hamas, observing Israeli troop activity and posed a threat. The Israeli military said it killed six “terrorists” in the strike, four members of Hamas, a member of Islamic jihad and one person it said participated in the Oct. 7 attacks.
Israeli military chief of staff Eyal Zamir on Tuesday instructed further investigation into “several gaps,” looking into the authorization process prior to the strike, including the ammunition approved for the strike and timing of the authorization. Zamir also called for an examination of the decisionmaking process in the field.
The Foreign Press Association in Israel, initially responding to the attack, said it was “outraged and in shock” and demanded an explanation from the Israeli military and accused Israel of targeting journalists.
“This has gone on far too long. Too many journalists in Gaza have been killed by Israel without justification. Israel continues to block international journalists from independent access to Gaza,” the organization said in a statement.
The Israeli government has barred international journalists from entering Gaza to freely report on the war, citing safety concerns, and only permits foreign and Israeli journalists to enter Gaza alongside the Israeli military. That has left Palestinian journalists in Gaza — enduring bombardment, hunger and displacement, along with the rest of the population — as the primary sources for relaying information on the ground.
Israeli spokesperson Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin said the military does not intentionally target civilians and put the blame on Hamas for deliberately using civilian infrastructure, including hospitals, as shields.
“Hamas began this war, created impossible fighting conditions — and is preventing its end by still holding 50 hostages,” Defrin said in a video statement.
President Trump’s position on the war has swung wildly, from raising concern over starvation in Gaza to putting his support behind an expanded Israeli military operation. On Monday, he said he was “not happy” about the hospital strike and that the war could be concluded in two to three weeks.
“At some point it’s going to get settled. I’m saying you better get it settled soon,” Trump said from the Oval Office.
There’s a stark partisan divide in Congress over Israel’s actions, with some Democrats speaking out against Israel’s war conduct and Republicans almost uniformly supportive of Israel’s actions and explanations.
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said she was “appalled” by the hospital bombing and journalists’ death and called for the end to the war. Shaheen spoke with journalists in a phone briefing from Beirut, Lebanon, on Monday, following a bipartisan trip to Syria.
Joining her was Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.), a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who pointed to Israel’s claims that Hamas embeds itself in hospitals and uses civilians as human shields.
“It’s heartbreaking, as we’ve seen the Palestinian population of Gaza used as human shields,” he said.
U.S. pressure, or lack of it, has an impact on how Israel responds to devastating civilian deaths and those of journalists, said Nissenbaum, who formerly served as Middle East correspondent for The Wall Street Journal.
His documentary cited an anonymous U.S. official concluding that Abu Akleh was intentionally shot by an Israeli soldier, despite public statements from the former Biden administration supporting Israel’s conclusion that the shooting was unintentional.
“We, in our documentary, try and make the point that America’s refusal to hold Israel to account for killing an American journalist, the first American journalist ever to be killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank or Gaza, gave Israel a real sense of impunity,” Nissenbaum said.
“Because if the United States wasn’t going to stand up and push for meaningful change in response to the killing of an American journalist, they certainly weren’t going to stand up in defense of Palestinian journalists. And so that failure to hold Israel to account, we think, paved the way for what we see in Gaza.”
Weimers, of RSF, said the fact that Palestinian journalists in the Nasser Hospital strike were working for international outlets has increased attention on the issue of press safety, calling for more pressure from foreign governments, in particular the U.S., as the only bodies that can exercise leverage for change.
Israeli officials are likely to hear an earful this week from Sens. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), who arrived in the region on Sunday to press for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and the return of hostages held by Hamas.
“We are demanding answers,” Van Hollen and Merkley said in a statement to The Hill on Tuesday.
“The conflict in Gaza has resulted in the unprecedented loss of life of journalists. The Netanyahu government’s pattern of disregard for the safety of journalists — and civilians at large — is unacceptable.”
Another high-profile case without conclusion is the killing of Reuters photojournalist Issam Abdallah, who died in October 2023 in southern Lebanon by Israeli tank shelling, a Reuters investigation found. The incident also wounded six other reporters who were working with Agence France-Presse and Al Jazeera. The Israeli military said in a statement to The Hill that “the event is still being examined.”
Weimers described Israel as having a long track record of acting with impunity when killing journalists in both Gaza and the West Bank, “and that’s a pattern of behavior that simply needs to change.”
“It’s so consistent that you have to call it policy at this point. It’s not a failure of policy. It is the policy that Israel targets journalists,” he said.
