Israel killed over 700 relatives of Palestinian journalists in Gaza: Report

Israel has killed at least 706 family members of Palestinian journalists since the start of its genocidal war in the besieged Gaza Strip in October 2023, a report says.

The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate’s Freedoms Committee said in a report that Israeli forces killed 436 relatives of journalists in 2023, 203 journalists in 2024, and at least 67 in 2025.

The findings show Israeli attacks have repeatedly struck journalists’ homes, places of displacement, and areas known to house media workers and their relatives.

In some cases, entire families have been wiped out, leaving journalists alive to bear witness to their annihilation.

The deaths continued even after many families were forcibly displaced and sought shelter in tents and makeshift camps, it said.

The report added that Israeli forces were systematically targeting the families of journalists as part of a war aimed at silencing Palestinian reporting.

The report said the attacks represent a deliberate strategy rather than deaths as a result of war.

Israeli violence against journalists has “evolved to take on a more dangerous and brutal dimension, represented by targeting the families and relatives of journalists, in a clear attempt to turn journalistic work into an existential burden for which sons, wives, fathers, and mothers pay the price,” the union said.

The syndicate further says Israel is using collective punishment to crush reporting of its genocidal war in Gaza.

It cited a recent case near Khan Younis, where the bodies of journalist Hiba al-Abadla, her mother, and about 15 members of the al-Astal family were recovered nearly two years after Israeli aircraft bombed their home west of the city.

The committee described this as a “qualitative shift” in Israel’s behavior, moving from individual targeting to collective punishment.

“Hundreds of children, women, and the elderly were killed because of a family member’s professional connection to journalism, in flagrant violation of all humanitarian and legal norms,” the committee said.

By turning families into targets, it said, Israel aims to intimidate society itself and “dry up the environment that nurtures the media.”

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Muhammad al-Lahham, head of the Freedoms Committee, said the pattern of attacks from 2023 to 2025 exposes Israel’s intent to crush independent reporting in the blockaded Palestinian territory.

Targeting journalists’ families, he said, “reveals that the Israeli occupation is waging a comprehensive war on the truth, making no distinction between the camera and the child, nor between the pen and the home.”

“The blood of the journalists’ families will remain a living witness to the crime of trying to silence the Palestinian voice,” al-Lahham added.

Press freedom groups have been condemning the Israeli attacks on journalists, but the killings have proceeded with impunity.

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Israel has never arrested or charged any of its troops for killing journalists.

The targeting of the press intensified during the genocidal war in Gaza.

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