"Publishing my son’s name on that list is a second assassination," begins 70-year-old Bakr al-Louh. "The first time, they killed his body. Now they are killing his legacy and his career as a journalist. They are killing him in his grave."
His son, Ahmed al-Louh, was a photojournalist working for Al Jazeera. He was 39 when an Israeli strike hit a civil defence post in Nuseirat refugee camp, in central Gaza, on 15 December 2024. He had returned there shortly before, after filming ambulances carrying the bodies of people killed in an earlier Israeli strike nearby.
On 1 October, the family found Ahmed’s name and photograph in The Press Files, an online database published by the Israeli occupation. It names 170 Palestinian journalists and media workers killed in Gaza and claims they were members or fighters of armed factions.
"This news destroyed us," his father says. He says the allegations against Ahmed are "lies, with no basis in truth."
Ahmed’s page on the site lists him as a military operative in Hamas’s armed wing. When The New Arab viewed it on 11 October, it contained no supporting evidence. Its only image linked to an internal address and did not load.
The Israeli army claims the database is the product of an in-depth investigation, drawing on open-source information, documents seized in Gaza, interrogations of alleged militants and intelligence gathered during military operations.
But the evidence it presents varies widely, from cropped documents to old photographs.
In 49 cases, the main evidence is an obituary published by an armed group. An analysis by +972 Magazine found that 59 of the pages contain no evidence at all, only a line saying the claim is based on intelligence sources.
For Bakr al-Louh, the list is an extension of the war on Gaza’s journalists. Targeting them, he says, is "an attempt to silence the free word and the truth, because the occupation doesn’t want any voice or image to come out of Gaza that exposes its massacres."
The fear does not stop with the dead. "We have a real fear that these accusations will reach the rest of the family," he tells The New Arab. If any of them needs urgent medical treatment outside Gaza, he worries Israel could reject them on security grounds.
‘He moved in the open’
Ahmed Khaireddine, 30, was a cameraman for Al-Quds Al-Youm. He was killed on 27 December 2023, when an Israeli strike hit his home in Beit Lahia, in northern Gaza. His uncle Mohammed Khaireddine, a journalist with Al-Aqsa TV, died with him, along with 23 other members of the family.
The Press Files describes Ahmed as an Islamic Jihad commander and lists his employer as Al-Aqsa TV, the channel his uncle worked for. His brother Basel, 36, a journalist himself, says the photograph on the page is fabricated. He says he had never seen it in his life. He believes the way his brother died is the clearest proof the allegations are false.
"Before he was killed, Ahmed spent more than 80 days moving around with his camera and his blue vest, covering al-Shifa and the Indonesian hospitals," he tells The New Arab.
"If he had really been a military target, they would have picked him off in the streets and public squares, where he moved openly. But he was killed with his family, in a massacre that destroyed three adjoining houses at once and killed more than 30 civilians."
Many of the names on the list, he says, belong to colleagues he saw every day. "We saw them all the time where journalists gathered at hospitals and out in the field, and we never once saw them among gunmen or fighters. They were doing their work in the open, and the drones above them knew very well they were civilians doing their jobs," Basel says.
He says Israel is deliberately confusing political affiliation with combat. "A Palestinian is born with a political affiliation. That is nothing shameful, and it does not take a journalist out of the civilian work protected under international law."
'A ready-made warrant'
Photojournalist Bilal Abu Samak says the database’s real purpose is to justify the killing of journalists who covered the war. He and Mohammed both describe the accusations as a ready-made warrant, one that could be used against journalists who are still alive and still reporting.
Gaza’s journalists, Abu Samak says, are civilians who wear protective vests and carry no weapons.
"Through this list, they are trying to terrify us and force us to abandon journalism, especially as they keep barring international journalists from entering Gaza to document their violations," he says.
"We demand real protection for press crews, and that the professional legacy of our colleagues who were killed be preserved."
Israel has barred foreign reporters from Gaza since the start of the war, apart from brief visits escorted by the army, and denies deliberately targeting journalists.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) told The New Arab it was still reviewing all the claims in the database. When new information emerges about the killing of a journalist anywhere in the world, it said, it reviews each case independently and updates its records.
CPJ published the database a week after completing its own review.
On 24 September, the New York-based group removed 22 people from its list of journalists killed in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory. It found that 19 of them had been militants or had taken part in combat, and that three could not be confirmed as journalists.
CPJ now counts 191 Palestinian journalists and media workers killed by Israeli forces. It said Israeli forces remain responsible for the large majority of journalist killings worldwide since 2023, and that each case in its review required interviews with at least two independent, credible sources as well as desk research.
The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate puts the toll higher, at more than 260. Its secretary-general, Ahed Farawneh, says the timing of the Israeli database is no accident.
"The occupation is trying to get around the huge numbers of journalists killed by levelling these false accusations of links to armed groups," he says, "to justify targeting them after a global outcry and strong condemnation from journalists’ unions and international organisations."
When the syndicate looks at the lives of those killed, he says, it finds that "they were working under the sun," in plain sight and far from any armed faction.
The syndicate says it applies criteria matching those of the International Federation of Journalists before recognising anyone as a journalist killed in the line of duty.
It is also building a case file of killings, injuries, arrests, destroyed offices and homes, and families wiped out and documenting the ban on foreign press and on bringing cameras and equipment into Gaza.
"We have obtained power of attorney from the families of those killed, and from injured journalists and former detainees, to file cases at the International Criminal Court," Ahed says.
"Unfortunately, the court is still stalling on opening this file. But together with the International Federation of Journalists, we insist on it, and on the families’ right to take the occupation to court."
He points to earlier legal efforts over the killings of journalists Shireen Abu Akleh, Ahmed Abu Hussein and Yaser Murtaja. The syndicate is also working with rights groups and legal experts to bring cases in countries whose laws allow prosecution of war crimes committed abroad.
'In case of doubt'
Hussein Hammad, a specialist in media and human rights, says the database deliberately blurs the line between political or institutional affiliation and taking a direct part in hostilities.
Working for a media outlet linked to a political faction, or sympathising with one, does not strip a journalist of civilian protection, he says.
International humanitarian law is clear on this. Article 79 of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions states that journalists on dangerous professional missions in armed conflict are civilians and must be protected as such.
Under Article 51, civilians lose that protection only "for such time as they take a direct part in hostilities." Article 50 adds that "in case of doubt whether a person is a civilian, that person shall be considered to be a civilian."
Accusing journalists after they have been killed, with no chance to answer the charges, has no legal value, Hammad says, and amounts to a cover for extrajudicial killing.
International justice, he adds, does not accept military verdicts based on evidence the victim or their lawyer can never see or challenge. He says the response must be to document every violation, gather physical evidence and build cases for court.
For Bakr al-Louh, the fight is also about memory. His son’s last assignment was to document the dead of Nuseirat being carried to hospital. Shortly afterwards, he was among them.
Ismail Nofal is a Gaza-based journalist specialising in human interest stories
This article was published in collaboration with Egab