By John Pickard
So yet another group of journalists are assassinated by the IDF in Gaza, this time hit by a drone strike as they were sheltering in their media tent near the al-Shaifa Hospital in Gaza City. Seven were killed altogether, including Al Jazeera correspondents, Anas al-Sharif and Mohammed Qreiqeh and three others broadcast technicians.
Probably the best-known of these latest victims was Al-Sharif, who knew he was a target after the IDF had earlier alleged that he was a member of Hamas. The IDF acknowledged his killing publishing an indecipherable picture on ‘X’ allegedly showing his links to Hamas, something Al-Sharif consistently denied.
Al Jazeera reported that Al-Sharif’s last tweet on X, posted minutes before his murder, warned about Netanyahu’s plan to take over Gaza permanently. “If this madness doesn’t end,” he wrote, “Gaza will be reduced to ruins, its people’s voices silenced, their faces erased – and history will remember you as a silent witness to a genocide that you chose not to stop”.
In July, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), an international organisation, had called for Al-Sharif to be “protected” after the IDF had named him as a member of Hamas. The IDF aim was to justify him being made a target. Al-Sharif told CPJ at the time, “All of this is happening because my coverage of the crimes of the Israeli occupation in the Gaza Strip harms them and damages their image in the world. They accuse me of being a terrorist because the occupation wants to assassinate me morally.” The CPJ, noted that Israel often brands Palestinian journalists as “terrorists” without providing proof, as justification for their assassination.
Netanyahu does not want the world to see his war crimes
Israel’s war on journalism can be seen from the fact that no journalists have been allowed into Gaza since the Hamas attack in October 2023. Netanyahu does not want the world to witness the war crimes and the genocide committed by Israel. All of the reportage and film coming out of Gaza has been from a dimishing number of heroic Palestinian journalists and independent reporters.
Since the war on Gaza began, hundreds of Palestinian journalists have been killed – al Jazeers lists 269 (see inset above). “Israel has turned its horrific 22-month war on the Gaza Strip into a slaughterhouse for Palestinian journalists” Al Jazeera reports, “systematically targeting them and their workplaces in an effort to enforce a total media blackout across the enclave”.
In a report in April – therefore four months out of date – the Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs published a report detailing the number of journalists killed and comparing Gaza to other wars. Their conclusions are astonishing and are worth citing in full…
“The death toll of Palestinian journalists is roughly equivalent to the killing of 8,500 US newroom employees. By comparison, the number of reporters killed in Ukraine since the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022, for example, stands at 19. Since that war officially began in 2014, CPJ counts 29 journalist deaths in Ukraine due to crossfire, dangerous assignments, murder, and all other causes…
More journalists killed than in all of the wars in the last century
“The war in Gaza has, since October 7, 2023, killed more journalists than the US Civil War, World Wars I and II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War (including the conflicts in Cambodia and Laos), the wars in Jugoslavia in the 1990s and 2000s, and the post 9/11 war in Afghanistan, combined. It is, quite simply, the worst ever conflict for reporters”.
Meanwhile, as every human rights and journalists’ organisation in the world is condemning the ongoing assassination of journalists by the IDF, there is not a peep out of the government in the UK. The alleged ‘Labour’ Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, is too busy arresting hundreds of UK pensioners and charging them under “terrorism” laws, for having the temerity to hold up a sign saying they oppose the banning order on Palestine Action.
Nothing to do with the fact that the powerful pro-Israel lobby gives huge amounts of money to the private offices of right-wing Labour MPs, including Cooper.
In Israel, the war in Gaza is increasing dissent and despair among more secular and liberal Israelis. The Netanyahu government does its very best to keep what is happening in Gaza away from public gaze, although most Israelis must be aware by now of the slaughter in Gaza. Although Al Jazeera is banned in Israel – precisely because of its coverage of Gaza – some liberal newspapers like Haaretz cover the genocide – and call it “genocide” – freely. Right-wing ministers would ban Haaretz, if they had their way – the same people on the far right who are celebrating, as much as the ‘liberal’ left are appalled.
Unless and until western governments react to the genocide in Gaza, by a complete embargo on trade and arms for Israel, the profound political divisions in Israel will continue to intensify and fester. In the long run, Israelis will come to fight Israelis, literally.
For the moment, things do not look good for the Israeli left. One correspondent in Haaretz, was particularly pessimistic. He described the “messianism” that has (so far, successfully) infiltrated the Israeli army and the state. “We are at a historic moment”, he wrote, “and if we don’t get our act together, no one from the liberal camp will be able to live in Israel.”
[The feature photograph shows Al-Jazeera’s Anas al-Sharif, left, and Mohammed Qraiqea. From Al Jazeera]
