Lebanese journalist killed by Israel received death threats from now-unmasked Israeli journalist
No Frontiers identified the death threat sender of Lebanese journalist Amal Khalil, who was murdered by Israel on Wed., while her journalist colleague managed to escape.
Lebanon—At 2:45 (14:45) on Wednesday, the Al-Akhbar correspondent Amal Khalil and photojournalist Zeinab Faraj were driving en route to an Israeli bomb site near the southern Lebanese city of al-Tayri when they were attacked by an Israeli aircraft.
The two journalists ran for shelter in a nearby house and, at 2:50 (14:50), Khalil contacted her editors about the attack. News began to spread that two Lebanese journalists were under siege by Israeli forces, prompting the Red Cross and Civil Defense to assemble and contact the Israeli army for permission to rescue the trapped journalists.
While fully knowing these women were journalists, at 4:27 (16:27), Israeli aircraft bombed the house. Minutes later, the Israeli military gave the Red Cross permission to retrieve the journalists.
Faraj managed to be rescued and was taken to hospital, but Khalil’s body was still trapped under the rubble. The Red Cross and Civil Defense workers were fired upon by Israeli forces while evacuating Faraj, and were blocked for hours by Israeli army from resuming rescue and excavation efforts for Khalil.
Khalil is now the 13th journalist murdered by Israel in the past 7 weeks, according to Databases for Palestine.
A timeline of the Israeli attack can be read here by the Al-Akhbar news outlet, and another timeline here by Al-Manar correspondent Sayed Hashem.
Below, you can watch the Lebanese Civil Defense workers excavate the house Khalil and Faraj were trapped in, and where Khalil was ultimately martyred.
“We know where you are & we will reach you when the time comes”
For nearly two years, Amal Khalil had lived with an Israeli target on her back. By 2024, Israel’s murder spree of journalists in Gaza were well underway, yet the Zionist regime was just beginning to target journalists in Lebanon during their invasion into the country.
In September 2024, Khalil received anonymous death threats from a WhatsApp number that, at the time, were attributed to the IOF. The sender urged her to flee Lebanon “if you want to keep your head connected to your shoulders.”
But yesterday, No Frontiers broke news of the alleged identity of the anonymous WhatsApp account that sent death threats to Amal Khalil in 2024, which alarmed Khalil and her colleagues at the Union of Journalists in Lebanon.
The target had been drawn.
On Nov. 13 2024, shortly after recieving these threats, Khalil and her team were targeted by Israeli drone.
“When the drone fired the first missile, naturally we ran in the opposite direction,” Amal Khalil told RT, in case a second bomb was struck. While running away, Khalil says she had the wherewithal to send a voice message to her Al-Akhbar press team: “They targeted us, publish it now as breaking news.”
Yet with no international consequences to the Zionist regime, Israel continued targeting journalists with impunity.
The day Khalil was killed, over WhatsApp with No Frontiers, the death threat messenger unmasked himself, and claimed to be Gideon Gal Ben Avraham. According to Avhraham's YouTube account bio, he is a self-proclaimed "orientalist," freelance journalist, researcher, and expert in international relations.
His account YouTube account handle @Gladiator32-g8t matches the WhatsApp account profile photo of Russell Crowe’s character from the movie Gladiator.
The two anonymous messages Avhraham sent Khalil in 2024 a month before she was targeted by Israeli drones were terrifying and sociopathic.
First message:
Alright, my lady, you are moving from one village to another, but you still haven’t gone to enough funerals or hospitals. There is a lot of grief & sorrow behind that smile you try to show on Twitter. Let’s see what your answer will be… Is your house still standing, Anisa (Miss)? I hope so?
The second message Khalil received urged her to flee:
We know where you are & we will reach you when the time comes. Even though you are not important to us, in the end we will take everything into account. I suggest you flee to Qatar or somewhere else if you want to keep your head connected to your shoulders :)
Now, you can listen to the voice of the Gideon Gal Ben Avraham, who anonymously threatened the life of Khalil.
He claims journalists targeted by Israel are intelligence operatives passing along information to either Hezbollah or Hamas. "If you are supporting terror, you need to know that you are destinated [sic] for death".
Voice memo #1
Voice memo #2
Voice memo #3
It’s unclear if Avhraham was in Israel’s armed forces at the time he sent Khalil his death threats, or if the journalist maintains any connections to Israel’s military or intelligence.
Still, journalists in Lebanon and Palestine’s Gaza Strip and West Bank often recieve death threats from anonymous accounts, many are presumed to be Israeli military intelligence. And often these death threats are followed by Israeli attacks and successful assassinations.
On Wednesday, the Lebanese journalist union condemned the attack on Khalil and Faraj, stating Israel’s targeting of Khalil and Faraj “is not an isolated incident, but comes within a repeated context of violations targeting Lebanese media professionals, with martyrs having fallen among them, which necessitates a firm stance from the international community to put an end to these practices.” **
Watch the screen recording of the exchange with Gideon Gal Ben Avraham.