Israel Poisoned Lebanon’s Farms. Then It Killed Another Reporter in Gaza.

By Rachel Hurley April 9th, 2026 Updated September 27th, 2026

The evidence grows while the witnesses disappear

I want to talk about two things that are happening at the same time, ’cause I think when you put them next to each other it tells you something nobody’s really saying out loud.

The first thing is that Mohammed Wishah, an Al Jazeera correspondent who’d been with the network since 2018, was killed yesterday by an Israeli drone strike in Gaza. His car was hit on al-Rashid Street. It caught fire. The Gaza Government Media Office says at least 262 journalists have been killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 2023.

262 journalists.

Eleven of them from Al Jazeera alone. I’m gonna name them ’cause somebody should.

Samer Abu Daqqa. Hamza Al Dahdouh. Ismail Al Ghoul. Ahmed Al Louh. Hossam Shabat. Ibrahim Thaher. Mohammed Qreiqea. Mohammed Nofal. Anas Al Sharif. Mohammed Salama. And now Mohammed Wishah.

The Committee to Protect Journalists says more journalists have died in this war than in any other war it’s documented since it started counting in 1992. Not just in this conflict. In the history of keeping track.

Israel has said since 2024 that Wishah was a senior figure in Hamas’ military wing, citing documents and photos from a laptop. Al Jazeera rejected the claim. And this is the part that should make you uncomfortable regardless of where you fall on this - you accuse someone of being a militant after they’re already dead. The person can’t respond. You can say whatever you want about a dead journalist.

Okay. Now the second thing.

Back in January and February, Israeli military aircraft flew low over villages in southern Lebanon and Syria’s Quneitra province and sprayed something on the farmland. Lebanese authorities ran lab tests. In Lebanon, it was glyphosate - that’s the active ingredient in Roundup. The World Health Organization’s cancer agency classified it as “probably carcinogenic to humans” in 2015 - the European Commission says it found no conclusive evidence it causes cancer.

But it wasn’t normal spraying. The concentrations were 20 to 30 times the recommended level. They covered 8.5 square kilometers of farmland, forests, and livestock grazing areas. The crops are dead. The vegetation is dead. Lebanese officials said it could contaminate the water and the food chain for multiple growing seasons. A farmer in Quneitra told a reporter: “We lost everything.”

Israel’s official explanation is that this was a security operation to deny militants cover. They had to kill the crops so fighters can’t hide in them.

Eight members of the European Parliament have formally asked the European Commission whether this breaks international humanitarian law. PAX, the Dutch peace organization, called for “an immediate halt to herbicide spraying and compensation for farmers who have lost income.” Lebanon said it would file a complaint with the UN.

And here’s why I’m putting these two things together.

The people who would normally cover the glyphosate story - who would go to southern Lebanon and photograph the dead fields, interview the farmers, document the soil tests, test the water, put it in front of cameras - those people are disappearing.
262 of them.

More than in any war the Committee to Protect Journalists has tracked since 1992. The coverage of the herbicide spraying has been thin, and it’s not hard to figure out why. So many reporters in this part of the world have been killed that there aren’t enough left to cover it.

You spray the fields. You kill the crops. And the people who would’ve reported on the dead crops keep getting killed by drone strikes.

I don’t know what to call that. But I know it’s not a coincidence that the two things are happening at the same time, and I know that 262 dead journalists means there’s a lot of stuff we’re just never gonna hear about.

Sources

Correction, September 27th, 2026: This essay first quoted PAX calling the spraying “collective punishment of civilian populations through environmental destruction” - PAX’s statement doesn’t contain those words. It called for an immediate halt to the spraying and compensation for farmers. The essay also called a written question from eight members of the European Parliament a formal inquiry into whether this is a war crime, said the herbicide concentrations were 20 to 50 times normal when the reports said 20 to 30, and said ten Al Jazeera journalists had been killed - Wishah was the eleventh, and Mohammed Salama was missing from the list.

Update, September 27th, 2026: A few lines now say who says so - who counts the journalists killed in Gaza, what Israel has alleged about Wishah since 2024, where glyphosate was found, and what the Committee to Protect Journalists’ record covers - and the title now says he was killed in Gaza.