In a remarkably frank statement on Sunday, Israeli forces openly admitted to using a faked picture of a journalist they killed in Lebanon as supposed evidence that he was affiliated with armed groups.

On Saturday, Israeli forces killed three journalists who were reporting on Israel’s expanded bombardments and ground invasion of Lebanon. They were in a clearly marked press car on their way to cover an assignment when Israel bombed them. The journalists were identified as Ali Shuaib, of Al-Manar TV, Fatima Ftouni, who works for Al Mayadeen, and her brother, freelance photojournalist Mohamad Ftouni.

The Israel military admitted to the strikes, which have been condemned by journalists’ rights groups and Lebanon’s president, Joseph Aoun, who said the attack was a “flagrant crime that violates all laws and agreements that protect journalists.”

In an attempt to supposedly justify the killing, Israeli forces claimed that Shuaib was a member of Hezbollah’s Radwan forces, a special operations arm of the military. The military said that he worked to “expose the locations of IDF troops operating in southern Lebanon” in their invasion and occupation there, and “engaged in incitement against IDF troops.”

However, the only evidence the military offered was a photo of Shuaib — a well-known war reporter who has covered the region for decades — in supposed military garb. The picture, posted on X, showed Shuaib with a press vest, microphone, and regular baseball hat on one half; on the other side was a black-and-white version of the photo showing Shuaib in a uniform and hat with a camouflage print.

When Fox News correspondent Trey Yingst asked the Israeli military about the source of the photo, the military admitted that it was fake.

“Unfortunately there isn’t really a picture of it, it was photoshopped,” the military said in a statement.

Israel has a long history of lying about journalists, who are protected in conflict under international law. In Gaza, Israel repeatedly claimed that the nearly 300 Palestinian journalists and media workers it killed in the genocide were affiliated with Hamas, without any evidence. This includes when Israeli forces killed well-known Al Jazeera journalist Ismail al-Ghoul in Gaza in 2024. The military claimed that al-Ghoul received a military rank in Hamas in 2007, when the journalist was only 10 years old.

Israel’s killing of journalists is so widespread that the military reportedly has an entire unit dedicated to flooding the media with disinformation about slain journalists after Israeli soldiers kill them, according to a report last year by +972 Magazine and Local Call.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), at least 11 journalists have been killed in Lebanon amid Israel’s bombardments on the country. The group reported that Israel killed at least 86 members of the press in 2025, helping to drive the death toll for journalists in conflict to a record high last year — though some reports have recorded a far higher number of journalist killings by Israel than CPJ’s counts.

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