The IDF and British broadcaster Piers Morgan became embroiled in a fiery public confrontation on X after the Israeli military released findings claiming that 170 Palestinians killed in Gaza and widely described as journalists or media workers were also members of terrorist organizations, primarily Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

The online battle erupted as the IDF began publicizing what it described as the results of an extensive investigation into Gazans whose deaths have been included in international counts of journalists killed during the war. The military says its newly released material demonstrates that a substantial number simultaneously served in terrorist organizations.

Ahead of releasing the findings Thursday, the IDF posted a video highlighting prominent commentators who have accused Israel of killing journalists in Gaza. Among those featured was Morgan, who is shown saying: “The IDF has killed over 200 Palestinian journalists and tries to pretend they’re all Hamas.”

The video also featured clips of Hasan Piker, Mehdi Hasan and Owen Jones making allegations about Israel’s treatment of journalists during the Gaza war.

The IDF’s video then teased the release of its evidence with the message: “For almost 3 years you’ve heard the accusations and fake news. Soon we will expose the truth.”

The military accompanied the video with another message challenging the narrative that has dominated much international coverage of journalist casualties in Gaza.

“The headlines told you one story, the evidence tells another. Stay tuned, soon we’ll reveal it all…”

The IDF tagged Morgan, Piker, Hasan and Jones directly before adding a pointed question: “This you?”

Morgan quickly fired back, saying he was unwilling to accept the Israeli military’s findings at face value and pointing to Israel’s restrictions on independent foreign journalists entering Gaza during the war.

“Forgive me, I don’t trust you guys to be entirely truthful given your ongoing ban on international journalists reporting freely in Gaza. Let them in, and then we can discover the real facts about what you have done there.”

The IDF responded with an unusually combative message from its official account, accusing Morgan of avoiding the evidence after having made sweeping accusations against Israel.

“Spread lies, get called out, and then try to change the topic. Quite the journalist you are. How about you take a look at the evidence, then get back to us?”

The exchange rapidly spread across X, drawing widespread attention as supporters and critics of Israel weighed in on both the IDF’s findings and Morgan’s response.

Behind the social-media fireworks was a much larger IDF disclosure. The military said that after a lengthy intelligence review, it identified 170 Gazans who had been presented internationally as journalists or media personnel but who, according to Israeli intelligence, were also members of terrorist organizations.

The IDF said its evidence includes internal documents produced by the terrorist organizations themselves, records recovered by Israeli troops inside Gaza, photographs and other intelligence material. The military has created a dedicated database displaying names, photographs, organizational affiliations, positions and evidence it says can be publicly disclosed.

Additional details released with the findings indicate that 118 of the 170 individuals were identified by the IDF as members of Hamas’s military wing, while 49 were identified as members of Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The remaining cases involved other terrorist affiliations.

Perhaps the most striking finding is the IDF’s assertion that 17 of the individuals on its list participated in the October 7 massacre in southern Israel.

Some of the individuals identified by the IDF had also done work for major international media organizations. Among the cases highlighted in the newly released database are Gazans who worked as photographers, freelancers, radio personnel or other media employees while allegedly maintaining parallel roles in Hamas or Islamic Jihad.

The IDF says the evidence directly challenges accusations that Israel has pursued a policy of intentionally targeting journalists. It maintains that membership in a media organization does not erase a person’s separate role in an armed terrorist organization and says its newly released documentation demonstrates that some of those counted internationally as journalists were simultaneously terrorist operatives.

At the same time, the IDF’s list does not establish that every Palestinian journalist killed during the war belonged to a terrorist organization, nor does it resolve the broader dispute over journalist deaths in Gaza. International press-freedom organizations have continued to accuse Israel of causing unprecedented losses among media workers and have demanded greater independent access to Gaza.

That broader dispute was precisely the point Morgan raised in his response. Rather than directly addressing the individual cases contained in the IDF database, he argued that international journalists should be permitted to enter Gaza freely so that outside media organizations can independently investigate events there.

The IDF, for its part, made clear that it viewed Morgan’s response as an attempt to shift away from his original assertion. Its message challenged him to examine the individual evidence the military had released before repeating claims about those killed.

The newly released IDF material is expected to intensify the international argument over how journalist casualty figures from Gaza are compiled, particularly in cases where individuals performed recognizable media work while allegedly also serving Hamas, Islamic Jihad or other armed groups.

For the moment, however, it was the unusually personal clash between one of Britain’s best-known broadcasters and the official account of the Israeli military that drew much of the attention — with Morgan saying he does not trust the IDF’s version of events and the IDF answering him with its blunt challenge: “Spread lies, get called out, and then try to change the topic. Quite the journalist you are. How about you take a look at the evidence, then get back to us?”

{Matzav.com}