The Committee to Protect Journalists has launched a full review of its Gaza journalist casualty database after Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad published obituaries identifying some of those previously listed as journalists as combatants — raising pointed questions about how one of the war’s most cited press-freedom tallies was compiled.

The New York-based watchdog said last week it had removed eight names from its database after they were established to be Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad operatives, and removed 12 others for separate reasons. CPJ said the full review of all names on its list of journalists and media workers killed during the Israel-Hamas war is expected to be completed in July.

As of June 25, CPJ’s database listed 209 journalists and media workers killed by Israel in Gaza and in Israeli detention centers since the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 252 were taken hostage. The organization has described the conflict as the deadliest for journalists since it began tracking press deaths more than three decades ago — a claim now under scrutiny.

Jonathan Conricus, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former IDF international spokesperson, accused CPJ of failing to exercise sufficient scrutiny of its Gaza list despite what he described as clear evidence from the outset of the war that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad were exploiting journalistic cover for military purposes.

CPJ “willingly and knowingly participated in an ongoing delegitimization effort against Israel by making a conscious decision not to undertake any due diligence or scrutiny in their lists and their description of so-called media workers in Gaza,” Conricus told The Algemeiner.

He said the failure came despite what he called “obvious evidence” that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad were “violating the special and protected status of journalists” by deploying terrorists in press vests and other press insignia to gain protection.

“I cannot imagine that CPJ was not aware, because Israel said so from the beginning, that there are dual-purpose media workers who are first and foremost terrorists in Hamas and Islamic Jihad and have a secondary income as media workers,” he said.

CPJ has said its process requires at least two independent sources before someone is added to the database as a journalist or media worker. It has also noted that in-person verification by outside researchers has been impossible since Israel barred international correspondents from entering Gaza independently at the start of the war.

CPJ CEO Jodie Ginsberg said the group does not include anyone in its database when there is evidence they were engaged in combat or inciting imminent violence, and that journalists affiliated with non-state actors remain civilians under international humanitarian law as long as they do not directly participate in hostilities. The organization also condemned the misrepresentation of combatants as journalists and the misuse of press insignia, warning that such conduct endangers legitimate reporters working in conflict zones.

Conricus said that acknowledgment only underscored why the review should have been undertaken earlier, and called on CPJ to explain why it had “refused to undertake the necessary procedural measures” to prevent misuse.

“If the organization really wants to regain legitimacy and trustworthiness, they need to admit that they were fooled and that they knowingly allowed Hamas and Islamic Jihad to abuse their statistics,” he said.

Shlomo Mofaz, director of the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, said the problem now being addressed by CPJ was far from new. His institute published a 140-page study in December examining, name by name, Palestinians identified as journalists or media workers killed in Gaza, and concluded that roughly 60% were members of or affiliated with terrorist organizations — primarily Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Israeli officials have claimed for years that Palestinian terrorists exploit journalist designations in their battle against Israel.

The study examined 266 media workers reported killed between Oct. 7, 2023, and Nov. 30, 2025, and found that 157 were members of or affiliated with terror groups. At least 47 belonged to Hamas’s military wing and 45 were linked to Palestinian Islamic Jihad, including 18 confirmed operatives.

Mofaz said the methodology was the same his institute has applied for years — examining Arabic-language social media, Telegram channels, mourning notices, funeral footage, organizational statements and claims of responsibility.

“Even before this war, every operation, whether in the West Bank or Gaza, showed us that the casualty numbers were not to be trusted,” he told The Algemeiner.

In earlier rounds of fighting, Mofaz said, that same process regularly led the center to find that more than 60% — and sometimes close to 70% — of those listed by Palestinian sources as civilians killed were in fact members of Hamas, Islamic Jihad or other armed groups. He added that the problem was not confined to adult men: even in cases involving minors, he said, researchers sometimes found social media posts expressing a desire for martyrdom alongside images with weapons.

Conricus called for CPJ to undergo a “complete overhaul,” comparing what he described as its exploitation by Hamas to the infiltration of humanitarian organizations more broadly — including, he said, UNRWA, whose schools were used to hide terror tunnels and weapons caches and whose staff included teachers who doubled as Hamas operatives.