SIHR Submission to the UN Special Rapporteur on the Role of Media and the Targeting of Palestinian Journalists After 7 October 2023

Skyline International for Human Rights (SIHR) has submitted its contribution to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories Occupied Since 1967, Francesca Albanese, in response to her call for inputs on the role of media in the context of Israel's policies and practices toward the Palestinian people, especially after 7 October 2023.

Gaza has become the deadliest place in the world to practice journalism. At least 292 Palestinian journalists were killed by January 2026, with hundreds more wounded, over 200 arbitrarily arrested, and those who survived detention describing being beaten, sexually violated, starved, and denied medical care. No accountability mechanism, domestic or international, has delivered justice for a single killing.

Our submission documents three interlocking dimensions of Israel's genocidal war on Palestinian journalists. First, the deliberate targeting of Palestinian journalists through AI-assisted systems and digital incitement. Israeli forces have used quadcopters and drone strikes to kill journalists whose digital presence formed part of the targeting infrastructure. State actors including Israeli military spokesperson Avichay Adraee and the IDF's official X account have run coordinated campaigns publicly labeling Palestinian journalists as terrorists, stripping them of protected status and manufacturing justification for targeting them—campaigns that consistently and demonstrably preceded their killing.

Second, the role of digital platforms in suppressing Palestinian documentation while amplifying Israeli narratives that enable and justify genocide. YouTube has removed footage of Israeli strikes on hospitals and civilian infrastructure uploaded by journalists in Gaza. Wikipedia's neutrality policy was weaponized to suppress the term "genocide" from its own article on the subject. Meta approved 94 per cent of Israeli Cyber Unit takedown requests, resulting in the removal of over 90,000 posts and the systematic erasure of Palestinian journalistic content. The same platforms have allowed state-sponsored incitement against Palestinian journalists to remain online without intervention.

Third, the complicity of technology companies in the infrastructure used to target and kill journalists. Amazon Web Services provided Israel's military intelligence with what sources described as "endless storage" for surveillance data on almost every Palestinian in Gaza, including billions of intercepted phone calls. Microsoft's Azure stored a mass surveillance program recording Palestinian civilian communications. These systems feed AI targeting programs that algorithmically designate Palestinians, including journalists, for killing.

SIHR calls on the Special Rapporteur to urge the ICC to prosecute those responsible for the killing of Palestinian journalists as war crimes, to call on platforms to overhaul their content moderation policies and publish full transparency reports on government takedown requests, and to affirm that internet shutdowns during genocide are incompatible with press freedom and international humanitarian law.

About SIHR
Skyline International for Human Rights (SIHR) is a non-profit organization dedicated to defending digital freedoms across the Southwest Asia and North Africa (SWANA) region. Through monitoring, in-depth research, and advocacy, SIHR documents digital rights violations spanning government surveillance, platform censorship, digital freedoms, and the lethal use of artificial intelligence.