Protest: Hundreds of people gathered in San Francisco in May 2024 to honour journalists and those bearing witness to atrocities in Palestine and to call for justice, accountability and an end to the impunity with which journalists and civilians have been killed. Photo: Flickr
Ever since an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) sniper’s green-tipped, armour-piercing bullet killed Shireen Abu Akleh on 11 May 2022, journalists are increasingly the victims of Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip.
Abu Akleh, the renowned Al Jazeera correspondent, was shot while reporting on an IDF raid in Jenin. Forensic reconstructions confirmed sniper fire, yet accountability never came.
Two years on, the killing of journalists has become routine. On 7 October 2025, the world will mark two years since Hamas’s terrible storming of Israel — in which about 1 200 people were killed and about 250 taken hostage — ignited Israel’s most devastating military campaign against Palestinians. More than 63 000 people have been killed. Amid the staggering civilian toll lies a quieter, chilling pattern — the deliberate targeting of those documenting it.
Last week, the South African National Editors’ Forum (Sanef) condemned the killing of five Palestinian journalists in Gaza: Anas al-Sharif and Mohammed Qreiqeh, Al Jazeera correspondents; cameramen Ibrahim Zaher and Moamen Aliwa and assistant Mohammed Noufal.
“This is no tragic accident,” Sanef stated. “It is part of a blatant and premeditated assault on press freedom.”
Israel insists it targets Hamas operatives. Yet it rarely produces evidence. The United Nations reports that since October 2023, 242 Palestinian journalists have been killed.
“Journalists are the eyes and ears of the world,” Sanef’s KwaZulu-Natal representative Judy Sandison noted. “Attacking them is an attack on truth itself. It has to stop.”
The silencing began with Abu Akleh’s killing, which sparked global outrage. The UN described “well-aimed bullets [fired] at journalists”. The New York Times investigation confirmed shots fired from an Israeli military vehicle. Washington admitted IDF fire was probably responsible.
Still, no one was held to account.
Soon after, Al Jazeera’s Gaza newsroom was bombed. Reporters had to operate in exile or underground, their press vests offering no protection against guided missiles and drones.
Silenced: Journalist Anas al-Sharif is one of five killed by the Israeli Defense Forces in its attack on Nasser hospital this week. Photo: X
War without witnesses
Hamas militants’ breaching of Israel’s fortified border on 7 October 2023, in which people were killed in kibbutz towns and hostages seized, drew global condemnation. But Israel’s retaliation unleashed a campaign that many human rights groups now label genocide — which includes a deliberate attempt to starve Gaza, flatten its cities and break its people.
The human toll is staggering. By August 2025, more than 61 000 Palestinians had died, including about 18 000 children.
Malnutrition and famine haunt survivors.
Yet the world might never know the full scale of the catastrophe without local journalists documenting it at unimaginable personal risk.
That is why they are being hunted. “The only reason anyone kills journalists,” a media ethicist observed, “is because they’re telling the truth.”
International law is unambiguous — journalists in conflict zones are civilians. The Geneva Conventions, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and multiple United Nations resolutions classify targeting them as a war crime. The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation’s Plan of Action on the Safety of Journalists makes clear that their protection underpins global press freedom.
And yet, as Gaza shows, these legal guarantees mean little when the perpetrators act with impunity and powerful allies shield them from consequences.
In November 2024, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, as well as the Hamas commander Mohammed Deif. The symbolism was seismic — both state and non-state actors charged in the same breath.
The responses exposed global fault lines.
The United States rejected the warrants, insisting there was “no equivalence” between Israel and Hamas.
South Africa, Spain and Sweden welcomed the move, with Pretoria co-launching The Hague Group to defend the court’s jurisdiction.
France expressed “support for ICC independence” but avoided endorsing the specific charges.
Germany suspended arms exports to Israel.
France’s President Emmanuel Macron floated a UN peacekeeping mission for Gaza.
Whether symbolic or enforceable, the warrants marked a turning point — a rare moment when the machinery of international justice acknowledged the war’s double-edged criminality.
While governments hesitated, the streets erupted. From Washington to Dhaka, Gaza became a rallying cry for one of the most sustained protest movements since the 2003 anti-Iraq war marches.
In the US, more than 2 600 demonstrations took place, with the March on Washington for Gaza in January 2024 drawing 400 000 people. In Europe, Paris, Berlin, The Hague and London witnessed marches of hundreds of thousands. Barcelona read aloud the names of Gaza’s dead children. In Africa, vigils and rallies were held in numerous countries, from Durban to Cairo. In Asia, protests in Dhaka, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur and Karachi tied the Palestinian cause to anti-colonial struggles.
The message was consistent — global civil society refuses silence where official diplomacy falters.
Wars in Gaza are not new: they occurred 2008, 2012, 2014 and 2021. But the current war is unfolding in a hyper-connected world. Smartphones and social media bypassed censorship, turning every bombed building and starved child into viral testimony.
Journalists became not just recorders but amplifiers; witnesses whose footage entered millions of feeds within minutes. To silence them is to control the narrative.
Thus, the attacks on reporters is not collateral damage. They are strategic. Starve the population. Silence the journalists. Control the truth.
The roots of Gaza’s misery stretch back to 1948, when Israel’s creation displaced about 700 000 Palestinians, many into Gaza. Israel occupied the Strip in 1967, withdrew settlements in 2005, but sealed it under blockade with Egypt. Hamas’s 2006 election victory deepened the siege. Since then, Gaza’s 2.3 million residents have endured repeated attacks and economic strangulation.
The current war is the deadliest yet — tens of thousands killed, famine imposed, international law flouted. Ceasefire calls have been ignored. The occupation, critics warn, is sliding into annexation.
For South Africans, the parallels are raw. During apartheid, journalists faced banning orders, imprisonment and exile. International solidarity depended on their courage and those who amplified their work. That legacy underpins Pretoria’s legal challenge against Israel at the International Court of Justice and Sanef’s forceful denunciation of Gaza’s press killings.
In 1985, Archbishop Desmond Tutu warned: “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”
Forty years later, his words land with the same moral clarity in Gaza as they once did in Soweto.
The killing of Abu Akleh symbolised a turning point. Since then, more than 240 of her colleagues have paid the same price. Their deaths are not just personal tragedies; they are attacks on global truth-telling.
History will record who stood silent while the cameras went dark — and who demanded accountability. Until justice is done, the cameras must keep rolling. Because without them, Gaza’s story — and the world’s conscience — risks vanishing into silence.
Marlan Padayachee is a veteran political, foreign and diplomatic correspondent from South Africa’s transition to democracy, recipient of awards — including the British Council and the USIS International Visitor. He is currently a freelance journalist, photographer and researcher.