Were a majority of the Gazan journalists killed since October 7th, 2023 linked to terrorist organizations?

Israeli government and pro-Israel research sources claim this, but it's a contested assertion, not an independently verified fact — major press freedom organizations dispute or have not corroborated these figures.

What Israeli sources claim:

The Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center (an Israeli think tank with ties to Israel's intelligence community) published a study asserting that the Meir Amit center finds 60% of media workers killed since October 2023 were tied to Hamas or Islamic Jihad. Specifically, a new study by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center asserts that a majority of Gaza-based journalists killed since the outbreak of the current war were operatives in, or closely affiliated with, terrorist organizations — primarily Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, examining 266 individuals, of which at least 157 — roughly 60 percent — were members of terror groups or clearly affiliated with them, including 104 linked to Hamas and 45 to Islamic Jihad.

More recently, the IDF itself released a separate, lower figure: the IDF revealed that 170 individuals who were misleadingly presented as civilian "journalists" killed in strikes on Gaza were actually affiliated with Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), and other terrorist organizations. The IDF says 170 Gazans who were killed during the war and presented as journalists and media personnel actually served as terrorists in terrorist organizations, primarily Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, with 118 of the 170 members of Hamas' military wing, 49 belonging to Palestinian Islamic Jihad, one affiliated with Adonei HaShmama and two with the Popular Resistance Committees.

Important context and caveats:

Bottom line: The claim that a majority were linked to terrorist groups comes from Israeli military/intelligence sources (IDF, Meir Amit Center) and is disputed or not fully verified by independent press-freedom organizations like CPJ and RSF, who report substantially higher overall death tolls and have not broadly endorsed the "majority were terrorists" framing, though some individual cases have been corroborated through Hamas/PIJ's own martyr announcements. Given the source is largely one side of an active conflict with an obvious interest in the narrative, this is best treated as a contested, politically charged claim rather than settled fact.