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| Journalist Amal Khalil reporting in Lebanon last month (Photo: Mohammed Zaatari/Alamy) |
On Wednesday, journalist Amal Khalil and photographer Zeinab Faraj were reporting from southern Lebanon when an Israeli airstrike reportedly hit a car in front of them.
The two journalists, working for the Lebanese newspaper Al Akhbar, were then targeted as they sought shelter in a nearby home. Khalil was killed and Faraj was seriously injured.
Khalil is one of over 259 Palestinian and Lebanese journalists to be killed by Israel since 2023, with the IDF responsible for two-thirds of all journalist killings globally in 2025.
While systematically killing Palestinian journalists, the Israeli government blocked entry of foreign media workers to Gaza, in an effort to create a blackout of its genocidal campaign.
At the same time, an influential lobby group named ELNET has been quietly taking UK journalists on propaganda tours of Israel, Declassified can reveal.
ELNET was created in 2007 to “counter the widespread criticism of Israel in Europe”, and is increasingly seen as the AIPAC of Europe.
The journalists who participated in ELNET delegations to Israel have written for some of Britain’s largest news organisations including the Telegraph, Spectator, and Mail on Sunday.
ELNET has also taken former British military officers to Israel, with many of them returning to Britain and putting a positive spin on the IDF’s operations in Gaza.
Des Freedman, professor of media and communications at Goldsmiths, told Declassified: “Journalists can try to claim that these are fact-finding visits but, in reality, they are junkets specifically deigned to generate pro-Israel coverage.
“Embedded journalism like this is dodgy in peacetime but utterly scandalous during a genocide when the rest of the world’s media have been locked out of Gaza.
“At the very least, just as the UK competition regulator insists that paid-for content must be ‘clearly labelled’, the same should apply to news stories that are made possible by well-funded supporters of the Israeli regime”.
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