Hassan Majdi Ibrahim Abu Warda appears in an Israeli military list in two capacities: as a reporter for the Barq Gaza news agency and, according to the Israel Defense Forces, as a Palestinian Islamic Jihad sniper in the group’s Northern Gaza Brigade.
His name is among 170 Palestinians killed in Gaza during the war whom the IDF says were presented internationally as journalists or media workers while also serving in what it calls terrorist organisations. The military released an initial batch of 10 names before publishing the full list.
The IDF says 118 of those named were Hamas members and 49 served Islamic Jihad. It created a dedicated website containing names, photographs, alleged organisational affiliations, roles and evidence.
Some of those listed had worked with Reuters, CNN, BBC and other international outlets. Asem Adli Ahmed Al-Barsh, who was linked to Al-Rai radio, was listed by the IDF as an operative in Hamas’s military wing.
Joe Truzman, an analyst at FDD, examined the first 67 entries in the IDF document. He wrote that each entry included a military ID, unit and rank. Most also included an official Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad ‘martyrdom poster’ or a photograph of the person in uniform, he said.
By Truzman’s count, roughly a third of those first 67 entries belonged to their faction’s military propaganda or combat information units. The available evidence does not appear to be uniform across the list: an analyst said it varied between entries, and reports contain no independent verification of the full list.
The competing descriptions carry consequences for how these deaths are assessed. The people on the list were presented internationally as media workers, while the IDF describes them as members of militant organisations. The material released so far leaves unresolved whether the individuals were primarily journalists or militants, and whether the remaining entries contain the same detail as the first 67.
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