From Gaza to Tehran, why journalists are frontline targets in the Middle East - Region

Al-Ahram Weekly

a day ago

As missiles rain down and cameras go dark, a new front in modern warfare has emerged: the systematic targeting of journalists. From Tehran to Gaza, media workers are being bombed, shot, and silenced—not for what they've done, but for what they dare to show.
On 16 June, broadcaster Sahar Emami was halfway through her evening bulletin when the building shook. The missile struck like thunder. The lights blew out. Smoke filled the room. Somewhere down the corridor, someone screamed.
An Israeli airstrike had just hit the compound of Iran's state broadcaster, IRIB, in Tehran. Emami paused only briefly, running for cover as the shockwaves intensified. She returned to her chair moments later—composed, defiant—and resumed the live broadcast.
File Photo: A snapshot of Broadcaster Sahar Emami after an Israeli strike hit the building.
The attack killed producer Masoumeh Azimi and news editor Nima Rajabpour. Many others were wounded.
"This was part of a plan to destroy 'the regime's symbols,'" American-Iranian journalist, formerly based in Beirut, Séamus Malekafzali told Ahram Online. "If they can stop IRIB from broadcasting and kill its reporters, they can prevent the state from informing people about what is happening in their own country."
"It has a chilling effect on going back to work and on associating oneself with its reporters," he added.
The strike on IRIB was part of a growing Israeli strategy of targeting "hostile" media infrastructure.
Iran responded with missiles aimed at Israel's Channel 14 and Channel 12. The strike caused structural damage but no casualties. Iran's government labelled Channel 14 a "terror network" tied to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition.
Israel condemned the attack as a strike against civilian media. But in Tehran, the questions had already shifted.
"We heard the bombs around us, our windows shook, and we kept working," wrote Iranian journalist Ruhollah Nakhaee to Ahram Online. "Some of us had to move our families out of Tehran and return to work alone."
"They [the West] brushed off IRIB being hit because it's state TV," he said. "The BBC is state TV. The VOA is state TV. Would anyone react the same if they were targeted? I'm very aware that if any of our offices are hit, no one will ask why. And even if they do, it won't matter."
The language of international law offers no protection, he adds.
"After all Israel has done with blanket support from the West, terms like 'international law' mean nothing here. They never did."
Cross-border attacks and the information war
File Photo: Reuters video journalist Issam Abdallah. Photo courtesy of social media.
The strike on IRIB reflects a growing pattern of Israeli attacks on journalists in the region. On 13 October 2023, the Israeli army opened tank fire on seven reporters clearly marked as press while filming on a hillside near Alma Al-Shaab, southern Lebanon.
Reuters video journalist Issam Abdallah was killed. AFP photojournalist Christina Assi lost her leg. Five others were injured.
Investigations by AFP, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the United Nations all concluded the strike was deliberate.
"Despite extensive evidence of a war crime … Israel has faced zero accountability," said Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) President Jodie Ginsberg in a 2024 report.
"All over Palestine and in southern Lebanon, the primary aim of assassinating all these journalists has been to prevent the dissemination of what is happening on these fronts to the rest of the world," Malekafzali said. "They attack reporters no matter what network they're from … as long as they are focused on exposing Israeli atrocities."
Reporting from the front lines in Gaza and the West Bank
File Photo: A Palestinian woman holds the body of her son, killed in an Israeli strike. Photo courtesy of Salma Al-Qaddoumi's Instagram.
By the second month of the ongoing genocide, Gaza had already become the world's most dangerous environment for journalists.
On a blistering August morning, journalists Ibrahim Muhareb, Salma Al-Qaddoumi, Ezzedine Muasher, Rasha Ahmed, and Saeed Al-Lulu were documenting displacement in Gaza's Hamad City when an Israeli tank opened fire. Muhareb was shot in the leg. Al-Qaddoumi and her friend Mahmoud rushed to carry him to safety.
"But snipers opened fire on us. Ibrahim [Muhareb] was killed. Mahmoud was wounded. I was shot in the back—the bullet exited near my heart. I was clearly marked as press. I wore my vest. And yet, they aimed at us deliberately," Al-Qaddoumi told Ahram Online.
Since October 2023, at least 226 journalists have been killed, 430 injured, 48 detained, and 119 media offices or institutions destroyed in Palestine—mostly in Gaza—according to the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate (PJS). The PJS also reported that the number of journalists killed represents nearly 20 percent of all Palestinian journalists.
"For over twenty months, we've tried to deliver Gaza's image to the world," says Al-Qaddoumi. "But we are exhausted—physically, emotionally, spiritually. We are weary of capturing massacres, of photographing shredded bodies."
"Gaza needed its story told. The displacement was relentless, the bombing spared no neighbourhood, and there simply weren't enough journalists to document every massacre," she explained.
Al-Qaddoumi was nearly killed doing just that.
File Photo: A woman holding her children's hands, with several Israeli Army vehicles behind her in Jenin, the occupied West Bank. Photo courtesy of Obada Tahayna's Instagram .
In the northern West Bank, Obada Tahayna, Jenin-based correspondent for Al Jazeera and Free Palestine TV, faces the same threat.
"In Jenin, being a journalist is extremely hazardous. Every day could be my last," Tahayna told Ahram Online.
Since 21 January, Israel has carried out its most expansive military operation in the West Bank since 2002.
"The vest no longer offers protection," Tahayna says. "It's a target. The occupation forces recognise it. That makes you a target for attack, pursuit, and detention."
He has been beaten, detained, and had his phone confiscated—but persists.
"If we fall silent, it would be as if nothing ever occurred."
Media coverage of the West Bank was severely curtailed after Israel closed the Al Jazeera media office in Ramallah last September.
When did journalists become targets of war?
The deliberate targeting of media workers has become increasingly systematic.
In 2001, the United States bombed Al Jazeera's Kabul office during its invasion of Afghanistan. In 2003, it struck the network's Baghdad bureau, killing Palestinian correspondent Tareq Ayyoub. Both incidents were never meaningfully investigated. In 2007, leaked US military footage—later published by WikiLeaks as "Collateral Murder"—showed a helicopter crew killing civilians, including two Reuters journalists in Iraq, laughing as they opened fire.
In asymmetric conflicts, especially in the digital age, narrative warfare is as decisive as territory.
"The Israeli narrative spreads rapidly and is presented as the sole truth," Tahayna says.
The journalist thus becomes not just an observer but a counter-narrator.
"The Palestinian journalist does not merely transmit news. He is part of the event itself—threatened, under pressure, yet resolute. Perhaps the world doesn't realise how much we risk so people may see—not for personal gain."
Today, journalists are increasingly seen as affiliates, particularly those working for national broadcasters, local agencies, or partisan outlets. Their presence challenges the monopoly of official narratives, and their footage often outpaces state messaging.
The limits of international protection
Despite protections under international humanitarian law, its application remains inconsistent.
The 2002 killing of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl sparked global outrage and immediate diplomatic pressure. The US government launched high-level investigations, resulting in arrests and convictions.
File Photo: Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. AFP
By contrast, the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh in 2022—filmed, verified, and acknowledged even by Western allies—has led only to prolonged inquiries, tepid statements, and no justice.
Journalists from the Global South are often seen not as independent professionals but as extensions of their geographic or political contexts.
Groups such as Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF), the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), and CPJ continue to track deaths, demand inquiries, and issue press freedom alerts. However, much of their work yields only expressions of solidarity, rather than justice.
Malekafzali summed it up:
"Reporters can be maimed, killed, obliterated … but they will always be fundamentally untrustworthy to the West unless they've been granted access to its vaulted institutions."
"The Israeli victims are foregrounded," he stressed. "We know many of their names by now, even if we don't live there. But we rarely know about the Palestinians, Lebanese, and now Iranians killed by the Israeli army—except as numbers in the death toll."
"We will not be silenced"
Despite the risks, journalists continue working—not because they are safe, but because the world needs their voices.
"If I could capture just one photo that carries my voice to the world," Al-Qaddoumi says, "I would want it to show Gaza's beauty—the children, the youth, the women. Gaza is full of talent, creativity, brilliance. And yet many of those vibrant young people are now amputees—or martyrs. Why? For what crime?"
"To me, photography is an act of resistance. It is documentation. It is a message of steadfastness. We are here, on the ground. And we will not be silenced," she concludes.
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