ISRAEL'S SYSTEMATIC TARGETING OF JOURNALISTS: THE WESTERN MEDIA REMAINS SILENT

This week Israel killed Lebanese journalist Amal Khalil. She was the ninth Lebanese journalist killed by the Israeli military this year. Israel has been engaged in the systematic targeting of journalists both in Gaza and Lebanon. But the western mainstream media has remained largely silent. New Zealand’s mainstream media has been no different. Television New Zealand and Radio New Zealand have avoided even acknowledging the mounting international legal findings that Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute genocide. Their silence on the killing of journalists mirrors their silence on the wider devastation.

 

ISRAEL'S KILLING of Lebanese journalist Amal Khalil, a 43-year-old reporter for al-Akhbar, marks another grim milestone in a war that has turned journalism itself into a frontline. According to The Guardian Khalil died after what colleagues described as a 'sustained Israeli attack', with rescuers prevented from reaching her as she lay trapped beneath rubble. Before her death, she had spoken publicly about receiving threats from an Israeli phone number warning her to leave southern Lebanon or be killed. She refused to abandon her post.

Khalil was the ninth journalist killed in Lebanon this year. Just weeks earlier, three more were killed in a double-tap strike — a method long associated with deliberate targeting. These deaths are not isolated incidents. They form part of a pattern that has become impossible to ignore.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Israel has killed 259 media workers since October 7, 2023 — including 210 Palestinian journalists in Gaza. No other conflict since CPJ began tracking deaths in 1992 comes close to this scale. The numbers are so extreme that they reshape the meaning of journalism in wartime. In Gaza and Lebanon, reporting is not merely a profession; it is an act of survival. The bravery of these journalists has been extraordinary.

Israel insists it does not target journalists. Some of its defenders in Western media and political circles have gone further, claiming — without evidence — that many of the dead were 'Hamas fighters in disguise.' This narrative has been repeated in New Zealand by Juliet Moses, President of the Zionist-controlled New Zealand Jewish Council. She has echoed the claim that journalists killed in Gaza were militants. As with many of her other assertions, no proof has been offered.

International law is unambiguous. Article 79 of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions states that journalists on dangerous professional missions 'shall be considered as civilians' and must be protected as such. Targeting them is a war crime. Yet in Gaza and now Lebanon, press vests and cameras have become markers of risk rather than protection.

The systematic killing of journalists serves a clear strategic purpose: to stop information from leaving the war zone. When reporters are silenced, atrocities unfold in the dark. When media workers are killed at a rate unprecedented in modern conflict, it becomes impossible to dismiss the pattern as accidental. Many analysts and human rights organisations argue that the assault on journalists fits within a broader framework of genocidal intent — not only the destruction of a people, but the destruction of their narrative, their witnesses, their chroniclers.

And yet, despite the scale of the killings, the Western mainstream media has remained largely silent. Outlets that loudly condemn attacks on journalists in Russia, China, or Iran have shown a striking reluctance to criticise Israel. There have been no major campaigns, no sustained coverage, no front-page editorials demanding accountability. The double standard is glaring.

New Zealand’s mainstream media has been no different. Neither commercial outlets nor public broadcasters have mounted any meaningful defence of Palestinian or Lebanese journalists. Organisations such as Television New Zealand and Radio New Zealand have avoided even acknowledging the mounting international legal findings that Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute genocide. Their silence on the killing of journalists mirrors their silence on the wider devastation.

This absence of solidarity is not a minor oversight. It is a failure of the very institutions that claim to defend press freedom. When journalists are killed in record numbers and the profession’s supposed guardians look away, the message is unmistakable: some reporters’ lives matter more than others. Some deaths are tragedies; others are inconveniences.

Amal Khalil’s killing is not just another casualty in another war. It is part of a deliberate campaign to extinguish the eyes and ears of the world. When journalists are targeted, the truth is targeted. When the truth is targeted, the public is disarmed.

The question now is not whether Israel is killing journalists — the evidence is overwhelming. The question is why so many in the West, including here in New Zealand, refuse to speak when the very foundations of press freedom are under attack. Silence, in this context, is not neutrality. It is complicity.