ISRAEL has killed at least 706 family members of Palestinian journalists since the start of its genocidal war in Gaza in October 2023, according to the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate.
The syndicate’s Freedoms Committee said in a report released late on Saturday that Israeli forces are systematically targeting the families of journalists in ‘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.
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 Gaza.
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.
The syndicate said Israeli forces killed 436 relatives of journalists in 2023, 203 in 2024 and at least 67 this year. The deaths continued even after many families had been forcibly displaced and sought shelter in tents and makeshift camps, it said.
The syndicate 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 in the west of the city.
‘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.
According to the findings, 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 syndicate described this as a ‘qualitative shift’ in Israel’s behaviour, moving from individual targeting to collective punishment.
By turning families into targets, it said, Israel aims to intimidate society itself and ‘dry up the environment that nurtures the media’.
Beyond the death toll, the committee warned of severe psychological harm.
Journalists who survived after losing children, partners or parents now face trauma, family breakdowns and crushing guilt, and many have been forced to flee or suspend their work under the weight of Israel’s continuing violence.
Over the past year, Israel killed several journalists in Gaza in targeted assassinations, most notably Al Jazeera’s Anas al-Sharif, falsely claiming that they were members of Hamas.
They are among nearly 300 journalists and media workers killed in Gaza during the war over 26 months, an average of about 12 journalists a month, according to Shireen.ps, a monitoring website named after Al Jazeera’s veteran correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh who was killed in the occupied West Bank in 2022.
Media freedom groups have condemned the Israeli attacks on journalists, but the killings have proceeded with impunity. Israel has never arrested or charged any of its soldiers for killing journalists.
While the targeting of the news media has intensified during the war in Gaza, Israel has killed dozens of Arab journalists over the past two decades.
In December, a report by Reporters Without Borders (Reports Sans Frontieres – RSF) found that Israel killed more journalists in 2025 than any other country.
The 2025 round up report said: ‘Nearly half (43%) of the journalists slain in the past 12 months were killed in Gaza by Israeli armed forces.
‘In total, since October 2023, the Israeli army has killed nearly 220 journalists, at least 65 of whom were slain either due to their work or while they were working.’
The RSF report added that ‘Israel is the second country to imprison the largest number of foreign journalists. As of 1st December 2025, 20 Palestinian journalists are behind Israeli bars, 16 of whom were arrested over the past two years in Gaza and the West Bank.’
The group noted: ‘Currently, 135 journalists are missing in 37 countries. Some have been missing for more than 30 years. Although news professionals go missing all over the globe, the trend spikes sharply in Mexico (28) and Syria (37).’
Meanwhile, the Palestinian Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs Commission reported on Sunday on several cases of medical neglect among Palestinian detainees held in the Israeli Ofer and Megiddo prisons, following visits by its lawyers.
The commission noted the case of Nader Al-Sheikh from the village of Beit Surik, northwest of Jerusalem, who is serving a four-month administrative detention, who suffers severe tooth pain after being beaten during his detention, causing the loss of some of his his upper teeth.
Despite needing treatment, prison authorities have ignored his condition; he is currently held in Ofer Prison.
Another detainee, 19-year-old Mohammad Khalaf from Al-Am’ari refugee camp in Ramallah, serving six months of administrative detention, complains of pain in his left leg and requires medical care. He is also held in Ofer Prison.
18-year-old Ahmed Abed from Tulkarm suffers dizziness, vomiting, severe abdominal pain, and constipation following an urgent gallbladder surgery at HaEmek Hospital. He is currently detained in Megiddo Prison.
The commission held Israeli prison authorities fully responsible for ongoing medical neglect of Palestinian prisoners and called on international organisations, human rights institutions, and the Red Cross to intervene and address the issue comprehensively.
- The Palestine Authority Government Operations Room stated on Sunday that the Gaza Strip requires around 200,000 prefabricated housing units to meet the urgent humanitarian needs of displaced families and provide safer shelter amid harsh weather conditions.
In a press statement, the operations room said the current storm has flooded and destroyed thousands of tents across Gaza, worsening the humanitarian emergency.
The statement noted that the Al-Rasheed Coastal Street, stretching approximately 26km, was flooded, damaging tents set up along the road due to rising sea waves accompanying the storm.
Partially destroyed homes have also collapsed, posing a direct threat to residents’ lives, amid a lack of safe alternatives for shelter.
The statement added that humanitarian organisations are unable to meet the urgent needs of displaced persons due to severe shortages in supplies and ongoing restrictions by the Israeli occupation on aid entering the Strip.
The operations room called on the United Nations and international organisations to pressure Israel to allow the immediate entry of prefabricated housing units and shelter supplies to alleviate the suffering of displaced persons and reduce the life-threatening risks they face.
In a separate development, the Arab League on Sunday convened an emergency meeting of permanent representatives at the request of Somalia to discuss Israel’s recognition of the Somaliland region in Somalia as an independent country.
The meeting was held at the League’s headquarters and chaired by the United Arab Emirates, with the participation of Assistant Secretary-General Ambassador Hossam Zaki and representatives of member states.
The Palestinian delegation was headed by Palestine’s Permanent Representative to the Arab League, Ambassador Muhamad Al-Aklouk, along with Senior Counsellor Tamer Al-Tayeb.
Al-Aklouk reaffirmed Palestine’s full support for the unity, sovereignty, and political independence of the Federal Republic of Somalia, in line with international law, the United Nations Charter, and resolutions of the Arab League and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation.
He stressed Palestine’s rejection and condemnation of Israel’s recognition of part of Somalia’s territory, describing it as an illegal act by an occupying power that undermines Somalia’s unity and stability and supports separatism.
He said the move is part of Israel’s broader attempts, as a colonial power, to destabilise regional and international peace and security, warning that it violates peremptory norms of international law and the principle of respect for states’ territorial integrity and non-interference in internal affairs.
Al-Aklouk called on the international community, the UN Security Council, the Arab League, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, and the African Union to take legal, economic, political, and diplomatic measures against Israel, including economic boycotts, activating international accountability mechanisms, and freezing Israel’s participation in the UN General Assembly in accordance with Arab League resolutions.
He also warned that Israel has previously sought to use Somaliland within plans aimed at forcibly displacing the Palestinian people, particularly from the Gaza Strip, reaffirming Palestine’s absolute rejection of any forced displacement schemes under any name or pretext.