Israel Kills Three Journalists in Lebanon, Defends Strike With Disputed Image

After killing Al-Manar correspondent Ali Shoeib in the southern Lebanese town of Jezzine on Saturday, the Israeli military released an image of the veteran journalist dressed in Hezbollah military uniform. The photograph became the centerpiece of its public justification for the strike. It was fabricated.

"Unfortunately there isn't really a picture of it, it was photoshopped," the Israel Defense Forces told Fox News, acknowledging that the image it had circulated to support its claim that Shoeib was a Hezbollah Radwan Force operative had been digitally altered. The admission arrived after the photograph had already spread across social media, where Shoeib's Telegram account alone had drawn approximately 53,000 followers during nearly three decades of covering the south Lebanon conflict.

The strike killed three journalists in total: Shoeib, Fatima Ftouni of Al Mayadeen, and her brother, cameraman Mohammed Ftouni. Videos from the aftermath showed press vests and helmets among the wreckage of their charred vehicle, the kind of visual evidence that rights groups say should inform, not contradict, a military's public account.

The Israeli military's formal statement called Shoeib "a terrorist" operating under the "guise of a journalist" and alleged he was a member of the elite Radwan Force intelligence unit who "served as a conduit for disseminating Hezbollah propaganda" and "reported on the location of IDF forces operating in southern Lebanon" during Operation Northern Arrows. The military acknowledged targeting Shoeib but made no mention of Fatima or Mohammed Ftouni, the two other journalists killed in the same strike. It provided no documentary evidence for its Radwan Force allegations and did not respond to requests for such evidence.

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun described all three as "civilians doing their professional duty." In a statement on X, he was unsparing: "It is a blatant crime that violates all treaties and norms under which journalists enjoy international protection in war."

International humanitarian law protects journalists regardless of their political affiliations or the outlet they work for. Both Al-Manar, which Hezbollah owns, and Al Mayadeen, which is widely seen as aligned with Hezbollah and its regional allies, are editorially aligned with the group. Rights groups, however, have consistently held that editorial alignment alone does not strip a journalist of protected status under the laws of war, and that the deliberate targeting of media workers constitutes a war crime. Hezbollah rejected the Israeli military's allegations as false.

Shoeib, whom Al-Manar described as an "icon of resistance reporting," had covered southern Lebanon for the network for nearly three decades. Al Mayadeen said Fatima Ftouni had been distinguished by "brave and objective coverage." The same day's strikes across southern Lebanon also killed nine medics on duty and other civilians, as Israeli operations widened against health, media, and financial institutions in the region.

The photoshopped uniform image encapsulates a recurring evidentiary problem in wartime: a fabricated photograph, released without metadata or sourcing, can travel globally before any correction catches it. That the IDF itself confirmed the manipulation to a news outlet rather than proactively withdrawing the image leaves the question of what genuine evidence, if any, underpinned the targeting decision entirely unanswered.