Journalist group drops 22 from Gaza war dead after listed as combatants

The CPJ said it has continuously revisited tallies as new evidence emerges since it began tracking the killings of media workers in 1992.

NEW YORK - The Committee to Protect Journalists said on Sept 24 it had removed 22 people from its list of media workers killed in the Gaza war after a review triggered by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad obituaries identified some as combatants, although it still named Israel the world’s leading killer of journalists.

With the reclassifications, the committee now concludes that Israel is responsible for the deaths of 191 journalists or other media workers in Israel or the occupied Palestinian territories since the start of the war, sparked by Hamas’s bloody Oct 7, 2023 attack on Israel.

The New York-based group that defends media rights is barred like other journalists and researchers from entering the Gaza Strip independently, but says it reviewed published work, social media posts, photographs, videos, and statements of deceased journalists and other published materials before enlisting an outside auditor to assess the process.

“The accuracy and credibility of CPJ’s research are fundamental to our mission and to efforts to seek accountability and justice for journalists and media workers around the world,” the group’s CEO Jodie Ginsberg said in a statement.

The CPJ said it has continuously revisited tallies as new evidence emerges since it began tracking the killings of media workers in 1992.

“We base the determinations we make solely on whether individuals meet our definitions of who we consider to be a journalist, not an individual’s affiliation or views, nor in response to pressure or intimidation from any government or interest group,” Ginsburg said.

Israeli forces “remain responsible for by far the majority of killings of journalists and media workers worldwide since 2023,” the CPJ said in a statement.

The group said it was taking 22 people off its list of slain media workers in the conflict, bringing to 36 the net total removed.

The committee also reinstated four people it said had been wrongly removed from the tally.

It separately also reclassified two Israelis killed in the Hamas attacks on Oct 7 as journalists.

The changes came in part after the committee decided it will now exclude anyone who is actively part of the military arm either of a country or a non-state actor such as Hamas.

It had earlier included journalists in military media units if they were not known to have actively engaged in combat.

Israel has repeatedly dismissed criticism of its killings of journalists, saying either that Gaza media workers were part of Hamas and therefore combatants, or that they were not the intended targets.

Hamas and other militants carried out the deadliest ever attack against Israel on Oct 7, 2023, killing 1,221 people and dragging 251 others as hostages into Gaza, according to Israeli official figures.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has displaced virtually the entire population of Gaza, damaged or destroyed the vast majority of buildings and killed more than 73,900 people, according to the Gaza health ministry, which operates under Hamas and whose figures are considered reliable by the United Nations. AFP