Israel’s war in Gaza has not only been fought with drones, tanks and air strikes. It has also been waged through words, videos and carefully crafted narratives. At the heart of that effort is the army’s shadowy "Legitimisation Cell", a communications unit tasked with shaping international perceptions of the conflict.
According to the independent Israeli media outlet +972 Magazine, its mission is clear: to scour the lives of dead and living journalists for any trace of Hamas links, however tenuous, to justify killing them.
More than a dozen journalists have been killed in Israeli air strikes in Gaza in recent weeks, highlighting what analysts describe as a deliberate military strategy to criminalise Palestinian reporting.
"The key task of the 'Legitimisation Cell' is to undermine the work done by Palestinian journalists and provide the excuse to kill them," said political scientist Ahron Bregman.
The Legitimisation Cell monitors reports from Gaza and pushes out counter-narratives on social media and international airwaves. In practice, it often portrays Palestinian reporters as Hamas operatives – claims that press advocates and analysts say are flimsy at best.
"The links Israel establishes between Palestinian journalists and Hamas are often weak, but in Israel’s Hasbara war [the public diplomacy of Israel voiced by the IDF or the PM's office] it is good enough to justify their killing," Bregman explained.
A war of narratives
The pattern has been evident in multiple high-profile cases. In early August, Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif was killed alongside four of his colleagues in a strike outside Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital. The Israeli army quickly circulated documents claiming he had been a Hamas operative since 2013. Yet even if taken at face value, the files showed his last contact with Hamas was in 2017 – years before the current war.
Al-Sharif, 28, had spent months covering northern Gaza, reporting on starvation and relentless air strikes. "I never hesitated for a single day to convey the truth as it is, without distortion or falsification," he wrote in a message prepared before his death.
Read moreFive Al Jazeera journalists, including Anas al-Sharif, killed in Israeli strike on Gaza
A similar tactic followed the killing of journalist Ismail al-Ghoul in July 2024, along with his cameraman. Weeks later, the army described him as a "Nukhba terrorist", a Hamas special forces branch, citing a 2021 document allegedly retrieved from a Hamas computer. But the same document listed him as receiving his rank in 2007 – when al-Ghoul was just ten years old.
An anonymous journalist working in Gaza told FRANCE 24 the Legitimisation Cell’s tactics are "alarming", saying they put reporters’ lives at risk by linking them to armed groups.
“We already work under constant fear – air strikes, losing colleagues, being silenced. Now the threat is also reputational, stripping us of international support and protection,” the journalist said. “It’s a systematic effort to delegitimise our voices and block the truth about Gaza from reaching the world. We are painted as targets, not professionals reporting the facts.”
In 2024, the organisation Forbidden Stories, which brings together journalists from around the world, investigated the killing of nearly a hundred Palestinian reporters by the Israeli army as part of its Gaza Project.
"The Israeli army participates in disinformation around journalists to suggest that all journalists operating in Gaza are Hamas agents," Executive Director Laurent Richard told Radio France.
"The reality is far more nuanced and complex…It usually starts with rumours and articles on sites close to the Israeli government, claiming a particular journalist is in fact a terrorist. Then, weeks or months later, that journalist is targeted by a drone."
'The worst conflict for reporters'
On Monday, Israel struck southern Gaza’s main hospital twice, killing at least 20 people, including five journalists, according to medical officials. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemned the strikes as part of Israel’s "progressive elimination of information in Gaza" and called for an emergency UN Security Council meeting.
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"How far will the Israeli armed forces go in their efforts to gradually eliminate information in Gaza? How long will they continue to defy international humanitarian law?" said RSF Director Thibaut Bruttin.
Media watchdogs estimate that around 200 journalists have been killed in nearly two years of fighting between Israel and Hamas, making Gaza the deadliest conflict for journalists in modern history. In April, Brown University’s Watson Institute described it as "quite simply, the worst ever conflict for reporters".
"Israel kills Palestinian journalists as if they were flies," Bregman said. "The Israeli method is simple: they allow into the Gaza Strip journalists and influencers they believe will support the Israeli narrative, and silence – often with bullets – those who contradict the Israeli narrative."
Controlling the story
Aside from the case of al-Sharif, Israel maintains that its operations do not intentionally target journalists, asserting that air strikes are aimed solely at militants and military infrastructure. The IDF did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the existence or activities of the Legitimisation Cell.
Following the latest hospital strike, the army’s chief of staff ordered a preliminary inquiry, stressing that the IDF "does not in any way target journalists as such".
Read more'Death follows us everywhere': Israel pounds Gaza City as it vows to press on with offensive
But press freedom groups say the pattern is clear: reporters smeared as militants, then killed in strikes justified by those same allegations. For Bregman, the logic is about information control, not battlefield necessity.
"This is all about Hasbara and controlling the narrative Israel wants the world to believe in. It has nothing to do with security and military operations," he said.
Israel extends its control over the Gaza narrative beyond the conflict zone, strictly regulating foreign reporting by allowing access only to journalists embedded with its forces
"This is one of the rare times in modern history when a conflict of this scale cannot be covered by journalists who wish to report from the ground," Richard said. "When a country refuses access to foreign journalists in a war zone, it poses a major democratic problem regarding access to information."
The Legitimisation Cell is more than a PR tool. It embodies the militarisation of information, where every word, image, or report is scrutinised as a potential threat. In this framework, journalists are not just messengers but become targets themselves.
"Being a journalist doesn't mean being a target, but unfortunately the Israeli army tries to label us as such, traumatizing both the public and reporters themselves,” the anonymous reporter said.
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