Israel refers to documents that they claim to have found in Gaza, as well as other intelligence sources, when they point out the six journalists, all of whom are Palestinian men. Israel claims that four of the men are or have been affiliated with the terrorist-stamped Hamas and the other two with Islamic Jihad.
The news agency AP has not been able to verify the authenticity of the documents that Israel has published online to support their claims.
Al Jazeera: Fabricated
Al Jazeera claims that the allegations are fabricated and "part of a broader pattern of hostility" towards the media network. The claims are "an obvious attempt to silence the few remaining journalists in the region and thereby obscure the harsh reality of the war from the public around the world", according to Al Jazeera.
The Arab media company is based in Qatar, where many high-ranking Hamas members are also located. Qatar, which finances Al Jazeera, has been a key player in negotiations on a ceasefire in Gaza, along with the USA and Egypt.
The independent organization Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is critical of Israel, which, according to the organization, "has repeatedly made similar claims without producing credible evidence".
"Contradictory information"
Among other things, the organization points to an incident in July this year, when two Al Jazeera journalists were killed in an Israeli attack in Gaza City. Then, Israel presented a similar document that, according to CPJ, contained contradictory information about one of the killed journalists, Ismail al-Ghoul.
"The document, which contained contradictory information, showed that al-Ghoul, born in 1997, received a military ranking from Hamas in 2007 – when he would have been ten years old", writes CPJ in a statement.
