‘Israel’s killing of journalists follows pattern of silencing media that stretches back to 1967’
Tucson (US): Five journalists were among the 22 people killed on August 25, 2025, in Israeli strikes on the Nasser Hospital in the Gaza Strip.
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 192. 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.
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 criminalising “political” assembly and “propagandistic” publications in the occupied territories.
Yet despite such restrictions, local journalism persisted and grew. By the early 1980s, Palestinians in the occupied territories were publishing three dailies, five weeklies and four magazines. The most popular publications circulated up to 15,000 copies.
But all Palestinian publications were subject to Israeli military censorship. Every night, editors were forced to submit two copies of everything they planned to print to Israeli censors. That included articles, photos, ads, weather reports and even crossword puzzles.
Anything the Israeli censor deemed to be “of political significance” had to be removed prior to publication. Editors who violated these terms, or who were accused of belonging to Palestinian political groups, could be detained or deported. These practices have echoes today with Israel often accusing the journalists it kills of being Hamas operatives.
Censorship regimes
Objecting to these and many other restrictions, Palestinians launched the first intifada, or uprising, against the Israeli occupation in December 1987. During the uprising’s first year, Israeli forces reportedly jailed 47 Palestinian reporters, temporarily banned eight local and regional newspapers, permanently revoked the licenses of two magazines and closed four press service offices.
