There is a shameless, unintentional black humour to Israel’s insistence that it cannot let international journalists into Gaza because it cannot guarantee their safety. The Committee to Protect Journalists, an NGO, reports that some 186 journalists have been killed in Gaza since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in October 2023, at least 178 of them by Israel. Dozens of journalists remain confined to its jails.
The Watson School of International and Public Affairs calculates that more journalists have been killed in Gaza than in both world wars, the Vietnam war, the wars in Yugoslavia and the US war in Afghanistan combined.
Most who have died appear to have been so-called “collateral” damage, victims of the illegal killing of civilians, located beside what the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) regarded as “legitimate targets”.
However, Anas al-Sharif, the renowned Al Jazeera reporter killed in a tent alongside four journalistic colleagues and two others at the weekend was deliberately targeted by the IDF. He was accused by Israel publicly a week ago of allegedly having a “military affiliation to Hamas”, suggesting he headed a terrorist cell responsible for planning rocket attacks against Israeli civilians and soldiers. There was no evidence produced to support this claim that he was effectively a combatant, which Al Jazeera strongly denies.
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Rather, it appears that Al-Sharif’s real “crime”, in the eyes of the Israeli authorities , was in fearlessly recording and publicising Israel’s criminal campaign in Gaza, representing all those journalists who were and are still denied access by the Israeli government to the territory.
His farewell message, penned in advance of the death he knew was coming, is moving testimony to his undimmed spirit: “I have lived through pain in all its details, tasted suffering and loss many times, yet I never once hesitated to convey the truth as it is, without distortion or falsification.”
The UN has, quite rightly, called for a rigorous and independent inquiry. But without Israeli cooperation it will come to nothing.
