One of the most common allegations leveled against Israel during two years of war with the Hamas terrorist group was that scores of journalists had died in the course of doing their job in Gaza, killed ostensibly by Israel.

Time and again, news reports piggy-backed on claims from the New York-based organization Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) that Israel was not just killing journalists in Gaza inadvertently, but was “targeting journalists and their families.” Similar accusations were spread by groups like Reporters Without Borders.

Scandalously, in June, 2025, the two groups co-authored an open letter demanding “full protection of journalists who continue to report under siege,” claiming that “200 journalists have been killed by the Israeli military,” it was signed by David Walmsley, editor-in-chief of The Globe & Mail.

These striking accusations were treated as de facto true by countless Canadian news media outlets, which repeated them without even a hint of skepticism.

In fact, even in the presence of significant evidence showing that many, if not most, of these supposed ‘journalists’ had ties to Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), these details were completely ignored, in favour of a more palatable narrative of ‘Israel is killing journalists,’ repeated again and again in the Canadian news media.

Groups like the Canadian Association of Journalists (CAJ) weighed in, accusing Israel of deliberate attacks against journalists, and condemning what it called the “targeting killing of journalists in Gaza,” allegations that were also spread by Fatima Syed, the group’s vice-president.

But now, more evidence suggests that the narrative of innocent journalists being killed isn’t the story it seems.

And now, a recent study by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center is asserting that a majority of the so-called “journalists” killed in Gaza – around 60 percent – were affiliated with Palestinian terrorist organizations like Hamas and PIJ.

The study reviewed the identities of 266 people who were identified as reporters or journalists, killed in Gaza between October 7, 2023, and November 30, 2025, and found that at least 157 of them, or about 60 percent, were active members of terrorist groups.

According to the research, 104 of the deceased were connected to Hamas, while 45 were connected to PIJ, while other terrorist groups represented were the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and others. All these groups are listed as banned terrorist entities in Canada.

The 114 page report exhaustively documented these connections, which was collected, according to a media report, from “public records, Palestinian media reports, and Hamas documents seized by the Israel Defense Forces during ground operations in Gaza.”

While the centre noted that many of the deceased were indeed employed by ‘news’ agencies like Al Jazeera, that did not change their identities as bona fide terrorists.

When unfounded accusations of Israel killing journalists in Gaza were made by activists, the Canadian Association of Journalists (CAJ) was quick to condemn Jerusalem, ignoring all evidence to the contrary. And now, when substantial evidence is now repudiating these same claims, CAJ is predictably silent, apparently preferring to simply ignore what it finds uncomfortable.

However, the CAJ does not have the luxury to be silent and to pretend that it is ignorant of evidence it doesn’t like. The group claims to promote “excellence in journalism, encouraging investigative journalism,” but its actions instead show an activist group more interested in anti-Israel ideology than facts.