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It’s worse than we thought. In research that I have undertaken over the last few weeks based on information compiled by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) about Palestinian journalists killed by Israel since October 2023, I’ve discovered that, of the 68 Palestinian journalists killed by Israel in the first three months of their genocidal campaign, the majority were targeted and killed while at home with their families. My research provides startling confirmation, never unearthed before, of the widespread use of Israel’s AI program, dubbed “Where’s Daddy?”, specifically for journalists, relentlessly targeting them when they were at home, with a complete disregard both for their required protection as civilians under international humanitarian law, and for the often extensive “collateral damage” inflicted on their families.

There is no doubt that Israel’s sustained genocidal assault on the largely civilian population of the Gaza Strip, now in its fourth year, has been the deadliest military conflict for journalists in human history.

As the journalist Nick Turse reported for Brown University’s “Costs of War” project in April 2025, “The war in Gaza has, since October 7, 2023, killed more journalists than the US Civil War, World Wars I and II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War (including the conflicts in Cambodia and Laos), the wars in Yugoslavia in the 1990s and 2000s, and the post-9/11 war in Afghanistan, combined.”

Under international humanitarian law, as most noticeably enshrined in the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their Additional Protocols of 1977, “Civilian journalists engaged in professional missions in areas of armed conflict must be respected and protected as long as they are not taking a direct part in hostilities.” (emphasis added).

The State of Israel, however, has nothing but contempt for international humanitarian law. As far as they are concerned, everyone who works for a media outlet that is, in any way, aligned with the military wing of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, or any other militant faction in Gaza, is a terrorist, and can be targeted and killed, and anyone who works as a journalist but has previously had any suspected involvement with any of these military factions in any kind of capacity can also be targeted and killed.

Israel doesn’t recognize that, by the same application of its lawless logic, almost every journalist in Israel could be regarded similarly by the Palestinians, because military service is mandatory in Israel. Most crucially, however, it fails to recognize that, if an individual has, in the past, been a part of a Palestinian military faction in any way, that doesn’t apply endlessly as a justification for their targeted killing. If they don a press vest and begin reporting, international humanitarian law makes it clear, as noted above, that they cannot be regarded as a legitimate military target unless they are specifically “taking a direct part in hostilities.”

In a cynical, devious and sustained effort to erase these distinctions, Israel has targeted and killed journalists for what it regards as “suspicious activity” — using drones to secure footage or photos, for example, or using vantage points on buildings, both for the overview they provide, but also, often, to secure transmission signals in an environment in which internet and mobile phone signals are often notoriously unreliable.

It has also, increasingly, resorted to black propaganda, alleging, almost entirely without providing evidence, that the journalists it has killed were not journalists at all, but were military operatives masquerading as journalists, and it has sometimes targeted these journalists directly, texting or calling them to tell them to stop their work or threatening them that, if they don’t stop, they or their families will be targeted and killed.

One reason why Israel feels empowered to so comprehensively erase the distinctions between combatants and civilians is because, since the 1990s, western governments (including the US in 1997, the EU in 2003, and the UK in 2021) have obligingly designed the whole of Hamas as a terrorist organization — not just its military wing, but also the whole of the civilian administrative government in Gaza.

Since October 7, 2023, this has allowed to Israel to claim that, for example, doctors and medical staff can — if a devious enough excuse can be invented — be regarded as terrorists because they work for the Ministry of Health. This is a western-approved betrayal of the absolute prohibition on targeting doctors or hospitals, which Israel has thoroughly embraced, making risible and never-proven claims that the hospitals were Hamas control and command centres, and that the doctors, like the journalists, were not actually doctors at all, but were military operatives pretending to be doctors.

Israel’s “war” on journalists

For the west, Israel’s “war” on journalists largely flew under the radar in the early months of the genocide, because those killed were mostly broadcasting in Arabic. However, it began to gain international attention on December 15, 2023, when Wael Al-Dahdouh, the avuncular man-mountain who was Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief, was wounded in a missile strike in Khan Younis in which his cameraman, Samer Abu Daqqa, was killed, as they were reporting on an overnight strike on a former UN school sheltering displaced people.

15 members of Al-Wahdouh’s extended family of 45 — including his wife, Amna, his 15-year-old son Mahmoud, his seven year-old daughter Sham, and his 18 month-old grandson Adam — had already been killed on October 25, after they had obeyed an evacuation order and had moved to a relative’s home in the Nuseirat refugee camp on October 13, where they were subsequently targeted. There was more heartbreak to come. Three weeks after Wael Al-Dahdouh was wounded, on January 7, 2024, his eldest son, Hamza, also working for Al Jazeera, was targeted and murdered, with Mustafa Thuraya, a freelance video journalist, in an Israeli drone strike as they were returning from an assignment.

Journalist casualties continued to mount throughout 2024, although, as in the first three months of the genocide, most were working for Arabic-speaking broadcasters, and western concerns only spiked when those broadcasting in English, or who had developed a following on social media appealing to both Arabic- and English-speaking audiences, were killed — Al Jazeera journalists Ismail Al-Ghoul and his cameraman, Rami Al-Rifi, on July 31, 2024, and Ahmed Al-Louh on December 15. In addition, on October 8 and 9, two other Al Jazeera cameraman, Ali Al-Attar and Fadi Al-Wahidi, were severely wounded, with Al-Wahidi ending up paralyzed after he was shot in the neck by a sniper.

2025 was, however, the year that Israel threw all caution to the winds, as, in March, it deliberately broke a six-week ceasefire to resume military action in a savagely depraved manner. On March 24, the luminous Hossam Shabat, just 23 years old, was targeted and murdered, and, on August 11, the most tenacious reporter of all, Anas al-Sharif, was targeted and murdered with six others, including three of his Al Jazeera colleagues, in a deliberate attack on a clearly-marked and well-known media tent outside the main gate of Gaza City’s Al-Shifa Hospital.

Israel had been pursuing these journalists with threats and lies since its genocidal assault on Gaza began. In November 2023, as CPJ described it, Al-Sharif “received multiple calls from Israeli army officers instructing him to cease coverage and leave northern Gaza, as well as voice notes disclosing his location”, and on December 11, 2023, an Israeli airstrike hit his family home, killing his 90 year-old father. On October 23, 2024, at the height of Israel’s savage “genocide within a genocide” in northern Gaza, which the world only knew about because of the journalists’ incredible bravery, he, Hossam Shabat and four other Al Jazeera journalists were smeared as “Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists” in a farcical post on X by the IDF. As the threats to Al-Sharif from November 2023 show, however, Israeli forces always knew where the journalists were, and waited to kill them until, presumably, they thought it would have the maximum impact.

In another atrocity, on August 25, 2025, just two weeks after the killing of Anas Al-Sharif and his colleagues, five more journalists — including Al Jazeera’s Mohammad Salama, Reuters cameraman Hussam al-Masri, and Mariam Abu Daqqa, a freelance journalist working for the Associated Press at the time — were killed by Israel in a “double-tap” attack on Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, in which at least 21 people in total were killed. Israel’s risible excuses for the attack were thoroughly dismantled in a searing Reuters report published a month later.

This was a low point for Israel, from which, I believe it will never recover, because some of these journalists — Hossam Shabat and Anas Al-Sharif in particular — were so beloved internationally that their memories are impervious to Israel’s depraved and risible black propaganda, which has sought — and still seeks — to portray them as military operatives who were only masquerading as journalists.

In the cases of Hossam Shabat and Anas Al-Sharif, who indefatigably covered every atrocity in Gaza that they could find, and who never stopped reporting, even during the “genocide within a genocide” in northern Gaza, from October 2024 to January 2025, when Israel ordered everyone to evacuate, and declared that everyone who remained could be summarily executed as “enemy combatants”, they refused to comply, and clearly had no time whatsoever to be engaged in any kind of military activity, as they risked their lives on a daily basis in the most tireless acts of frontline journalism imaginable.

Israel’s desperate and risible attempts to reclaim the narrative

Undeterred, however, Israel capitalized on posts made by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, in May and June this year, “announcing the deaths of its fighters during the war”, as the Times of Israel explained on June 22, to launch a renewed media onslaught on the Palestinian journalists it had murdered. Obligingly, the Israeli newspaper declared that it had undertaken a review “of many of the hundreds of names of operatives published on official Hamas and PIJ military-wing Telegram channels and affiliated accounts”, and had “found several people who had previously been identified as journalists, or other civilians.”

The disclosures prompted a huge backlash, mainly aimed at the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), which, since 1981, has been assiduously monitoring journalists who are killed or imprisoned while doing their jobs, or while seeking to uphold press freedom.

In the wake of the furore, the CPJ conducted a thorough review of its list of Palestinian journalists killed since October 7, 2023, removing 19 individuals who it judged to have been “engaged in combat” rather than working as journalists.

Nevertheless, CPJ still listed 189 journalists as having been killed by Israel in Gaza since October 2023, a number that still dwarfs the numbers of those killed in any other conflict in human history, and declared, on September 24, “Israel has now killed more journalists and media workers than any other government since CPJ began collecting data in 1992. More press members have died in the combined Israel-Gaza and related regional conflicts than in any other war that CPJ has documented.”

As if in retaliation, on October 1 the IDF released “The Press Files”, an alleged database of 170 Individuals who, it claimed, while “presented as innocent journalists were, in fact, militants in the military wings of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and other terrorist organizations”, adding, “They presented themselves as legitimate media professionals while serving terrorist organizations that regularly use propaganda and psychological warfare.”

The list is, of course, derisory, as the Palestinian political analyst Muhammad Shehada ably verified in an article for Israel’s +972 Magazine, entitled, “Debunking Israel’s latest list of ‘terrorist’ journalists in Gaza.”

In it, he noted how the pages for 59 of the 170 individuals named were ”devoid of any evidence or documentation whatsoever”, with, in general, only unverifiable claims presented that the IDF’s evidence was “based on multiple intelligence sources.” Elsewhere, he identified “clearly edited documents”, and “unverifiable snippets” of information that were either devious or inadequate when claiming to be evidence.

He also noted how Anas Al-Sharif and Ismail Al-Ghoul were still included, despite the claims against them being so thoroughly discredited, and it should also be noted that Hossam Shabat and Ahmed Al-Louh also feature in the IDF’s flimsy catalog of feeble Israeli hasbara.

How I discovered a pattern of AI targeted killings of Palestinian journalists in their homes from October to December 2023

From my own point of view, I wanted to ascertain quite how many of these 170 individuals were included in the CPJ’s list of 189 verified journalists, and was able to ascertain that around 100 — including some of those removed by CPJ after their review — were not included at all. Some had been included in less intensely researched lists of journalist casualties — which indicated that around 260 or 270 Palestinian journalists in total had been killed — but others were clearly invented as rebukes to claims that had never been made in the first place.

Seeking further clarification, I undertook detailed research into the CPJ list, establishing that 68 of their 189 listed journalists were included in “The Press Files”, indicating that the CPJ review had, in all these cases, found Israel’s allegations to be groundless.

It then occurred to me that it would be helpful to spend some time examining the CPJ’s entries, and it was at this point that I realized that collating them in chronological order of their deaths, rather than in alphabetical order, as laid out by CPJ, might reveal some previously unnoticed patterns in Israel’s actions.

As I researched the journalists killed in the first three months of Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza, it suddenly became apparent that a majority of these individuals had been targeted and killed in their homes, with these targeted attacks taking place on an almost daily basis.

Suddenly, I realized that the pattern that had emerged was of the IDF’s “Where’s Daddy?” AI program being played out in real time across Gaza, with specific reference to journalists.

The existence of the “Where’s Daddy?” program — cynically designed to target individuals when they were at home, because it was easier than locating them elsewhere — had first been revealed in April 2024 in “‘Lavender’: The AI machine directing Israel’s bombing spree in Gaza”, an article for +972 Magazine by Yuval Abraham, who based his analysis on detailed statements made to him by six Israeli intelligence officers.

“Where’s Daddy?” was an offshoot of “Lavender”, an AI program that, using Israel’s knowledge of the names and addresses of everyone in Gaza, and detailed surveillance of mobile phone (cellphone) use, built up profiles ranking every individual on their suspected involvement in, or affiliation with militant groups, generating “kill lists” for those with a high score, which were then, with almost no human oversight whatsoever, translated into targeted missile or bomb attacks on these locations, with little or no concern for the extent of civilian “collateral damage” involved.

No one cared that “low-level” members of militant groups were included, or that, when target generation lapsed, the program was tweaked to included people working for the civilian government, just as no one cared that there was an anticipated 10% error rate, or that the program was regularly assessing “suspicious activity” that would lead to individuals being put on a “kill list” based on nothing more than unverified associations with militants, moving home regularly, or even buying a second-hand phone that may once have belonged to someone who may, at some point, have had as a contact someone regarded as a “low-level” militant. In one notorious case, as reported in Abraham’s recently released documentary film “NAZA”, following up on his earlier groundbreaking articles, it was revealed that a baker and his entire family had been targeted and killed because one of his customers was a member of Hamas.

The primary aim of this AI-driven military targeting, for which almost no restraints on “collateral damage” were employed, involved targeting military leaders, and the lack of restraints helps to explain why, horrifically, entire families were wiped out in the wholesale destruction of entire apartment blocks, to target just one “high-profile” individual.

But my research reveals, in day to day detail, how it was not just militants who were targeted. The journalists and media workers in this list were, in many cases, working for media organizations aligned with Hamas and other militant groups, but that didn’t make them a legitimate target, as the Geneva Conventions’ prohibition on targeting journalists unless they are “taking a direct part in hostilities” makes clear. Even interpreting a Hamas-centered journalist narrative as propaganda doesn’t work as an excuse. Propaganda is not “taking a direct part in hostilities.”

What is also apparent is how other journalists with no connection with any militant groups whatsoever were also targeted, demonstrating, I believe, how the AI programs used by Israel so casually drew inferences from “associations” that were so broad as to be meaningless, but that led, inexorably, to those individuals nevertheless being put on “kill lists”, and ruthlessly targeted and killed.

I hope you have time to read my list below, drawn from the CPJ’s own list, and that you’ll watch carefully the dates when, one after another, journalists at home were targeted and killed with their families. The numbers of those killed as “collateral damage” are often not available, but they clearly run into the many hundreds, to add to the journalists themselves — children, spouses, elders, all murdered for convenience. The most shocking verified statistics in the list involve Mohamed Abu Hassira, a driver for the Palestinian Authority-run WAFA news agency, who was killed in an Israeli strike on his home in Gaza City, along with 42 family members, on November 7, 2023, and the respected writer and analyst Mostafa Al Sawaf, killed with 45 members of his family, on November 18.

What I also hope, with this list, is that it spurs investigations into individuals from many other walks of life who were killed using the “Lavender” and “Where’s Daddy?” AI programs in the first three months of the genocide. We all, I’m sure, recall the targeted murder of the much-loved writer, poet and professor Refaat Alareer, targeted and killed, on December 6, 2023, in the apartment where he was staying with his family, in which his brother, sister, and four of his nephews were also killed, after weeks of death threats that he received online and by phone from Israeli accounts. How many more professors, teachers, writers and artists were also killed in a similar manner?

The 68 Palestinian journalists killed by Israel between October and December 2023, mostly targeted and killed while at home

October 8, 2023: KILLED AT HOME Assaad Shamlakh, killed in an Israeli strike on his house in the Sheikh Ijlin neighbourhood in Gaza City on October 8, 2023. He was a freelance reporter and co-founder of the Telegram news channel Riyaheen Al-Quds. He was also included by the IDF in “The Press Files.”

October 9, 2023: TARGETED AT WORK Hisham Alnwajha, Mohammed Sobh and Saeed Al-Taweel, killed when Israeli warplanes struck an area housing several media outlets in Rimal district in western Gaza. Alnwajha was a reporter for the “Khabar” News Agency, for which Sobh was a photographer, while Al-Taweel was the editor-in-chief of the Al-Khamsa News website. See Hisham and Saeed’s last recorded messages to the world here.

October 12, 2023: KILLED AT HOME Ahmed Shehab, killed along with his wife and three children when an Israeli airstrike struck his house in Jabalia. He was a journalist for Sowt Al-Asra Radio (Radio Voice of the Prisoners).

October 13, 2023: KILLED AT HOME Husam Mubarak, killed in an Israeli airstrike on his home in Beit Lahiya, in the northern Gaza Strip. He was a sound technician for the Hamas-affiliated Al-Aqsa Voice Radio. He was also included by the IDF in “The Press Files.”

October 13, 2023: KILLED AT HOME Salam Mema, killed after sustaining injuries when her home in the Jabalia refugee camp, in the northern Gaza Strip, was hit by an Israeli airstrike. Her husband, their two-year-old daughter Sham, their seven-year-old son Hadi, and other members of the family were also killed, leaving their five-year-old son Ali as the sole survivor. Salam was a freelance journalist and head of the Women Journalists Committee at the Palestinian Media Assembly, which, as CPJ noted, is “affiliated with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and is intended to be a Jihad alternative for the Fatah-affiliated Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate.”

October 14, 2023: KILLED AT HOME Yousef Maher Dawas, killed in an Israeli missile strike on his family’s home in the northern town of Beit Lahia. He was a contributing writer for Palestine Chronicle and for We Are Not Numbers (WANN), a youth-led Palestinian nonprofit project.

October 16, 2023: KILLED AT HOME Abdulhadi Habib, killed along with several of his family members (including his mother-in-law and grandchild) in an Israeli airstrike on a residential apartment in the Zeitoun neighborhood, south of Gaza City. He was a journalist who worked for Al-Manara News Agency, HQ media, and UNRWA TV. The Director-General of UNESCO, Audrey Azoulay, said in a statement on October 30, 2023, “I deplore the death of Abdulhadi Habib. I reiterate my call for the respect of the UN Security Council Resolution 2222/2015 on the protection of journalists, media professionals and associated personnel as civilians in situations of conflict and call for a full independent investigation into the circumstances of his death.”

October 17, 2023: KILLED AT HOME Issam Bhar, killed in an Israeli airstrike on his home in the northern Gaza Strip, which also killed his wife, and injured several members of his family. He was a journalist for Al-Aqsa TV, which, as CPJ described it, is “Hamas-affiliated.” He was also included by the IDF in “The Press Files.”

October 17, 2023: KILLED AT HOME Mohammad Jameel Balousha, killed in an Israeli airstrike on the Al-Saftawi neighborhood in northern Gaza City, alongside at least 10 family members. He was a media worker (the administrative and financial manager) for the Gaza office of the Lebanon-based Arabic TV channel Palestine Today.

October 18, 2023: KILLED AT HOME Abdel Rahman al-Tanani, killed on October 18, 2023, when Israeli aircraft bombed his father’s home in the Jabalia refugee camp, where he was staying after he was displaced with his wife and son from their home in the Tawam area. He was a freelance journalist and a social media publisher for the local radio Zaman FM.

October 18, 2023: KILLED AT HOME Sameeh Al-Nady, aka Al-Nadi, 55, killed in an Israeli airstrike on on his home in Deir al-Balah, in which between four and nine members of the family, including at least two women, aged 63 and 54, and a three-year old girl, were killed and others were wounded. He was a journalist and director for Al-Aqsa TV.

October 19, 2023: TARGETED Khalil Abu Aathra, killed along with his brother in an Israeli airstrike in Rafah, in southern Gaza. He was a camera operator for Al-Aqsa TV. He was also included by the IDF in “The Press Files.”

October 20, 2023: KILLED AT HOME Mohammed Ali, killed in an Israeli airstrike on his home in Beit Lahiya, a city in the northern Gaza Strip, on October 20, 2023. He was the head of sound engineering at the independent radio station Al-Shabab Radio (Youth Radio). Audrey Azoulay, the Director-General of UNESCO, issued a statement deploring his death on November 9, 2023.

October 22, 2023: KILLED AT HOME Roshdi Sarraj, killed as he sat down to have breakfast with his family, when an Israeli missile struck his home. His wife, and his daughter, a toddler, were injured. He was a photojournalist and the co-founder of Ain Media, a Palestinian company specializing in professional media services. He also worked as a photographer and fixer for non-governmental organizations and multiple media outlets, including Al-Araby and Al Jazeera – where he worked on documentaries – and the UN relief agency UNRWA. In his last post on Facebook on October 13, Sarraj wrote: “We won’t leave. We’ll exit Gaza to the sky, the sky only.” On October 17, he posted on X, “A lack of media coverage from Gaza due to the killing [of] more than 12 journalists, the bombing, and the blackout of electricity and the internet. However, we are still trying to withstand and continue coverage so the world can see the Israeli crimes in Gaza.” The Washington Post noted that he appealed for the safety of Gaza’s journalists days before he was killed, telling the newspaper in a voice message, “We need international protection.” Audrey Azoulay, the Director-General of UNESCO, issued a statement deploring his death on November 9, 2023. He was also included by the IDF in “The Press Files.”

October 23, 2023: KILLED AT HOME Mohammed Imad Labad, killed in an Israeli airstrike on the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood of Gaza City. He was a reporter for the Al Resalah news website. In its June 2026 review, CPJ “examined online claims alleging that Labad was a combatant”, and stated, “The claims identified by CPJ centered around a circulated screenshot of a Facebook post by a family member hinting at a possible combatant role without explicitly claiming such role or providing evidence to support it, specifically a claim that he had ties to a known combatant. Two independent credible sources and one family source confirmed that he was an active journalist and had no military affiliations. CPJ was unable to identify credible images, armed-group obituaries, official statements, or other reliable information demonstrating that he held a military role or was an active combatant at the time of his death. CPJ found no credible evidence that he held a military role or was an active combatant at the time of his death. Labad therefore qualified as a journalist under the organization’s methodology, and CPJ has retained him in its database.”

October 24, 2023: KILLED AT HOME Ibrahim Marzouq, killed along with his family in an Israeli airstrike on his home in Gaza City’s Al-Tuffah neighborhood. He was a media worker for the logistics department of the Gaza Bureau of Palestine Today TV.

October 25, 2023: KILLED AT HOME Ahmed Abu Mhadi, killed in an Israeli airstrike on his family home in Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza. He was a broadcast engineer for Al-Aqsa TV. He was also included by the IDF in “The Press Files.”

October 25, 2023: KILLED AT HOME Jamal Al-Faqaawi, killed in an Israeli airstrike on his home in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza. He was a journalist for Mithaq Media, described by CPJ as “Islamic Jihad-affiliated.” In its June 2026 review, “CPJ identified and examined an obituary published by Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) in June 2026 which referred to Al-Faqaawi as a member of the group’s ‘Central Support and Supply Unit.’ The PIJ obituary did not specify when Al-Faqaawi’s alleged affiliation or activity with the group occurred, nor did it claim that he was carrying out a militant role at the time of his death. CPJ conducted additional desk research and interviewed three independent sources, who told the organization that Al-Faqaawi continued working as a journalist throughout the war. Reporting also found that Al-Faqaawi had been seeking cancer treatment outside Gaza and returned to the Strip only weeks before October 7, 2023. Sources described his health at the time as frail. Based on the totality of the information available, CPJ was unable to determine that Al-Faqaawi was an active combatant, and therefore, he remains classified as a journalist under the organization’s methodology, and has been retained in CPJ’s database.” He was included by the IDF in “The Press Files.”

October 25, 2023: KILLED AT HOME Saed Al-Halabi, killed in an Israeli airstrike on his daughter’s house in Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, along with 20 of his relatives and members of his daughter’s husband’s family. He was a driver for Al-Aqsa TV. A colleague, Ahmed Zughabar, told CPJ that “he was exceptionally committed to maintaining strong personal relationships with his colleagues”, and “was also attentive to his coworkers, regularly checking in on them, asking about them, and staying in touch with them on important occasions.”

October 25, 2023: KILLED AT HOME Tasneem Bkheet, killed along with several family members, when Israeli airstrikes bombed their home in the Yarmouk area west of Gaza City. She was a journalist for the local Al-Saada magazine, described by CPJ as “pro-Hamas.” Her sister, Somaia Bkheet, told CPJ, “my sister Tasneem was with my family in their apartment in the Taj 3 Tower in the Yarmouk area west of Gaza City when the Israeli warplanes targeted the entire residential area, destroying all the towers and killing dozens, including my sister Tasneem, my parents, my other two brothers and sisters, and their children.”

October 26, 2023: KILLED AT HOME Duaa Sharaf, killed with her child in a strike on her home in Al-Zawaida, a town located in central Gaza. She was a host for Radio Al-Aqsa, described by CPJ as “Hamas-affiliated.”

October 30, 2023: TARGETED Akram ElShafie, 53, sustained injuries on October 30, 2023, from Israeli bullets. He was shot while he was on his way to check up on his house. He died on January 5, 2024, after the Israeli authorities refused to allow his evacuation for medical treatment. He worked as a reporter and editor for the Palestinian press agency Safa.

October 30, 2023: KILLED AT HOME Nazmi Al-Nadim, 54, killed with 18 other members of his extended family, including his wife, two sons, three brothers and several young children, in a strike on his home in the Zeitoun area of eastern Gaza on October 30, 2023. He was a deputy director of finance and administration for Palestine TV.

October 31, 2023: KILLED AT HOME Imad Al-Wahidi, 57, killed with his family members in an Israeli airstrike on his home. He was a media worker and administrator for the Palestinian Authority-funded Palestine TV channel.

October 31, 2023: KILLED AT HOME Majed Kashko, killed with his family members in an Israeli airstrike on his home. He was a media worker and the office director of the Palestine TV channel.

November 1, 2023: KILLED AT HOME Iyad Matar, 47, killed alongside his mother in an Israeli airstrike on his home in Deir al-Balah, in central Gaza. He was an administrative employee working in the archives department at Al-Aqsa TV.

November 1, 2023: Majd Fadl Arandas, 28, killed by an Israeli airstrike near his home in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. A photographer, he was a member of the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate who worked for the news website Al-Jamaheer, and was remembered in an article in the art magazine Hyperallergic as a “kind and gentle soul,” a self-taught artist who loved to take photographs of the Mediterranean sea and Gaza. The importance of his work, the article stated, “lies in the urgency of documenting and celebrating Palestinian life, excavating pockets of optimism and resistance amidst loss and destruction.”

November 2, 2023: KILLED AT HOME Mohamad Al-Bayyari, killed in an Israeli airstrike on his home in Gaza City. He was a journalist with Al-Aqsa TV. He was included by the IDF in “The Press Files.”

November 2, 2023: KILLED AT HOME Mohammed Abu Hatab, killed along with eleven members of his family in an Israeli airstrike on their home in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza. He was a journalist and correspondent for Palestine TV. As Al Jazeera reported, a statement by his employer noted that “an air strike hit Abu Hatab’s apartment shortly after his arrival”, a hallmark of the targeting using the “Where’s Daddy?” AI program. The statement added that the attack was “a bloody message to terrorize Palestinian journalists”, intended to stop them from “conveying the suffering of the Palestinian people and exposing the crimes of the occupation”, but that Palestine TV would continue to carry out its duty “no matter how great the sacrifices are and no matter how many crimes the occupying state commits against our journalists.” When news of his death was reported, his colleague Salman Al-Bashir “broke down in tears on air”, as the BBC explained, “removing his vest and helmet saying that the even the protective gear was not keeping journalists alive.”

November 6, 2023: KILLED AT HOME Mohamed al-Jaja, killed alongside his wife and two daughters in an Israeli strike on his home in the Al-Nasr neighborhood of Gaza City. He was an organizational development consultant and media worker at Press House-Palestine, which owns the Sawa news agency in Gaza and promotes press freedom and independent media.

November 7, 2023: KILLED AT HOME Mohamed Abu Hassira, 53, killed in an Israeli strike on his home near the fishermen’s harbour area in Gaza City along with 42 members of his family. He was a driver for the Palestinian Authority-run WAFA news agency.

November 12, 2023: KILLED AT HOME Moussa Al-Borsh, killed in an Israeli airstrike on his home in Jabalia, north of Gaza City. He was a journalist and the general manager of the local privately-owned Namaa Radio. Hie brother Issa, the financial director of Namaa Radio, told CPJ that “Israeli missiles hit us at 5.30am, killing Moussa, our father, and our uncle instantly.” He added that other family members were also injured in the strike, which hit their six-storey building. He was included by the IDF in “The Press Files.”

November 13, 2023: TARGETED Ahmed Fatima, killed by an Israeli sniper while presenting a news update at the entrance to Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. He was a freelance photojournalist, a contributor to the Egyptian-owned Al-Qahera News, and an administrative assistant at Press House-Palestine.

November 18, 2023: KILLED AT HOME Abdelhalim Awad, killed in a strike on his home. He was a media worker and driver for Al-Aqsa TV, and, as his colleague Ziad AlMokayyed told CPJ, he “had been working full-time since the beginning of the war in Khan Younis and had left to visit his family in the week before his death”, where he was evidently targeted by the “Where’s Daddy?” program.

November 18, 2023: KILLED AT HOME Amal Zohud, killed when Israeli warplanes bombed her family home in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, along with nine other family members. She was a freelance photographer. Ahmed Zohud, her half-brother, told CPJ in November 2024, “We were surprised at 7pm on Saturday, when Israeli warplanes bombed our home in the Nuseirat camp with four missiles, killing Amal Zohud and her mother in addition to eight women and children from the family, and injuring 15 family members.”

November 18, 2023: KILLED AT HOME Amro Salah Abu Hayah, killed in a strike on his home in Gaza City. He was the deputy director of Al-Aqsa TV.

November 18, 2023: TARGETED Sari Mansour and Hassouneh Salim, killed in an Israeli airstrike on the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza. Mansour was a journalist and director of the Quds News Network, a Palestinian youth news agency, while Salim was a freelance photojournalist. Both were included by the IDF in “The Press Files.”

November 18, 2023: KILLED AT HOME Mostafa Al Sawaf, killed along with 45 others, mostly members of his family, including his wife, two of his sons, their families, including numerous children, and also eight displaced civilians who were sheltering with the family, in an Israeli airstrike on his home by Shawa Square in Gaza City. He was a writer and analyst, who worked as a freelance journalist for several Palestinian, Arab, and international media outlets. He had also held senior government positions in Gaza’s Ministries of Culture and Social Development, was a member of Hamas’s Political Bureau from 2006 to 2010, and had been a member of its General Shura Council representing Gaza since 2006. In its June 2026 review, CPJ stated that, “After conducting desk research and speaking to two independent sources who knew Al Sawaf, CPJ found no credible evidence linking him to any armed military work or that he participated in combat. The sources confirmed that he worked as a journalist throughout the latest war in Gaza. He is, therefore, classified as a journalist under CPJ’s methodology, and has been retained in the organization’s database.” He was also the father of the two journalists Marwan and Montaser, who were killed two weeks later.

November 19, 2023: TARGETED Bilal Jadallah, 45, killed in his car in Gaza in an Israeli shelling. He was the founder and director of Press House-Palestine, a nonprofit that supported the development of independent Palestinian media. According to CPJ, “He provided indispensable research for CPJ’s May 2023 report ‘Deadly Pattern’, which found a lack of accountability in Israeli military killings of 20 journalists over 22 years.” He “helped locate the families of journalists killed in Gaza and acquired their photos for CPJ’s report”, and he “was often described as ‘the godfather of Palestinian journalism’, because of his mentorship programs that helped many journalists in Gaza establish their careers.” He was profiled by the Palestinian journalist Aseel Mousa in “Remembrance”, an extraordinary article written with the academic Azmat Khan for the Columbia Journalism Review on October 7, 2026, in which Press House was recalled as “a kind of sanctuary, especially in times of war,” which “had reliable electricity and internet and, somehow, always seemed to be insulated from the conflict raging outside.” After October 7, as Mousa notes, “Press House handed out free flak jackets and helmets to a stream of journalists intent on covering the region’s latest conflict. Jadallah and his staff ultimately distributed more than eighty protective vests, and Press House staff worked in shifts to keep the electricity and internet running. They turned a conference room into a workspace for freelancers, and dozens of journalists gathered there with laptops and cameras to file stories, photos, and video.” It is, sadly, no surprise that Israel ended up targeting and killing such a determined, practical and influential individual.

November 20, 2023: KILLED AT HOME Ayat Khadoura, killed along with two of her sisters, two of her brothers, and two of her grandparents in an Israeli airstrike on her home in Beit Lahia in northern Gaza. She was a freelance journalist and podcast presenter, and shared videos on social media about the situation in Gaza, including a November 6 video, which she called “my last message to the world”, in which she said, “We had big dreams but our dream now is to be killed in one piece so they know who we are.”

November 21, 2023: KILLED AT HOME Jamal Mohamed Haniyeh, killed along with other family members and in-laws in an Israeli airstrike on his home in Gaza City. He was a reporter for the sports news website Amwaj, but was also the grandson of Hamas leader Ismael Haniyeh.

November 23, 2023: KILLED AT HOME Mohamed Mouin Ayyash, killed in an Israeli airstrike on his home in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, along with 20 members of his family. He was a journalist and freelance photographer, working for Gaza Now, one of Gaza’s most popular news outlets, described by CPJ as “Hamas-aligned”, Al Mayadeen and Wafaf. An airstrike the day before targeted the home of his brother, Mustafa Ayyash, the founder and director of Gaza Now, who survived, although his mother, father, brothers, their wives and children, and his sister, her husband and her children were all killed. In its June 2026 review, “CPJ identified and examined a video circulating on Telegram featuring an image of a face-covered militant that the channel claimed was Ayyash, and was not able to verify those claims. CPJ conducted desk research and interviewed two independent and credible sources, as well as Ayyash’s brother, who said he was not involved in any combat activities or affiliated with any armed group. Eyewitness accounts place Ayyash in the field working as a photojournalist, with some in contact with him the day of his killing. Based on the evidence available, CPJ found no indication that Ayyash participated in combat activities and therefore has retained him in its database as a journalist.” He was included by the IDF in “The Press Files.”

Killings stopped from November 24 to 30, because of a temporary ceasefire negotiated for the release of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners, but resumed immediately after.

December 1, 2023: KILLED AT HOME Adham Hassouna, 41, killed, along with several members of his family in an Israeli airstrike on his home in Gaza City. He was a freelance journalist and media professor at Gaza and Al-Aqsa Universities, and a director at Palestine TV.

December 1, 2023: TARGETED Marwan Al Sawaf and Montaser Al-Sawaf, killed by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City. Marwan was a photographer and sound technician at the privately owned Alef Multimedia Company, and was on his way to film coverage of the war when he was killed, his brother, Mohamed, the founder of Alef Multimedia, told CPJ, adding, “He wasn’t wearing his press jacket at the time, as he had expressed concern about the risks, fearing the jacket would make him a target due to the repeated targeting of journalists.” Unbeknown to him, however, the IDF was undoubtedly tracking him through his phone. His brother Montaser was an avid photographer and a cameraman for Anadolu Agency. His cousin Hassan Ismameh said that, “After being seriously injured in the bombing, [Montaser] had to wait for an ambulance for about half an hour.” He “was eventually transported to the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital by private vehicle after no medical teams arrived”, but died of his wounds. A touching tribute to Montaser, by the Palestinian journalist Aseel Mousa was included in “Remembrance”, an extraordinary article written with the academic Azmat Khan for the Columbia Journalism Review on October 7, 2026. Montaser was also included by the IDF in “The Press Files.”

December 2, 2023: TARGETED AT HOME Alaa Al-Hams, seriously wounded in an Israeli airstrike on her family house in Rafah city, in southern Gaza, which resulted in the deaths of ten members of her family, including her mother and siblings. She died on February 12, 2024, when she succumbed to her injuries. She was a journalist for the local Palestinian News Agency SND.

December 3, 2023: KILLED AT HOME Hamada Al-Yaziji, killed in an Israeli airstrike that hit his home in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood, north of Gaza City. He died along with approximately 34 members of his family. He was a journalist and editor at the privately-owned Kanaan News Agency and also worked for Al-Quds Radio, described by CPJ as “Hamas-owned.” He was also included by the IDF in “The Press Files.”

December 3, 2023: KILLED AT HOME Shaima El-Gazzar, killed along with her daughter, parents, siblings, and twelve other members of her family, in an Israeli airstrike east of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, on her family home. Her husband was killed 20 days before in an airstrike that targeted his workplace in a grocery store, so she moved to her family home, which was then targeted. She was a journalist for the Gaza-based Al-Majedat Network.

December 9, 2023: KILLED AT HOME Ola Atallah, killed with nine members of her family, including her brother and her uncles, in an Israeli airstrike on the house in which she and her family was taking refuge, in the El-Daraj area of Gaza City in northern Gaza. She was a freelance journalist who contributed to multiple media outlets. On November 27, she wrote an article for the Al-Morasel website about life in Gaza during the war, describing the destruction and damage to her neighborhood and city. She had formerly worked as a reporter for the Anadolu news agency, which she left in 2017, and was known on social media. In her last post on X, on December 8, she asked, “How many nights of terror and death must Gaza count? How many days of loss and absence and pain must it count? How many hours of hunger and thirst and cold and illness and displacement and exile must it count? How many of the departed and the weeping and the heartbroken must it count before the curse of calculation falls and the cruelty of numbers vanishes?”

December 15, 2023: TARGETED Samer Abu Daqqa, killed in an Israeli drone strike in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza. A journalist, cameraman, and editor for Al Jazeera Arabic, he was with Al Jazeera Arabic correspondent and Gaza bureau chief Wael Al-Dahdouh, who was severely injured in the strike. They were covering the aftermath of an Israeli strike on a UN-run school sheltering displaced people in the center of Khan Younis. He died after being “left to bleed to death for five hours”, with no ambulance able to reach him.

December 17, 2023: Assem Kamal Moussa, killed in an Israeli airstrike on Khan Younis, southern Gaza on December 17, 2023. He was a journalist who produced visual and written news reports for the local privately-owned news website Palestine Now.

December 17, 2023: KILLED AT HOME Haneen Kashtan, killed in an Israeli airstrike on Nuseirat refugee camp in northern Gaza, along with other family members. He was a journalist who contributed to multiple media outlets including the local Fatah-affiliated TV Al-Kofiya, the local privately-owned Baladna Web TV (launched by journalists in 2017), and Press House-Palestine.

December 18, 2023: KILLED AT HOME Abdallah Alwan, killed in an Israeli airstrike on his home in Jabalia. He was a media worker and voice-over specialist who contributed to multiple media outlets including the Al Jazeera-owned platform Midan, Mugtama magazine and Al Jazeera, and was a radio host for the Islamic University’s Holy Quran Radio. In his last Facebook post on December 16, he wrote that, “Every morning, we say that last night was the worst night in the war. All days are worse than each other. This briefly describes the war.” On November 30, he posted photos of an earlier Israeli attack on his home, in which two of his nieces were killed.

December 19, 2023: KILLED AT HOME Adel Zorob, killed in an Israeli airstrike on his home in Rafah, southern Gaza, along with at least 22 others, from his family and from the Al-Ladda family, who were sheltering in the building. Eleven of the victims were children, the youngest just three months old. He was a freelance journalist who worked with multiple media outlets, including Al-Aqsa Voice Radio, and was known for his efforts to help wounded children. Amnesty International reviewed his case, and three others, reporting in February 2024 that they “did not find evidence that any of those staying in the house that was directly hit were affiliated with an armed group”, and “also did not find any indication that there were military objectives in or near the houses, raising serious concerns that the strike, which Israel is yet to explain, was a direct attack on civilians and civilian objects and must be investigated as a war crime.”

December 22, 2023: KILLED AT HOME Mohamed Khalifeh, killed in an Israeli airstrike on his home in Nuseirat camp in central Gaza, along with his wife and three of his children. He was the broadcast director at Al-Aqsa TV.

December 24, 2023: TARGETED Ahmad Jamal al Madhoun, killed in an Israeli airstrike on northern Gaza on December 24, 2023. He was a journalist and deputy director of the local newspaper and news agency Al-Rai, described by CPJ as “Hamas government-owned”, where he was also the director of visual content. He was also included by the IDF in “The Press Files.”

December 24, 2023: KILLED AT HOME Mohamad Al-Iff, killed in an Israeli airstrike on Gaza City, northern Gaza, along with an unspecified number of his family members. He was a journalist and photographer for Al-Rai, and the cousin of another journalist, Mohamed Azzaytouniyah, who was also killed in another airstrike on the same day. He was also included by the IDF in “The Press Files.”

December 24, 2023: KILLED AT HOME Mohamed Azzaytouniyah, killed in an Israeli airstrike on Gaza City, northern Gaza, along with an unspecified number of family members, including his father. He was a media worker and a sound engineer for Al-Rai.

December 28, 2023: KILLED AT HOME Ahmed Khaireddine and Mohamed Khaireddine, brothers killed in an Israeli airstrike on their family home in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza, along with eleven other family members. Ahmed was a journalist and a camera operator for Al-Quds Al-Youm TV, and a reporter for the Quds feed, both described by CPJ as “Hamas-affiliated.” Mohamed was an office assistant at Al-Aqsa TV. Their brother Basil, a reporter for Palestine Today, spoke about Ahmed’s killing to the channel, in a video that went viral. He said that Ahmed wanted to rest for the first time in 82 days and didn’t want to leave the house to report when Basil asked him to go with him, adding, “He wanted to rest, but apparently his rest was forever.” Ever watchful, Israel’s AI programs presumably identified that he was at home, explaining how his rest after 82 days of relentless reporting ended up being “forever.” Ahmed was also included by the IDF in “The Press Files.”

December 30, 2023: KILLED AT HOME Jabr Abu Hadrous, killed in an Israeli air strike on his home in the Nuseirat refugee camp in northern Gaza, along with seven members of his family. He was a reporter for Al-Quds Al-Youm TV. See his last recorded message to the world here. He was also included by the IDF in “The Press Files.”

In conclusion, while I am immensely grateful to the Committee to Project Journalists for their research, on which this report of mine is almost entirely based, I’d like to send out an open appeal to them to expand their definitions of the circumstances in which journalists are killed. The Palestinian journalists killed are almost all listed under two categories — “murdered”, which applies to 33 of the 189 cases profiled, and, in most cases, “On dangerous assignment.”

As I hope to have made clear, Israel has, since October 2023, clearly invented a third category — “Targeted and killed at home” — and CPJ needs to update its categories, because being at home and being targeted and killed ought to be the very opposite of being killed while on a “dangerous assignment.”

Home is meant to be where you’re safe.

* * * * *

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer (of a photo-journalism project, ‘The State of London’, which ran from 2012 to 2023), film-maker and singer-songwriter (the lead singer and main songwriter for the London-based band The Four Fathers, whose music is available via Bandcamp). He is the co-founder of the Close Guantánamo campaign (see the ongoing photo campaign here) and the successful We Stand With Shaker campaign of 2014-15, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo”, which you can watch on YouTube here.

In 2017, Andy became very involved in housing issues. He is the narrator of the documentary film, ‘Concrete Soldiers UK’, about the destruction of council estates, and the inspiring resistance of residents, he wrote a song ‘Grenfell’, in the aftermath of the entirely preventable fire in June 2017 that killed over 70 people, and, in 2018, he was part of the occupation of the Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden in Deptford, to try to prevent its destruction — and that of 16 structurally sound council flats next door — by Lewisham Council and Peabody.

Since 2019, Andy has become increasingly involved in environmental activism, recognizing that climate change poses an unprecedented threat to life on earth, and that the window for change — requiring a severe reduction in the emission of all greenhouse gases, and the dismantling of our suicidal global capitalist system — is rapidly shrinking, as tipping points are reached that are occurring much quicker than even pessimistic climate scientists expected. You can read his articles about the climate crisis here. He has also, since, October 2023, been sickened and appalled by Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and you can read his detailed coverage here.

To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to Andy’s new Substack account, set up in November 2024, where he’ll be sending out a weekly newsletter, or his RSS feed — and he can also be found on Facebook (and here), Twitter and YouTube. Also see the six-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, The Complete Guantánamo Files, the definitive Guantánamo habeas list, and the full military commissions list.

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Please click on either of the ‘Donate’ buttons below (via PayPal or Stripe) to make a donation towards the $2,500 (£2,000) I’m trying to raise to support my work as a reader-funded investigative journalist, commentator and activist over the next three months. To get links to all my work in your inbox, please also consider taking out a free or paid subscription to my new Substack newsletter.

 

UPDATE: Please free free to check out my one-hour interview with Chris Cook of Gorilla Radio, recorded on August 13, in which we discussed the targeted murder of Anas Al-Sharif and his colleagues, Israel’s war on journalists and its persistent lies, as well as the self-inflicted problems created by the British government following its proscription of Palestine Action, a direct action group, as a terrorist organization.

Yesterday, at around 11.35pm, in a deliberate targeted attack on the press tent outside Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, Israel murdered the whole of the remaining crew of Al Jazeera Arabic in northern Gaza — the journalists Anas Al-Sharif and Mohammed Qreiqeh, the cameramen Ibrahim Zaher and Mohammed Noufal, and an assistant, Moamen Aliwa. Also killed was a freelance journalist, Mohammed al-Khaldi, and Al-Sharif’s teenage nephew Musab, who had hoped to follow in his uncle’s footsteps.

My heart sank when I read the news last night. Al-Sharif, 28, was probably the most hard-working journalist in history, relentlessly chronicling the genocide for 22 months with barely a break. It’s unimaginable how, hurrying from one atrocity to another, repeatedly reporting on shattered bodies and erased families, and always enveloped by the smell of blood, he carried on working.

Well known in the Arabic-speaking world, and with millions of followers on social media, where he posted in both Arabic and English, Al-Sharif, who leaves a wife and two young children he adored, kept going even though he must have known that his days were numbered. He was the last of the tireless and ever-visible Al Jazeera journalists, surviving as his closest friends and colleagues were picked off one by one — journalist Ismail Al-Ghoul and cameraman Rami Al-Rifi, who were killed on July 31, 2024, cameraman Fadi Al-Wahidi, who was paralyzed after an attack on October 9, 2024, and Hossam Shabat, who was targeted and murdered on March 24 this year.

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A “genocide within a genocide” is taking place in northern Gaza, where Israel has specifically prevented any food, water, fuel or medical supplies entering since October 1, and where Israeli forces are involved in massacre after massacre, bombing and blowing up residential buildings and killing entire families, attacking and decommissioning the last three remaining partly-functioning hospitals, and picking off and killing anyone who dares to leave their homes via armed drones and snipers.

This is the manifestation of the “Generals’ Plan”, a diabolical initiative proposed by retired general Giora Eiland, which advocated for the enforced evacuation of the remaining 400,000 residents of northern Gaza — those unwilling or unable to obey previous evacuation orders — followed, after a week, by starvation and the execution of everyone who remains as a “terrorist.”

That plan was horrendous enough — especially because there is no legal basis whatsoever for regarding civilians who can’t or won’t leave a designated military area as “terrorists” — but its manifestation is even more horrific.

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