Israel is deliberately killing Palestinian journalists and blocking international coverage in Gaza to conceal war crimes and human suffering, threatening press freedom and making the world less informed and less safe.
Anas al-Sharif, 28, expressed his fear of being assassinated by Israel. These concerns were shared by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), along with the UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression.
Anas al-Sharif, a prominent Al Jazeera correspondent who tirelessly documented the horrors of northern Gaza, was facing a deadly smear campaign by the Israeli military, accusing him—a father of two—of being a member of Hamas, accusations he vehemently denied. CPJ asserted that these accusations were baseless.
In fact, just a few weeks ago, the committee noted that this campaign was "an attempt to encourage public acceptance of the idea of Sharif's assassination," adding that the danger to his life had become imminent. UN Special Rapporteur Irene Khan called on the world to take action to refute the "blatant attempt to endanger his life." Yet the world remained silent.
A few days ago, Israel deliberately targeted the tent where Sharif was sleeping, killing him and four of his Al Jazeera colleagues, a freelance journalist in a neighbouring tent, and a passerby. All this occurred within the confines of a hospital.
Journalists continue to be targeted
The Israeli military celebrated the operation, considering this state-sponsored assassination a successful strike against a Hamas member. The Committee to Protect Journalists, for its part, described the assassination as "a flagrant murder" and considered it part of a systematic pattern of accusing Palestinian journalists without providing any credible evidence.
This is clear now because, to date, Israeli airstrikes have already killed more than 200 Palestinian journalists and media workers in Gaza since October 2023. As the number of Palestinian journalists, like Anas, being eliminated by Israel in Gaza increases, the number of people reporting to the world on one of the world's worst humanitarian disasters is decreasing. This is how the truth is hidden from the world.
Moreover, since the outbreak of this war, Israel has deliberately prevented international correspondents from entering Gaza or covering its events unless they are on field trips subject to military censorship. As a result, newsrooms have become entirely dependent on Palestinian journalists, who have become the eyes of the world, witnesses to what is happening inside the blockaded, bombarded, and devastated Strip.
The massacre of Palestinian journalists and the ban on international correspondents mean that journalists everywhere outside Gaza are less and less informed about what is happening there. Israeli bombardment, along with the military confrontations with Hamas, has killed more than 61,000 people, according to local officials, and famine is rife, according to the UN-backed World Hunger Monitor. Israeli bombardment has also forced more than 90 percent of the Strip's 2.3 million population to flee repeatedly, trapping people inside this death box.
The deliberate targeting and killing of journalists is a war crime under international humanitarian law. The killing of journalists would set a dangerous precedent for journalists everywhere. It is worth noting what Amnesty International stated: "In modern history, no conflict has seen the number of journalists killed as many as the number killed by Israel's genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip."