Here is a public relations problem: various press-freedom groups keep saying that Israel’s war in Gaza is the deadliest period for journalists ever recorded. The International Federation of Journalists has catalogued at least 240 journalists and media workers killed and called it ‘the deadliest period in the history of journalism.’ Reporters Without Borders says it has found dozens of cases in which journalists were targeted deliberately because of their reporting, and has filed multiple complaints with the International Criminal Court alleging war crimes against the press.
And here is a public relations solution: last week, the Israel Defense Forces published a database it calls the ‘Press Files’ — 170 slain Palestinians who, the IDF says, were not legitimate media workers at all but ‘militants in the military wings of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and other terrorist organizations.’ The database, produced by what the IDF calls an ‘in-depth investigation’ drawing on open-source material, documents recovered in Gaza, interrogations of alleged militants and operational intelligence, declares that the journalists-killed narrative ‘does not tell the full story.’
The thing about publishing your evidence, though, is that people can read it. Muhammad Shehada, a Palestinian political analyst and visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, sat down and read all 170 entries. His verdict, in a social media thread on Sunday reported by Common Dreams, was that the list is ‘the most sloppy shameless fraud possible.’ ‘In the overwhelming majority of those listed, the IDF presents ZERO credible evidence,’ he wrote. ‘In most of them, their pages are literally blank.’