Al Jazeera has condemned Israel for tagging six of its journalists in Gaza as members of Hamas or Islamic Jihad resistance groups.
The Qatari broadcaster rejected the allegation Wednesday as an Israeli attempt to silence journalists working on the ground in Gaza.
"Al Jazeera condemns Israeli accusations against its journalists in Gaza and warns against (this) being a justification for targeting them," the network said in a statement.
The Israeli military published documents where it said it had found in Gaza that proved the men had a military affiliation with the groups. Reuters was not able to immediately verify the authenticity of the documents.
The Israeli military said the papers included Hamas and Islamic Jihad lists of personnel details, salaries and militant training courses, phone directories and injury reports.
Al Jazeera journalists Anas al-Sharif, Hossam Shabat, Ismael Abu Omar, and Talal Arrouki were accused by Israel of ties to Hamas. Ashraf Saraj and Alaa Salameh were accused of ties to Islamic Jihad.
"These documents serve as proof of the integration of Hamas ... within the Qatari Al Jazeera media network," the military said.
In response, Al Jazeera said, "The Network views these fabricated accusations as a blatant attempt to silence the few remaining journalists in the region, thereby obscuring the harsh realities of the war from audiences worldwide."
Al Jazeera has said the Israeli actions against it were criminal, draconian and irresponsible and that the latest allegations were "part of a wider pattern of hostility" toward it.
The Committee to Protect Journalists also released a statement Wednesday that was critical of Israel, which it said "has repeatedly made similar unproven claims without producing credible evidence."
In July, after an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City killed two Al Jazeera journalists, including Ismail al-Ghoul, Israel "produced a similar document, which contained contradictory information, showing that al-Ghoul, born in 1997, received a Hamas military ranking in 2007 – when he would have been 10 years old," the committee said in its statement.
The Doha-based network says it has no affiliation with armed groups and has accused Israeli forces of deliberately killing several of its journalists in the Gaza war, including Samer Abu Daqqa and Hamza al-Dahdouh. Israel claims it does not target journalists.
It has long accused Al Jazeera of being a Hamas mouthpiece and over the past year its authorities have ordered it to shut down its operations for security reasons, raided its offices and confiscated equipment.
In May, after an Israeli court ordered the closure of Al Jazeera's operations and broadcasts within Israel, police raided a hotel room in East Jerusalem from where the network had been broadcasting live images.
It was the first time Israel had ever shuttered a foreign news outlet. Four months later, Israel raided Al Jazeera's office in the Palestinian-governed West Bank city of Ramallah, shutting down the bureau there.
Several of those named by Israel on Wednesday, including al-Sharif, have become mainstay figures of the outlet's 24-hour live coverage of Gaza. They have acquired celebrity-like status among Palestinians and other countries across the Middle East.
Al Jazeera is one of a handful of news organizations still broadcasting daily from the besieged enclave.
Israel has killed nearly 200 journalists in Gaza, the West Bank, Israel, and Lebanon since last October, according to different sources.
It has killed more than 42,600 Palestinians in Gaza, mostly women and children, since launching its genocidal war, according to the local Health Ministry.
Even before the war, tensions between Al Jazeera and Israel ran high. Israeli forces shot and killed Shireen Abu Akleh, a Palestinian-American journalist, in May 2022 as she reported on a story in the West Bank.
