"We survived by a miracle": Al-Haq exposes Israel's journalist assassination campaign from six survivors
Analysis: In harrowing detail, the Palestinian human rights org Al-Haq gathered testimony from survivors of Israel's journalist assassination campaign to submit to UN
Around sunset on August 18, 2024, a group of journalists on assignment in Hamad City gathered together while covering the advance of Israeli army vehicles. As the journalists walked the street, an Israeli tank turned the corner and immediately advanced on the group.
A barrage of Israeli gunfire burst around the journalists, all of whom were wearing clearly marked blue “press” helmets, vests, or carrying camera gear. It was unmistakable. They were civilians. They were journalists.
While fleeing, photojournalist Ibrahim Mohareb was shot in the leg, and he collapsed to the ground. A female journalist (name withheld) for Agence France-Presse (AFP) stopped to help, lifting him onto her shoulder. At that moment, she didn’t realize she was shot in the back and through her chest.
“The rest of them were still running away, but Ibrahim started calling out, gesturing and pleading with me to come and get him out,” the AFP journalist told Al-Haq, a Palestinian human rights investigative group.
“I didn’t get him out, and the tank was advancing towards him. Of course, I had to go; I couldn’t just leave my mate behind. So I went to Ibrahim, grabbed him by the hand and said, ‘Focus on my shoulder, I’m going to get you out. Come with me.’”
Mohareb tried to get up but was shot once more. The severely injured AFP journalist managed to escape with three of her colleagues who helped carry her. The tank continued to shoot and pursue them as they sought shelter at a refugee camp—supposedly a “safe zone.”
Tragically, Mohareb was trapped by the advancing murderous Israeli army and was martyred. His body was recovered the next morning.
Footage from the attack posted by one of the survivors, journalist Ezzedine Muasher, shows utter chaos and terror as he and his colleagues desperately flee, every few steps hugging the ground to duck the assault.
This Israeli attack was first documented by the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PHCR) and then further investigated by Al-Haq. Mohareb was the fourth journalist murdered by Israel that August 2024.
In late April this year, Al-Haq submitted a report on Israel’s targeting campaign against Palestinians journalists to the UN Human Rights Commission, detailing a dozen Israeli attacks.
The report contains testimony collected from six press survivors who all endured deliberate Israeli assassination attempts, amounting to 12 total attacks.
Al-Haq writes: “Testimonies collected by Al-Haq reveal a consistent pattern: journalists are not merely caught in crossfire but are intentionally pursued and attacked, even while attempting to flee or after reaching areas designated as so-called ‘safe zones’ for forcibly displaced civilians.”
These six media survivors escaped aerial bombings from Israeli aircraft; they were fired upon by tanks, ground troops, and snipers. They watched their colleagues get killed or wounded, and many sustained life-altering injuries themselves.
Several journalists reported surviving multiple Israeli army attacks. A correspondent for TRT, known in the report as S.F.M.B., survived five assassination attempts. Another journalist reported surviving three attacks, and another survived two.
In nearly all 12 Israeli attacks, journalists were wearing clearly marked blue “press” helmets, vests, and passes, or traveling in “press”-marked vehicles, or situated in “safe zones” such as hospitals or refugee camps, and even in internet access areas known as civilian and journalist gathering points.
“Due to the scale, consistency, and context of these attacks, including overtly genocidal statements made by Israeli officials, the routine targeting of journalists and media workers indicate a pattern of conduct that further attests to Israel’s genocidal intent,” writes Al-Haq, a Palestinian human rights investigations organization.
Explore the table below for an overview of the circumstances surrounding the 12 Israeli press attacks documented by Al-Haq.
“There are no red lines”—S.F.M.B
Civilians, non-combatants, are a protected group under international law, yet are the primary targets in Israel’s genocidal campaign. This targeting includes journalists, civilians carrying out reporting duties, who often actively place themselves near active war or, in this case, genocide zones.
In August 2024, the latest attack that journalist S.F.M.B. survived, he was in a press tent shared with his colleagues.
My colleague [M.A-Z.] was next to me; he was hit by shrapnel in his left eye, which is still lodged there, and his condition is not good. There is another colleague, [M.K.] who was also hit by shrapnel in his right hand. We survived by a miracle. The bomb fell just one and a half meters from where I was standing, that is, by the vehicle bearing all the ‘TV’ and press markings—meaning the army knew these were areas with tents and fellow journalists.
One year later, in August 2025, Israel would target and kill renowned Al Jazeera journalist Anas Al-Sharif, along with five other journalists, in their press tent in Gaza City.
“Journalists remain in the direct line of Israeli targeting; there are no red lines,” S.F.M.B. told Al-Haq investigators. “Every day we stand here and appeal to Israel to spare journalists, yet Israel responds by targeting them.”
Israel and Israeli state media not only aspired to paint all Palestinian civilians (men, women, and children) as “Hamas terrorists”, but also sought to frame all Palestinian journalists as undercover “Hamas agents” and “affiliates.” Yet Israel isn’t just going after journalists for their reporting, but also their families.
“Israel has destroyed the homes of a large number of our colleagues, and the families of colleagues have been targeted and killed by Israeli aircraft.”
In November 2025, No Frontiers reported that Israel killed roughly half of all Palestinian journalists in Gaza in their homes or shelters by aerial bombings, while also killing hundreds of their family members in the same attack. According to data collected by Databases for Palestine, this pattern remains true.
On Thursday, May 28, the Zionist regime murdered Palestinian journalist Hossam Zidan by aerial bombing. He was sheltering in a displacement tent with his son in the southern city of Sidon, Lebanon. Zidan was an Al Alam TV correspondent originally from Kahn Younes in Palestine’s Gaza Strip.
The Israeli Nazareth District Court placed a target on his head in March, accusing him of being a spy—with no evidence—for the “Palestine branch” of Iran’s Quds Forces, citing his past reporting and ties to the Golan region as a correspondent for the Iranian TV news outlet.
“The Zionist entity’s insistence on deliberately assassinating journalists is evidence of a desperate fear that grips this symbol of darkness from the shining lights of truth; that degenerate entity that is well aware that the martyrdom of Hossam Zidan and all those who walk the path of honor and sublime human dignity is not an end, but rather the dawn of the greatest victory for the resistance,” wrote Al Alam in a statement on their correspondent’s martyrdom, translated into English.
As Palestine approaches nearly 1,000 days of Israeli genocide, Zidan is the 365th journalist and media worker to be murdered by the Zionist regime.
As journalist S.F.M.B. told Al-Haq in their human rights report: “Unfortunately, there is no immunity for journalists. We don’t even have a safe zone; we’re in tents on the roads with no safety whatsoever.”
View and download the full table below:
Overview:
The murder of jounalists is reprehensible and tragic. How come it is no longer “news” anymore? Thanks, Kalen, for keeping us in the loop and in the know.
I think of the murdered journalists and their families every day, and check in on the few who have been spared so far. Israel’s behavior, its very existence, is reprehensible.