The killing of six journalists outside Al-Shifa Hospital has pushed the number of Palestinian reporters killed since October to 238, the highest toll ever recorded in any conflict. Media and rights groups say this is no accident but a deliberate campaign to silence those documenting Israel’s crimes of mass killing, starvation and displacement in Gaza.

Journalists have long been demonised by Israeli officials, targeted with threats and smear campaigns before being assassinated in strikes on clearly marked press tents and vehicles. Among them was Al Jazeera’s Anas Al-Sharif, executed for refusing to abandon his coverage of the massacres unfolding across the Strip. Observers say these killings are not just violations of international law but part of a strategy to erase evidence of genocide.

Despite the dangers, Gaza’s press corps has continued to broadcast images and testimonies that exposed Israel’s starvation policy and mass bombardments. Legal experts argue that these images now form a body of evidence that may lead to prosecutions abroad. Israel, they say, has lost the “battle of images”, resorting to exterminating journalists in an attempt to hide atrocities from the world.

Under the protection of U.S. vetoes and international silence, Israel remains shielded from accountability, while Gaza’s journalists pay the ultimate price. Each camera destroyed, each reporter killed, is part of a war on truth itself, a war to bury Gaza’s voice under rubble and hunger. Yet their testimonies endure, carried beyond the Strip as living proof of crimes that can no longer be erased.