This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Israeli forces detain a photojournalist and distrain his equipment as they enclose the area around Jewish Brigade base where they ‘neutralized’ a Palestinian for allegedly carrying a knife according to their announcement in Hebron, West Bank on October 03, 2024. [Wisam Hashlamoun – Anadolu Agency]
A new report from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has ranked Israel as the third worst jailer of journalists in the world, behind only China and Myanmar, in a damning indictment of the state’s escalating war on press freedom.
The CPJ’s annual global census, released this week, recorded 320 journalists imprisoned worldwide as of 1 December 2025, with authoritarian governments using detention, legal harassment and violence to stifle independent reporting and silence dissent.
While China and Myanmar retained the top two spots, Israel’s position as the third worst jailer of journalists reflects its entrenched and systematic repression of Palestinian media workers, carried out through arbitrary arrests, administrative detention, and sweeping military censorship.
The report highlights the growing use of vague security charges, prolonged pretrial detentions, and denial of access to lawyers—tactics long used by Israel against Palestinian media workers.
Many of the journalists imprisoned by Israel are held under administrative detention, without formal charges or trial, a practice widely condemned by human rights organisations as a violation of international law.
The CPJ also confirmed that Israel continues to bar international journalists from entering Gaza, denying independent access to a war zone where it is conducting what leading legal scholars, including the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, have described as a genocide.
CPJ found that since 7 October 2023, Israel has Israel arrested more than 90 journalists during the course of the genocide and according to Reporters Without Borders killed at least 210.
Despite the mass killing of civilians and destruction of media infrastructure in Gaza, Israel has refused to allow international press into the territory, even as it claims to be a democratic state with “the most moral army in the world”.
“Israel, the only country on the worst jailers’ list that is traditionally considered a democracy, began imprisoning Palestinian journalists rapidly following the start of the Israel-Gaza war in October 2023,” the report said.
Regarding torture of prisoners CPJ said that the “greatest number of torture and beating claims since 1992 have occurred in Iran, followed by Israel and Egypt”.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAKeir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
The bodies of victims of the October 31, 2023 Israeli bombing of the Jabalia refugee camp in the Gaza Strip are lined up outside the Indonesian Hospital in Gaza City.(Photo by Fadi Alwhidi/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“The real figure is much higher,” said one UK lawmaker. “This is a ‘ceasefire’ in name only. The slaughter goes on.”
After two years of denial and deception, the Israel Defense Forces acknowledged Wednesday for the first time that over 70,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since October 2023, while continuing to deny the famine Israel caused by blocking humanitarian aid from entering the obliterated strip.
Israeli media including the Times of Israel, the Jerusalem Post, Haaretz, and others reported that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) accepts the accuracy of the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry’s (GHM) death toll, which currently stands at least 71,667, with more than 171,000 others wounded and 9,500 missing and presumed dead and buried beneath the rubble of bombed buildings.
“How many years did we spend screaming, with checked and re-checked figures, lists showing names and ID numbers, being told the numbers were completely fanciful despite rigorous, transparent verification, and now the IDF quietly accepts that they were correct all along,” Beirut-based journalist Séamus Malekafzali said on X in response to the IDF admission.
Experts—including the authors of multiple peer-reviewed studies in the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet—assert that the actual death toll in Gaza is much higher than reported. Last June, a study published in Nature reported 84,000 deaths in Gaza. Others say the toll could be even higher, with one Economist study estimating between 77,000-109,000 Gazans killed by Israeli forces.
“We should not care what the IDF accepts or not—they perpetrated the genocide,” said Jake Romm, the US representative for the Hind Rajab Foundation, which tracks suspected IDF war criminals and is named after a 5-year-old Palestinian girl massacred along with relatives and rescue workers by Israeli occupation forces on January 29, 2024. “Their communications are in service of that project.”
“This is, in any event, an admission that will only be used to discredit the real, much higher death toll as the scale of the atrocity becomes known,” Romm added.
After more than 2 years of Hasbara efforts to label journalists and NGOs as “useful idiots of Hamas” for using this data, the IDF has confirmed its accuracy. Yet with Gaza’s health system destroyed and long-standing aid restrictions, this estimate is only the tip of the iceberg. https://t.co/GDxppEr3ir
Israeli academic Ori Goldberg was also skeptical of the IDF’s admission, asserting on X: “’Accepts’ means that even the vast network of lies no longer holds. If the IDF ‘accepts’ 70,000, it has killed innumerably more.”
While the IDF accepted GHM’s death toll, it argued that the famine in Gaza—which officially lasted from August-December 2025, according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, the standard international framework for classifying food insecurity and malnutrition—did not happen.
GHM says at least 453 Palestinians, including 150 children, have died of malnutrition in Gaza since October 2023. The IDF contends that the figure is a mix of lies and misleading reporting about people who had preexisting health conditions before they starved to death.
However, famine experts argue that Israel orchestrated a carefully planned campaign of mass starvation in Gaza.
Throughout the war, Israeli leaders, their supporters abroad, and mainstream US media attempted to discredit GHM casualty figures by casting aspersions upon the “Hamas-run” ministry. This, despite Israeli military intelligence deeming the figures accurate and historical confirmations of their reliability.
“The phrase *Hamas* Health Ministry was used as a slur for years to signal unreliability, even though it was pointed out again and again that its numbers had always held up,” noted journalist Jasper Nathaniel, adding sardonically that “I’m sure the ‘Pallywood’ crowd will be rushing to apologize today.”
Well this is truly appalling:
The IDF now accepts the Gaza Health Ministry’s conservative official death toll figure of 71,000 Palestinians. Yet, for 2 years of a genocide it claimed those same figures were false – and the BBC News and other media insisted on seeding doubt in… https://t.co/D5W7vj9huL
The International Center for Justice for Palestinians (ICJP) said on social media that “every media outlet that cast doubt over these figures with dogwhistling phrases like ‘Hamas-run MoH’ is complicit in these killings.”
“In truth, the 71,000+ figure is conservative,” ICJP added. “Palestinian bodies are buried under the rubble and can’t be counted and many more have died from malnutrition due to Israel’s deliberate starvation of Palestinians. Different tools, same outcome: Israeli genocide of Palestinians.”
In the United States—which has supported Israel’s annihilation of Gaza with tens of billions of dollars in armed aid and diplomatic cover including vetoes of numerous United Nations Security Council ceasefire resolutions during both the Biden and Trump administrations—the House of Representatives approved a bipartisan amendment in June 2024 that banned US officials from using State Department resources to cite GHM casualty figures.
The amendment’s lead sponsor, Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.)—whose all-time top campaign contributor is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)—contended that “at the end of the day, the Gaza Ministry of Health is the Hamas Ministry of Health.”
Jared Moskowitz wrote the legislation to bar the state department from citing data from the Gaza Health Ministry. Now even the IDF accepts these numbers. The real death toll is certainly much higher.
A senior IDF official told the Times of Israel that the military is in the process of determining how many of the Gaza dead were members of Hamas or other militant groups.
While the Israeli government has claimed a historically low civilian-to-combatant kill ratio in Gaza, classified IDF intelligence data obtained last year during an investigation by Israeli journalist and filmmaker Yuval Abraham of +972 Magazine and Local Call and Guardian senior international affairs correspondent Emma Graham-Harrison revealed that 5 in 6 Palestinians—or 83%—killed by the IDF through the first 19 months of the US-backed war were civilians.
Former Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi—who led the IDF through most of the war—acknowledged after retiring last year that “over 10%” of Gaza’s population, or about 220,000 Palestinians, had been killed or wounded as of September 2025.
“This is not a gentle war,” Halevi said at the time, “we took the gloves off from the first minute.”
Following the Hamas-led October 7 attack on Israel, the IDF dramatically loosened its rules of engagement, effectively allowing an unlimited number of civilians to be killed when targeting a single Hamas member, no matter how low-ranking.
The IDF’s use of massive ordnance, including US-supplied 1,000- and 2,000-pound “bunker buster” bombs capable of leveling entire city blocks, and utilization of artificial intelligence to select targets has resulted in staggering numbers of civilian deaths, including numerous instances of dozens or more people being massacred in single strikes.
The killing isn’t over. Since a tenuous ceasefire between Israel and Hamas took effect last October 10, Israeli forces have killed more than 500 Palestinians in over 1,200 violations of the truce. Palestinians—mostly children and infants—are also still dying of exposure to cold weather as Israel continues to restrict the entry of aid into Gaza.
“They said Palestinians were exaggerating. Lying. Propagandists,” Independent UK Member of Parliament Shockat Adam said on X Thursday. “Now, even the IDF accepts 70,000+ killed in Gaza. The real figure is much higher. This is a ‘ceasefire’ in name only. The slaughter goes on.”
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAKeir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
US President Donald Trump, seen through a viewfinder, speaks at the Detroit Economic Club, in Detroit, January 13, 2026
With the illegitimate partition of Palestine, and inflicting ongoing terror on Palestinians, Israel and the US continue to smash down the basic principles of democracy
…
With Trump briefing his army that the future war and enemy is internal, ICE must surely be taking lessons from the IDF as to how one controls and intimidates a local population. The road checks, walls, settler violence and attacks, shootings, mass arrests and taking prisoners are a template that is being transferred to the US.
Regarding the local population as the enemy, defining them as terrorist is a well-worn tactic. In 1954, Israel passed A Prevention of Infiltration Law. Its effect was to criminalise those Palestinians who had been made refugees during the Nakba if they sought to return to their homes and land. Pass a law to make citizens aliens or define drug dealers and protesters as terrorists — then the normal rule of law does not apply. Indeed, there are no rules, anyone or anything can be defined as illegal. Just label it terrorist.
It is easy to take the parallels too far. In this neoliberal global war, the US does not need lessons in violence and aggression. It, too, is born on the back of settler colonialism and genocide, has a culture of guns and violence. But the strength of Israel as a 20th-century exemplar of what can be done without recrimination is evident.
This is not some historical precedent from before civilisation and enlightenment when everyone did abhorrent things. After the horrors of the second world war, “never again” was not just about the Holocaust, it was meant to bring about settling issues between states without recourse to war. Setting red lines of international law not to be crossed.
But Israel has crossed them time and again; relegitimised genocide, made it an acceptable tactic to kill tens of thousands of women and children deliberately, starve a population and create a famine, flatten a country and commit ecocide while destroying its health, education and water systems. No wonder Trump and Netanyahu get on most of the time — they are creating a new world order based on fascist means, morals and tactics.
It is not necessary to do historic comparisons. It is not the salutes they make nor the language they use — it is the ideology they share. Authoritarian, opposing equality, individual and collective rights while celebrating violence, embracing paramilitarism and seeking to expand territory using threats of armed conflict to underpin economic bullying. All classic traits of fascism in the making.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.The original Fascists Mussolini and HitlerOrcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.
Palestinians girls play amid buildings destroyed by Israeli air and ground attacks in the Zeitoun neighbourhood of Gaza City, January 14, 2026
ISRAEL’S far-right Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed that the United States’ announcement of the so-called ceasefire in Gaza advancing to its second phase is largely symbolic.
Israeli forces have killed more than 400 Palestinians since the ceasefire came into force on October 10, raising questions about whether phase two of the plan will bring any more respite for Gazans.
Speaking on Wednesday night with the parents of the last Israeli hostage whose remains are still in the coastal enclave, Mr Netanyahu said that the announcement of a governing committee of Palestinians as part of the second phase was merely a “declarative move,” rather than, as described by US envoy Steve Witkoff, a sign of progress.
Israeli police officer Ran Gvili’s parents had earlier pressed Mr Netanyahu not to advance the ceasefire until their son’s remains were returned, Israel’s Hostage and Missing Families Forum said earlier that day.
Mr Netanyahu told Mr Gvili’s parents that his return remained a top priority.
The announcement of the ceasefire’s second phase marked a significant step forward but left many questions unanswered.
They include the membership of a proposed apolitical governing committee of Palestinian experts and an international “board of peace.”
The committee’s composition has been co-ordinated with Israel, said an Israeli official speaking on the condition of anonymity.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAKeir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (C) chairs the cabinet meeting in Ramallah, West Bank on November 26, 2024. [Photo by Palestinian Presidency / Handout/Anadolu via Getty Images]
The Palestinian Cabinet on Tuesday called for urgent international pressure on Israel to halt the worsening humanitarian catastrophe in the Gaza Strip, as displaced families continue to endure severe cold and widespread destruction of shelters.
In a statement issued after its weekly meeting, the Cabinet urged the international community to intervene immediately to end the “humanitarian tragedy in Gaza”. It stressed that any meaningful solution requires lifting the siege, reopening border crossings, and allowing the entry of humanitarian aid, construction materials and mobile homes to address the growing needs of the population.
The Cabinet held the occupying authorities and the international community fully responsible for the deaths of children caused by exposure to extreme cold, particularly after thousands of tents sheltering displaced families were flooded, uprooted or destroyed.
Earlier on Tuesday, authorities in the Gaza Strip reported that the number of people who have died from cold-related causes since the start of the winter season had risen to seven, bringing the total to 24 deaths, including 21 children, since the outbreak of the Israeli war in October 2023.
During its meeting, the Cabinet reviewed the work of the government’s emergency operations room in Gaza. Despite severe restrictions imposed by Israel, the statement said the operations room had managed to carry out several relief measures, including distributing hundreds of locally produced tents, relocating families to safer areas, reinforcing water supplies and clearing rubble from key roads.
The Palestinian Cabinet reiterated that the scale of the crisis requires immediate and decisive international action to protect civilians and alleviate their suffering.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAKeir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
US President Donald Trump, seen through a viewfinder, speaks at the Detroit Economic Club, in Detroit, January 13, 2026
