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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 Union.
The union’s Freedoms Committee said in a report released Saturday evening that Israeli forces are systematically targeting journalists’ families in what it calls a war to silence Palestinian journalists.
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The report says the attacks represent a deliberate strategy rather than war deaths.
Israeli violence against journalists has “evolved to take on a more dangerous and brutal dimension, represented by the targeting of journalists’ families and loved ones, in a clear attempt to transform 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 series of attacks from 2023 to 2025 reveals Israel’s intention to crush independent reporting in Gaza.
Targeting journalists’ families, he said, “reveals that the Israeli occupation is waging a global 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.
Witnesses to family murders
The committee said Israeli forces killed 436 relatives of journalists in 2023, 203 in 2024 and at least 67 this year. Deaths continued even after many families were forcibly displaced and sought shelter in tents and makeshift camps, he added.
The union cited a recent case near Khan Younis, where the bodies of journalist Hiba al-Abadla, her mother and around 15 members of the al-Astal family were found almost two years after Israeli planes bombed their home west of the city.
“Hundreds of children, women and elderly people have been killed because of a family member’s professional ties to journalism, in flagrant violation of all humanitarian and legal standards,” the committee said.
According to the findings, Israeli attacks repeatedly hit journalists’ homes, places of travel and areas known to shelter media workers and their relatives. In some cases, entire families were wiped out, leaving journalists alive to bear witness to their devastation.
The committee described this as a “qualitative shift” in Israel’s behavior, moving from individual targeting to collective punishment. By making families targets, he says, Israel aims to intimidate society itself and “dry up the environment that nurtures the media.”
Nearly 300 journalists killed
Beyond the death toll, the union warned of serious psychological damage. Journalists who survived after losing children, partners or parents now face trauma, family breakdowns and overwhelming feelings of guilt, and many have been forced to flee or suspend their work under the weight of Israel’s continued violence.
Over the past year, Israel has killed several journalists in Gaza in targeted assassinations – notably those of Al Jazeera Anas al-Sharif – falsely claiming that they are 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 per month – according to Shireen.ps, a monitoring site named after the veteran Al Jazeera correspondent. Abu Akleh. who was killed in the occupied West Bank in 2022.
Media freedom groups have condemned Israeli attacks on journalists, but the killings have taken place with impunity. Israel has never arrested or charged any of its soldiers for killing journalists.
As attacks on the media intensified during the Gaza war, Israel has killed dozens of Arab journalists over the past two decades. In December, a report According to Reporters Without Borders, Israel killed more journalists in 2025 than any other country.
