In the last few years, the world has taken a clear turn for the worse. We’ve seen Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Israel’s takeover of Gaza and its incursion into southern Lebanon, and the war against Iran. Our quaint post-1945 belief that the world was subject to international law has pretty much evaporated. If you are the leader of a country that is sufficiently powerful, you can get away with anything: from the deliberate targeting of civilians to the destruction of national infrastructure.
Journalists whose job it is to bear witness in all this have suffered particularly badly. Take the example of Shireen Abu Akleh, a Christian Palestinian with US nationality who was a top correspondent for Al Jazeera. In the Middle East, particularly, she was a famous figure: calm and balanced, a thoroughly mature journalist, respected for her gutsy frontline reporting. On 11 May 2022, wearing a blue helmet and a flak jacket with PRESS on it in big letters, Shireen was covering an Israeli army raid on the Palestinian town of Jenin. She was standing with a small group of journalists, all clearly identified as “press”, when one or more snipers opened fire.
Al Jazeera correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh, who was killed in 2022 Jenin. . Photo: Al Jazeera Media Network
Shireen, who was 51, was hit in the head by an armour-piercing bullet. The snipers kept on firing for some time, so neither she nor three other journalists who were also hit could be rescued and taken to hospital. But Shireen had in any case died instantly. The Israeli government said at first that she had been shot by Palestinian gunmen. There were ugly scenes at her funeral in East Jerusalem two days later, when Israeli police attacked the mourners with batons and stun grenades.
After four months, the Israel Defense Forces admitted there was a high possibility that Shireen had been “accidentally hit” by IDF fire, even though, judging by the armour-piercing bullet he used, her killer was a sniper, and snipers rarely kill people by accident. Still, the Israeli government decided that no criminal investigation was called for. A television documentary about her death, produced by the US-based media company Zeteo, later claimed to have identified the Israeli soldier who had shot Shireen: Alon Scagio, of the IDF’s Duvdevan commando unit. Israeli soldiers interviewed on camera alleged that Scagio's colleagues had used Shireen's picture for target practice. Two years later, Scagio himself was killed by a roadside bomb in Jenin. He was 22.
No one is suggesting that journalism should be a safe profession. If you choose to go to places where people are shooting at each other, you stand a good chance of being killed or injured. Shireen Abu Akleh knew that. She may have hoped that her status, and perhaps her gender, would give her a measure of protection. But when soldiers believe that all Palestinian journalists are potentially their enemies, there is no protection.
There has never been a conflict where so many journalists were killed. Something like 274 media workers died in Gaza
After the appalling Hamas attacks of 7 October 2023, the Israelis prevented any international journalists from entering Gaza to see what was happening throughout the entire period of the war. As a result, the job of reporting on the day-to-day events was done by local journalists who risked their lives in order to act as the world’s eyes and ears. The outcome was completely unprecedented: there has never been a conflict where so many journalists were killed. The various agencies and organisations involved agree that something like 274 journalists and media workers died in Gaza between October 2023 and the eventual ceasefire last September.
According to the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University in the US, that means that more journalists died in Gaza during those two years than the total killed in the first world war, the second world war, the Korean war, the Vietnam war, the Yugoslav war of the 1990s and the post-2001 war in Afghanistan, all added together. That number was only possible, many agencies have claimed, because the IDF and the Israeli government did nothing to discourage the idea that every journalist in Gaza was an active supporter of Hamas, and therefore an enemy.
The Israeli government strongly rejects the idea that journalists were deliberately targeted, and the IDF has said their deaths were the unintended consequence of operating in a dense urban combat environment. Nevertheless, some agencies specifically accuse the IDF of singling out journalists for killing. Reporters Sans Frontières, for instance, has claimed that some Palestinian journalists were killed at their homes, together with their families.
“The Israelis killed him anyway”: Al-Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif, who died in August 2025. Photo: AFP / Getty Images
A new word has been coined to cover what has been happening: “journacide”. When a 28-year-old Al Jazeera correspondent, Anas al-Sharif, was killed by the Israelis last August, they accused him of having led a Hamas “terrorist cell”. A BBC investigation found that although al-Sharif had indeed worked for a Hamas media team before the start of the war, he had posted criticisms of Hamas on social media. The Israelis killed him anyway, together with another correspondent, three camera operators, and a freelance reporter. The other five died because they happened to be with a man who may or may not have been an active supporter of a group we know he criticised.
Now Israel is fighting another war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, and more journalists are dying. On 28 March, an Israeli drone targeted and killed Ali Shoeib, a well-known correspondent for the Lebanese station Al-Manar TV, as he was driving near the Israeli border in southern Lebanon. Israel said it had killed him because he was a Hezbollah intelligence operative. Al-Manar TV is without any question a Hezbollah outlet, and Shoeib had worked for it for nearly 30 years. An IDF social media post said: “For years, Ali Hassan Shaib [sic] operated as a Hezbollah Radwan Force terrorist under the guise of a journalist … Turns out the ‘press vest’ was just a cover for terror.”
But, whatever his background, Shoeib wasn’t alone as he drove through the southern district of Jezzine. Like plenty of reporters in wartime, he was travelling with colleagues; the company of other journalists gives you a sense of support, and perhaps an extra bit of courage. With him in the car were Fatima Ftouni, a reporter for Al-Mayadeen TV, which is based in Beirut but is watched right across the Arab world. She was young and bubbly, and in an online tribute her colleagues called her “Al-Mayadeen’s flower”. Her brother Mohammed, a young cameraman, was also in the car with them. The Israeli strike on the man they said was a Hezbollah terrorist killed the Ftounis, brother and sister, as well. There has been no suggestion that they were working for Hezbollah.
In circumstances like these – and I’ve often driven round in Lebanon or the West Bank with other journos for company, praying the Israelis won’t decide we’re spies – the only real protection you can have is some sense on the Israeli side that there’ll be serious consequences if they kill you. That sense has disappeared.
According to the Israeli human rights organisation Yesh Din, Israeli forces have “near-total immunity from prosecution in cases in which Palestinians were harmed by IDF soldiers”. For them, there aren’t, and perhaps never will be, any consequences whatsoever for killing journalists. No matter who they are, or what the circumstances.
John Simpson is the BBC’s world affairs editor. His weekly programme Unspun World resumes on BBC Two and iPlayer on 22 April.