On April 22, the Israeli regime killed another journalist. Her name was Amal Khalil. She was born in the early years of the last Israeli occupation of South Lebanon and was a prominent Lebanese journalist who documented the lives of people in the south during years of Israeli invasions and bombings.
Amal was widely known and loved in Lebanon. As her brother Ali Khalil said at the funeral, she was in every home. For two years, Amal received direct threats from the Israeli regime. In one interview, she recalled a call from a Mossad agent warning that if she did not stop reporting from the south, she would lose her head. They knew intimate details of her life — they wanted to show her she was under surveillance. Nevertheless, she continued reporting, knowing that any day the Israeli regime could carry out its threats.
Amal was one of the people Israel fears most: those who cannot be intimidated into silence, cornered, or openly confront Israeli brutal force. There is no doubt that the Israeli military directly targeted her. The publication Al Akhbar, where Amal worked, released details of her death. According to them, Amal was on assignment near the strategic city of Bint Jbeil, a place she often reported from. This city was a key battleground between Israeli regime forces and Hezbollah fighters before the truce. For many Lebanese, it is a symbolic site of resistance — in 2006, it successfully repelled attempts by Israeli regime forces to capture it.
Amal was traveling in a car with freelance photographer Zeinab Farraj when an Israeli drone struck the car in front of them. The two women took shelter in a nearby building and contacted relatives and colleagues for help. The building was soon bombed by Israeli forces. The Lebanese Prime Minister issued a statement calling on the Red Cross to intervene. The organization sent a team that managed to rescue the wounded Zeinab from the building. They came under fire, so they could not bring Amal out. When they returned, they found her dead.
Amal's killing echoes the death of veteran Palestinian journalist and longtime Al Jazeera correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh. Four years ago, she was also reporting from a symbolic site of resistance against Israeli regime forces — the Palestinian city of Jenin. As she tried to take cover from Israeli gunfire with a colleague, she was shot in the head. Since her killing, over 250 Palestinian journalists and media workers have been killed — mostly during the genocide in Gaza. Many were targeted on assignment, while others were attacked in their homes with their families. For example, Muhammad Abu Hatab was killed in November 2023 in an Israeli airstrike on his home along with 11 family members.
The Israeli regime's targeting of Palestinian and Lebanese journalists is well-documented, and Amal's killing is the latest entry in a list that, since October 2023, has become the bloodiest for the press in any conflict. What is striking about this list is not only its scale but also the conditions that made it possible. Impunity is not just an injustice after the event; it is part of a systemic policy that allows the killing of journalists.
