Israel Says 170 Gaza ‘journalists’ Were Terror Operatives — What the Evidence Shows, and Why the Claim Is Being Challenged

The IDF has released a database identifying 170 Palestinians reported as journalists or media workers who it says were also members of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other terror groups. Critics are challenging the evidence — but an earlier independent review already confirmed that some combatants had indeed been counted among Gaza’s journalist casualties.

For much of the Gaza war, international organizations and news outlets have cited the extraordinary number of Palestinian journalists and media workers killed by Israel.

Israel has now launched a major effort to challenge part of that narrative.

On October 1, the IDF unveiled “The Press Files,” a database naming 170 Palestinians killed during the war who had been presented as journalists or media personnel but who Israel says were also terror operatives.

According to the IDF, the breakdown is:

• 118 members of Hamas’s military wing
• 49 Palestinian Islamic Jihad operatives
• 2 members of the Popular Resistance Committees
• 1 member of the Mujahideen Brigades

Most strikingly, the IDF says 17 of the 170 participated in the Hamas-led October 7 massacre in Israel.

Some of those named had also provided material to major international news organizations, including Reuters, CNN, BBC, AFP, AP, Le Monde and ABC Australia.

The IDF says its findings are based on intelligence and “verified evidence,” including documents produced by the terror organizations, material recovered inside Gaza, photographs, military identification numbers and other information establishing their organizational affiliations and roles.

The military has begun publishing individual files and supporting material through its new “Press Files” website.

The Part That Has Already Been Independently Confirmed

The broader issue did not begin with the IDF's new database.

Earlier this year, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad themselves published obituaries identifying some Palestinians who had been counted as journalists as members of their organizations or combatants.

That triggered a major review by the Committee to Protect Journalists, one of the organizations whose Gaza journalist casualty figures have been widely cited internationally.

CPJ reviewed 229 deaths.

When it completed the review in September, CPJ announced that it had removed 22 people from its journalist database, reinstated six others and reclassified 12.

CPJ specifically reiterated that its longstanding policy excludes journalists who are found to have been engaging in combat.

In other words, whatever one thinks of the IDF's new 170-person list, the underlying issue is no longer merely an Israeli allegation: there were people counted internationally among Gaza's slain journalists who were subsequently found to have been combatants.

The Online Rebuttal

The IDF's new release has nevertheless generated a fierce online argument.

Palestinian researcher Muhammad Shehada says he examined the 170 cases and argues that Israel has not publicly demonstrated its claim to the same standard for every person on the list.

His criticism focuses in part on the difference between terror-group affiliation and active combatant status.

Some entries, critics argue, contain substantial evidence, while others rely heavily on the IDF's intelligence determination without making all of the underlying material publicly available.

That distinction matters.

A journalist does not automatically lose civilian protection merely because of his political views, propaganda activity or an association with Hamas. Under the laws of war, whether someone was actually a member of an organized armed group or directly participating in hostilities can be crucial.

And Israel's database should therefore not be described as independent proof that every one of the 170 was lawfully targeted or was actively fighting at the moment he was killed.

But the Rebuttal Doesn't Erase the Larger Problem

At the same time, criticism of individual entries does not establish that the entire Israeli finding is false.

There is now independent evidence that some people internationally reported as journalists were also militants or combatants.

Indeed, it was not simply Israel saying so. In some cases, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad themselves identified the dead as their members, prompting CPJ to reconsider its own figures.

That makes two extreme versions of the story difficult to sustain.

The claim that every Palestinian media worker killed in Gaza was simply a journalist targeted by Israel ignores documented cases of combatants appearing in journalist casualty databases.

But the opposite claim — that Israel's new list proves that all 170 were active terrorists and therefore resolves every controversy surrounding journalists killed in Gaza — goes beyond what has been independently established from the evidence currently available to the public.

Why It Matters

The controversy raises a much larger question about reporting from Gaza.

Throughout the war, international casualty statistics involving journalists have frequently been presented as evidence that Israel was deliberately targeting the press.

The IDF says its new database demonstrates that the reality was considerably more complicated: some of those wearing the label “journalist” simultaneously held positions in terrorist organizations.

Critics counter that Israel cannot use documented cases of militants posing or working as journalists to dismiss the deaths of genuine journalists.

Both questions require evidence.

But one significant fact has already changed since many of the original Gaza journalist death counts were published:

We now know that at least some people presented to the world as slain journalists were also combatants — and some of the organizations that originally counted them have been forced to revise their own records accordingly.

That fact deserves to be included whenever Gaza's journalist casualty figures are cited.