BREAKING: Israel Killed Al Jazeera Journalist Anas Al-SharifJournalists in Gaza continue to be murdered in record numbers,while Western media outlets and reporters show little or no outrage. |
On Sunday, the Israeli military killed our press colleagues, Al Jazeera journalists Anas Al-Sharif and Mohammed Qreiqeh, along with camera operators Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal, and Moamen Aliwa.
The journalists were killed by an Israeli airstrike late Sunday local time. One minute, they were reporting on Israel’s escalating bombardment of Gaza City. And the next minute, they became victims of it.
Israeli forces bombed a tent housing the reporters near al-Shifa Hospital. The attack also reportedly killed Al-Sharif's nephew Musab Al-Sharif, who is said to have looked up to his 28-year-old uncle and wanted to follow in his footsteps as a journalist.
Barely an hour before US-backed Israeli forces killed Al-Sharif, he had warned on Twitter, “If this madness doesn’t end, Gaza will be reduced to ruins, its people’s voices silenced, their faces erased — and history will remember you as silent witnesses to a genocide you chose not to stop.”
Just weeks ago, the Committee to Protect Journalists called for Al-Sharif’s protection in the face of an Israeli military smear campaign. The vile campaign included the Israeli military’s Arabic spokesperson Avichay Adraee alleging that Al-Sharif was a “terrorist,” since he cried on air while reporting on the starvation of his people in Gaza.
After the attack, the Israeli military said it targeted and killed “the terrorist Anas Al-Sharif, who posed as a journalist for the Al Jazeera network,” claiming without any substantiated evidence that he “served as the head of a terrorist cell in the Hamas terrorist organisation.”
“When you read the statement issued by the army, which was well prepared before all this happened, it’s almost as if it is bragging about it,” Al Jazeera’s Hoda Abdel-Hamid wrote.
‘Silencing My Voice’
Warnings like the one Al-Sharif wrote just before being killed have become horrifyingly familiar. Such appeals have fallen on deaf or disinterested ears in the halls of power worldwide, namely in the West, and particularly in the US. And for months, such pleas have been met with skepticism by the Western press, and particularly by the US press.
Where are the big names that proclaim themselves as brave, bold, as telling things as they are? The network figureheads, the Washington mainstays? Israeli forces have killed some 245 journalists in the past 22 months. Journalists who were also people, just like anyone else, and who had to become bigger than life, in order to justify themselves to viewers thousands of miles away. People who had been forced every single day to report on the devastation of their own land, their own families. People who would cover an airstrike that killed their children and, by sheer necessity, continue to report on the next strike, in the pursuit of convincing the world to act, of the hope of tomorrow being different.
How many murdered Palestinian journalists will it take for the mainstream press’s cowardly fever to break?
After his killing, Al-Sharif’s team published his final words on social media:
,
This is my will and my final message. If these words reach you, know that Israel has succeeded in killing me and silencing my voice. First, peace be upon you and Allah’s mercy and blessings.
I entrust you with Palestine—the jewel in the crown of the Muslim world, the heartbeat of every free person in this world. I entrust you with its people, with its wronged and innocent children who never had the time to dream or live in safety and peace. Their pure bodies were crushed under thousands of tons of Israeli bombs and missiles, torn apart and scattered across the walls.
I urge you not to let chains silence you, nor borders restrain you. Be bridges toward the liberation of the land and its people, until the sun of dignity and freedom rises over our stolen homeland. I entrust you to take care of my family. I entrust you with my beloved daughter Sham, the light of my eyes, whom I never got the chance to watch grow up as I had dreamed.
Do not forget Gaza… And do not forget me in your sincere prayers for forgiveness and acceptance.
Anas Jamal Al-Sharif
06.04.2025
These few paragraphs, are a shorter part of the journalist letter, but it gives a fair idea of its content and sad release after his deliberate murder with his colleagues by the Israeli army.
A sad episode of the barbaric onslaught taking place openly of all professional personnel serving in the Palestinian Gaza and to a lesser extend the under occupation West Bank, journalist, doctors, medical staff and humanitarian aid people by the thousands, it is planned to continue under different names, headings and tactics. As always, my many thanks to all.
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