Israel kills Gaza reporter Islam Abed as news outlets demand end to Israel's 'war on journalism'

Israeli forces on Sunday killed Palestinian journalist Islam Abed, a correspondent with Al-Quds Today TV, taking the total number of media workers killed in the enclave to 247.

The journalist was an on-air correspondent, who had been covering Israel’s assaults on the enclave and the subsequent humanitarian catastrophe since October 2023.

Al-Quds Today TV condemned her killing, stating "the Israeli killing machine will not succeed in silencing our voice, the voice of the Palestinian people".

According to reports in Arabic media, she was killed along with her husband and children after Israeli forces shelled a residential apartment in the Rimal neighbourhood of central Gaza City.

Gaza’s government media office issued a statement saying that Israel is "systematically" targeting Palestinian journalists, and urged the international community to act immediately and protect the remaining journalists on the ground.

The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate also denounced the killing of Abed, calling Israel’s direct targeting of reporters a "stain of shame" and added that it is a "full-fledged war crime added to the occupation’s long record of violations against journalists".

The syndicate said it holds Israel "fully responsible" for the killing of Abed, as well as the over 200 other journalists who were covering the atrocities in the besieged enclave.

It called on global media organisations and news outlets to take "urgent and effective action to hold Israeli leaders accountable for their ongoing crimes against Palestinian journalism".

Online, tributes have poured in from Abed from activists and other journalists.

"Journalist Islam Abed was martyred after an Israeli airstrike levelled her home in Gaza City. No battlefield, no crossfire, just the familiar occupation tactic of erasing witnesses alongside their families, ensuring no voice remains to document the crimes," one person wrote on X.

"In less than a week, Israel has bombed Palestine Lebanon. Syria. Yemen. they murdered the Prime Minister of Yemen along with cabinet members, drop grenades on women and children taking refuge in tents, they murdered journalist Islam Abed, along with her husband & children. If any other "country" did this they would be labelled terrorists…" another commented.

The killing of the journalist and unprecedented attacks on civilians in the enclave, coupled with Israel’s ban on foreign journalists entering the Strip has raised serious concerns over Tel Aviv targeting anyone who can be a witness to the genocide.

Despite the targeting of journalists being a crime under international law, Israel has continued to gather intelligence on the whereabouts of reports, directly targeting and killing them.

In Palestine, many have said that soon there will be no one left to report on the famine, the worsening humanitarian catastrophe, as well as the abduction and torture of civilians.

The world's leading genocide scholars' association on Monday passed a resolution saying that the legal criteria has been met to establish that Israel is indeed committing genocide in Gaza.

Eighty-six percent of those who voted among the 500-member International Association of Genocide Scholars backed the resolution declaring: "Israel's policies and actions in Gaza meet the legal definition of genocide in Article II of the United Nations Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948)".

Thibaut Bruttin, the Reporters Without Borders Director General said: "At the rate at which journalists are being killed in Gaza by the IDF, soon there will be no one left to keep the world informed. This is not only a war on Gaza, it is a war on journalism itself".

"Without them, who will speak of famine, who will expose war crimes, who will denounce genocides? Ten years after the unanimous adoption of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2222, we are witnessing, before the eyes of the entire world, the erosion of international law guarantees for the protection of journalists," he continued.

Israel’s war on Gaza has killed over 63,000 Palestinians since October 2023, displaced much of the population and triggered a dire humanitarian catastrophe.