Israeli soldiers fire mortar shells, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, near Israel’s border with Gaza in southern Israel, Jan. 3, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Violeta Santos Moura

The headlines blare: More than 70 journalists have been killed in the Israel-Gaza war. But those headlines are misleading, and used to demonize Israel.

As of January 5, 2024, according to information published by the Committee to Protect Journalists, 24 of those 70 Palestinians who died were affiliated with Hamas media outlets, two were affiliated with Hezbollah, and one with Palestinian Islamic Jihad. All of these groups are designated terrorist entities by the United States. While these individuals were likely not combatants, they would, nevertheless, seem to be supporting nefarious propagandist activity, not engaging in legitimate journalism.

Facts matter, and saying that 70 journalists are dead, without specifying that so many are affiliated with terror groups, completely distorts the story.

For example, the Committee to Protect Journalists casualty list includes more than 10 people affiliated with Al-Aqsa TV. In March of 2010, under US President Barack Obama, Al-Aqsa TV was designated “a television station financed and controlled by Hamas.” According to the US government, it is “a primary Hamas media outlet and airs programs and music videos designed to recruit children to become Hamas armed fighters and suicide bombers upon reaching adulthood.”

The Treasury Department at the time further stated that it “will not distinguish between a business financed and controlled by a terrorist group, such as Al-Aqsa Television, and the terrorist group itself.”

The conflated deaths of Hamas propagandists with journalists is an attempt to assail Israel. The bias can be seen in a November 9 public letter signed by hundreds of editorialists and reporters, demanding “an explicit commitment from Israel to end the violence against journalists and other civilians.”

This letter jettisons any pretense of objectively, and reveals a clear anti-Israel antipathy, accusing the Jewish state of genocide, and the intentional targeting of journalists.

“We have not seen any evidence that Israel is intentionally targeting journalists” said US Department of State Spokesperson Mathew Miller on December 18; but the November 9 letter seemed to have attracted more attention than either his denial or the absence of factual support for the accusation.

Moreover, the letter from the press community rejects the casus belli for the Gaza invasion — the terrorist mutilation and massacre committed against civilians by Hamas on October 7. Hamas’ suicidal stranglehold of Gaza civilians and holding of Israeli hostages is also ignored.

Given this obvious tendentiousness, it is easy to see why reporters consider Hamas propagandists as benign or innocent victims in the Gaza war.

By contrast, in the United States war against Al-Qaeda, there was no mainstream, editorial sentiment that Adam Gadahn, the American who traveled to the Afghanistan/Pakistan region in order to serve Osama bin Laden, was an innocent, unintended fatality, when killed by a US drone attack.

Gadahn was labeled, even by the mainstream press, as a terrorist and a “Propagandist for Al Qaeda Who Sold Terror in English.” As a spokesperson for an infamous terror group, Gadahn was seemingly considered an appropriate target for elimination. His killing at the time was largely unquestioned by the United States press corp.

To be clear, there are legitimate journalists, of multiple nationalities and partisan interests, who have been unintentionally killed in Israel’s war of defense in Gaza. These deaths are all tragic. Journalism is a noble endeavor that serves the common good. Naturally, even anti-Western partisan journalists should be protected in battle, and their unintentional deaths mourned.

But those on the payroll of organizations designed to promote and defend the actions of terrorists should not be considered in the same class as journalists. They do not objectively or even subjectively report news. Their only evil, criminal purpose is to abet the machinery of mass murder and terror. To mourn the deaths of these terror propagandists is another example of media hypocrisy and glaring bias.

Barry Ziman is a novelist and government relations professional living in Virginia.