AMEJA Urges Scrutiny of IDF Claims Used to Justify Targeting Journalists
The Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists Association (AMEJA) condemns Israel's killing of journalists in Gaza, Lebanon and across the region, and calls on news organizations not to repeat the claims in the Israel Defense Forces' (IDF) newly released "Press Files" without independent verification.
The IDF claims that 170 Palestinians killed during the war and identified as journalists or media workers were members of armed groups. The IDF says that 118 were members of Hamas’s military wing and 49 to Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The internal investigation presents itself as proof that accusations that Israel deliberately targets journalists are false. That conclusion should not be reproduced as fact.
The IDF declares that “the evidence is finally out,” but that evidence is already disputed by independent press-freedom researchers. It also conflicts with the Committee to Protect Journalists’(CPJ) own case-by-case research, which has repeatedly found Israeli allegations against slain journalists unsupported by sufficient or reliable evidence.
The IDF’s public database itself relies on varying evidentiary standards: some are undisclosed documents the military says it recovered, and others simply cite unknown “multiple intelligence sources.” Journalism standards from leading organizations, such as NPR, SPJ, Reuters and the Associated Press, all require independent verification rather than reliance on a single source, official or otherwise. None of these standards exempt governments or military sources, including the Israeli Defense Forces from that scrutiny.
AMEJA rejects the premise of this campaign: that a posthumous allegation of “affiliation” can retroactively erase a journalist’s civilian status and thereby answer questions about the circumstances of their killing. It cannot.
International humanitarian law protects journalists as civilians unless—and only for such time as—they directly participate in hostilities. Reporting, photographing, filming, holding political views, working for a partisan outlet or a loose affiliation does not make anyone a lawful target. Where credible evidence establishes that an individual was actually engaged in combat or performed a continuous combat function, that evidence should be independently examined and reported. But past political ties, an unverified name on a list, employment from a Hamas-linked institution, past involvement in hostilities, or a military’s undisclosed intelligence assertion cannot be collapsed into the word “terrorist.” Blurring this distinction gives governments permission to kill journalists wherever governments can attach an accusation to them.
Israel has previously attempted to justify attacks on journalists after killing them, making independent verification of any claims it makes particularly urgent. In March, after an Israeli strike deliberately hit a clearly identified media vehicle in Lebanon and killed journalists Ali Shoaib, Fatima Ftouni and freelance photojournalist Mohamad Ftouni, the IDF published an image purporting to show Shoaib in military fatigues as evidence of Hezbollah membership. An Israeli military spokesperson acknowledged “it was photoshopped,” and provided no further corroborating evidence. In Gaza, Israel initially said a camera associated with Hamas surveillance helped justify the August 2025 double-tap attack on Nasser Hospital. That attack killed 22 people, including Reuters cameraman Hussam al-Masri, AP visual journalist Mariam Dagga and three other journalists. Reuters and AP investigations subsequently established that the camera was Reuters equipment used by al-Masri for his reporting. AP and Reuters demanded answers and accountability. Israel still had not provided them.
Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah. Anas al-Sharif. Ismail al-Ghoul. Hossam Shabat. Shireen Abu Akleh. The list is too long to name. The record is overwhelming. The Committee to Protect Journalists which has tracked journalist killings worldwide since 1992. It has found that the Israeli military has committed more targeted killings of journalists than any other government's military on record, and that Israel has killed more journalists than any other government in CPJ's history. In 2025 alone, Israel was responsible for two-thirds of all journalist and media-worker deaths worldwide.
AMEJA encourages everyone to see this report in that context, in the company of other efforts by the Israeli military to rebut mounting evidence about its targeted killings of the press and to escape responsibility for an unprecedented death toll.
AMEJA calls for an end to Israel’s attempts to put our slain colleagues on trial, and calls for the international community to demand answers for why each of these journalists were selected as targets, releasing the evidence that informed those decisions for independent scrutiny, investigating unlawful attacks, prosecuting violations where warranted, changing the practices that permitted journalists to be killed, and allowing independent international journalists unfettered access to Gaza. We call on news organizations not to repeat the IDF’s classifications without independent verification or allow posthumous accusations to substitute for investigations into killings. And we call on Israel to end the targeting of journalists now.
Every time a government strips a journalist of protection with an accusation, made before or after killing them, it puts journalists everywhere in danger.