Don’t buy Israeli-haters’ lies about reporter deaths in Gaza

Former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan made an astonishing claim last week at the “Together for Palestine” rally in London’s Wembley Stadium.

“Two-hundred and seventy: That’s how many Palestinian journalists Israel has killed in Gaza,” he told the cheering crowd of 12,000.

“More than were killed in the First World War, the Second World War, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Iraq War — COMBINED!”

What an incredible statistic. It seems impossible that five bloody wars — which killed at least 110 million people across the globe — caused the deaths of fewer reporters than have occurred in the tiny Gaza Strip in the last two years.

If Hasan’s claim sounds off, it’s because he is lying.

He is knowingly repeating a grotesque falsehood that doesn’t pass the sniff test, and that any reputable journalist would dismiss upon two minutes of fact-checking.

It’s not just Hasan. This preposterous factoid has been spreading around the Internet for some time and is attributed to reporter Nick Turse, who published it in a paper on a Brown University website.

That source might be enough for a journalist of Hasan’s caliber, but a brief look at Turse’s footnote shows that he got his information from a webpage for the “Freedom Forum,” a First Amendment advocacy organization.

The Freedom Forum — which ran the defunct “Newseum” — features on its website a “Journalists Memorial” database, which lists reporters who have died in the line of duty since 1837.

But the Journalists Memorial doesn’t even present itself as an authoritative compendium of all reporters killed in action.

It lists some reporters, mostly American and British.

The memorial counts a grand total of two reporters as having been killed in World War I, which is substantially less than the number of famous poets killed in that war.

It lists 66 reporters who died in World War II, a conflict in which roughly 85 million people died.

It counts no Chinese, German or Japanese reporters, and lists only two French and two Soviet reporters.

It doesn’t count any of the hundreds of Yiddish-language reporters killed in the Holocaust, or any of the Cambodian journalists murdered by the Khmer Rouge.

No responsible adult would cite this data in good faith, but Hasan isn’t the only one doing so.

Francesca Albanese, the UN “special rapporteur” on Palestine, says it all the time, as does Al Jazeera.

Chris Hedges, widely hailed on the left as the conscience of American journalism, unblinkingly repeats this libel.

Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) posted it on X.

The other side of the ledger, namely the number of Palestinian journalists who’ve been killed, is also highly suspect.

An enormous number of these “journalists” have been identified as either closely affiliated with Hamas, or outright Hamas militants.

Reporters Without Borders mourned the death of “journalist” Abdullah al-Jamal, a freelance reporter who wrote occasionally for Al Jazeera.

He was killed when Israeli special forces stormed his home, where he was keeping three hostages.

Nevertheless, The Guardian included al-Jamal in a photo spread of murdered Palestinian journalists.

Anas al-Sharif’s video reporting for Al Jazeera made him the “face of the war in Gaza,” per CNN.

His death in August 2025 was met by an international outcry.

But Israel provided substantial evidence that al-Sharif was an active member of Hamas and, in fact, a cell leader in a guided-rocket platoon.

He was photographed being embraced by former Hamas commander Yahya Sinwar.

Fact is, if you’re reporting from Gaza, chances are high that you’re somehow in bed with Hamas, either as a collaborator or a soldier using a “Press” vest as cover.

And that’s been true even before the war: The Foreign Press Association, the oldest and largest organization for foreign correspondents, has long protested the pressure and threats of violence that Hamas routinely imposes on visiting journalists.

In a 2014 statement, the FPA denounced the “blatant, incessant, forceful and unorthodox” methods that Hamas uses to control the dissemination of information in and out of Gaza.

Professionals who’ve worked in the region know that Hamas, a totalitarian regime, will not permit “neutral” observers (or even aid workers) to exist in Gaza.

The Hamas propaganda machine has been running full steam since Oct. 7, with the assistance of its Fifth Column in the West.

It has promulgated lies about the bombing of hospitals, the targeting of children, the outbreak of famine, massacres at aid sites and a “genocidal” death toll 10 times larger than what Hamas itself reports.

The fog of war inevitably generates uncertainty, and that is no different in Gaza.

But outright lies such as Hasan’s about the unprecedented deaths of journalists in Gaza shine so brightly that they offer a beacon by which we can begin to discern truth.

Seth Barron is a member of The Post Editorial Board. X: @sethbarronnyc