Israel systematically targets families of Palestinian journalists: Report The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate said on Saturday that Israeli attacks on Palestinian journalists have expanded beyond killings, injuries, arrests and restrictions on coverage to include the systematic targeting of their families. In a report released, the union said Israeli forces have increasingly targeted the relatives of journalists in what it described as a deliberate effort to turn journalism into an existential threat, forcing families to pay the price for a loved one’s work. The findings, based on documentation by the syndicate’s Freedoms Committee, show that attacks on journalists’ families have become a repeated and organised pattern across 2023, 2024 and 2025. The committee recorded the deaths of about 706 relatives of journalists in the Gaza Strip during that period, stressing that the scale and consistency of the attacks indicate they are not the result of random wartime conditions. According to the committee, Israeli attacks killed about 436 relatives of journalists in 2023, followed by roughly 203 in 2024 and at least 67 more in 2025, even as many families were forcibly displaced and living in tents or makeshift shelters. The report said the most recent case came just days ago, when recovery teams found the bodies of journalist Hiba Al-Abadla, her mother and around 15 members of the Al-Astal family. Israeli aircraft had bombed their home west of Khan Younis nearly two years earlier. The syndicate said the figures show that hundreds of children, women and elderly people were killed solely because of a family member’s work in journalism, calling it a grave violation of international humanitarian and legal standards.