Five Al Jazeera staff members and another journalist were killed in a targeted Israeli drone strike on August 10. The staff were in a media tent near Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.
Those killed include Al Jazeera correspondents Anas al-Sharif, 28, and Mohammed Qreiqeh, 33, cameramen Ibrahim Zaher, 25, and Moamen Aliwa, 23, camera assistant Mohammed Noufal, 29, and freelance journalist Mohammad al-Khaldi, who was in a nearby tent. One more person was killed, and eight were wounded.
Al Jazeera condemned the attack, calling it a “targeted assassination.”
“The order to assassinate Anas Al Sharif, one of Gaza’s bravest journalists, and his colleagues, is a desperate attempt to silence the voices exposing the impending seizure and occupation of Gaza,” the media network said in a statement.
“As Al Jazeera Media Network bids farewell to yet another group of its finest journalists, who boldly and courageously documented the plight of Gaza and its people since the onset of the war, it holds the Israeli occupation forces and government responsible for deliberately targeting and assassinating its journalists.”
Mr. Sharif’s final message was posted to his Instagram and X followers on the day of his death, one hour after the journalist posted a short video on X depicting Israel’s bombardment of Gaza City. “If these words of mine reach you, know that Israel has succeeded in killing me and silencing my voice.
Peace be upon you, and the mercy and blessings of Allah,” he shared, according to the English translation. “Allah knows that I exerted every effort and strength I had to be a support and a voice for my people.”
Palestinian journalist Shuruq As’ad, reporter for Monte Carlo Doualiya radio and founder and director of the Palestine Journalism Hub, called Israel’s strike a crime against humanity and a crime against journalists.
She explained to The Final Call during an interview via the Signal app in Ramallah, how many of the journalists killed since the start of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023, received threats before their deaths.
“They were targeted. Either they lost their lives or their families. Anas lost his father directly after he received, last year, direct threats from the Israeli army that he has to stop reporting and he has to leave North Gaza, and he didn’t.
Then they attacked his family and killed his father, and now they killed him,” she said. “Two weeks before this, he was threatened again; even on social media, even Israeli journalists who should be colleagues, they were calling for attacking Anas and our colleagues and Israel even said that, yes, we killed Anas.”
“It’s beyond silencing,” Ms. As’ad added.
Osama Nazzal, who works as chief of the Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation’s international desk in Ramallah and as an English-Arabic interpreter for Palestine TV, accused Israel of targeting “all the society of Palestine in order to achieve its genocidal purposes,” including the intelligentsia, the medical doctors, the nurses, the fire brigadiers and journalists.
“The situation of the Palestinian people in Gaza in general is like hell on earth. And the Palestinian journalists, they are part of the society. They are the children of the Palestinian families who are subjected to Israeli missiles and Israeli bombs around the clock every day.
So they are in danger, first, as citizens, because they are Palestinian, and this danger gets worse and becomes like a compounded problem because of their profession as journalists,” he said to The Final Call in an interview via WhatsApp.
In a statement posted on X, the Israel Defense Forces admitted that Mr. Sharif had been “struck” and accused the journalist of being a “Hamas terrorist” involved in rocket attacks on Israeli civilians and IDF troops. A few weeks before the attack, on July 24, the Committee to Protect Journalists called for Mr. Sharif’s “protection in face of Israeli smears.”
“The Committee to Protect Journalists is gravely worried about the safety of Al Jazeera Arabic’s Gaza correspondent Anas al-Sharif, who is being targeted by an Israeli military smear campaign,
Which he believes is a precursor to his assassination,” the organization published in a statement. The organization noted increased threats against Mr. Sharif after the 28-year-old journalist cried on air while reporting on starvation in Gaza.
At least 238 journalists and media workers, but possibly up to 270, according to Al Jazeera, have been killed since the start of Israel’s genocidal war. Most of the journalists killed were Palestinian.
Before the recent attack, Israel had killed at least five other Al Jazeera journalists since October 2023. Al Jazeera considered Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza as the “single deadliest conflict for journalists.”
Mohammed Abu Hatab, a correspondent for Palestine TV, was one of the journalists killed in a previous Israeli airstrike. “He was our reporter in Gaza, and he was giving his report to our news bulletin.
After he finished, he said, Okay, I want to get back to my home in order to see my wife and children and have a cup of tea with them. He went home. Once he entered his house, the Israeli war planes bombarded the house over him and over his wife and children,” Mr. Nazzal said.
“You can’t imagine how the souls and the hearts of the people were shattered yesterday when Anas al-Sharif and the other five journalists were deliberately targeted by the Israeli drone while they were in the tent near Al-Shifa Hospital, because they were covering the starvation that their people are going through.”
Ms. As’ad, who lives near Ramallah, a city in Palestine’s West Bank, knows colleagues who stopped reporting due to the fear of being killed. She had spoken to Mohammad al-Khaldi several times and considered him a good investigative journalist.
“Israel knows the power of knowledge, the power of information, and they know that since years there has been a disinformation machine in the world vis-a-vis Palestine. And there was never a story of human rights.
There was never the story of families and never the story of historical events, of the occupation. They know the power of the videos, the power of the killing, the power of the displaced, demolishing 80% of Gaza, killing and injuring more than 60,000 people. So, they really think, in their opinion,
That journalists are targets and they have to be silenced because they don’t want the people in the world to see another narrative or another story, or children killed or starved,” she said.
Officials from Palestinian organizations, human rights organizations, Iran, Qatar, the United Nations and the European Union were among those who condemned Israel’s targeted attack.
But overall, Ms. As’ad believes the international community has failed. She accused both media organizations and politicians of being “spokespeople of the Israeli army.”
“They bought the story without even fact-checking it, without asking, is this right or wrong? Is this fake or true? Palestinians, for them, were just killed. They were numbers. They were never names, they were never human beings. They were never people who have families or loved ones,” she said.
In Chicago, the U.S. Palestinian Community Network (USPNC)-Chicago and the Chicago Coalition for Justice in Palestine held a news conference and memorial downtown for the slain journalists on Aug. 12. The gathering was also to honor the over 60,000 Palestinians who have been killed by Israel since October 2023.
Attendees brought flowers, pictures, notes of condolence and other items for a makeshift memorial. On August 16, over 200 organizations held a March for Gaza in New York, which drew people from around the country.
As for the current situation of journalists in Gaza: Hundreds are displaced and dozens of media organizations have been bombed; there is little internet and electricity, and journalists are starving and traumatized with no homes or families, Ms. As’ad said. Some have been arrested and tortured by Israel.
Mr. Nazzal also accused international media outlets, namely Western outlets such as Fox News, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and BBC News, of supporting Israel when the war first started.
“They were promoting the Israeli narrative. They were buying every word and every lie given by the Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and his Defense Minister [Yoav] Gallant at that time, and they continued their propaganda,” he said.
“It was not Western journalism, it was Western propaganda, and this caused much harm and much damage related to the Palestinian people, because they helped Israel defame and libel the Palestinians, as they showed their people that the whole issue, the whole history of Palestine.
Started on the 7th of October 2023, forgetting the Israeli massacres that were committed in 1948 and in 1967 and in 1972 and in 1982 and during the Palestinian al-Aqsa Intifada.”
The Al Jazeera Media Network remembered Mr. Sharif and his colleagues as “the last remaining voices from within Gaza, providing the world with unfiltered, on-the-ground coverage of the devastating realities endured by its people.”
“I hope that people will understand in the world that when humanity fails, we will all pay the price; not only Palestine, the freedom of speech,” Ms. As’ad said. “Everybody should know that it’s not an attack on the Palestinian journalism scene. It’s an attack on the journalism scene all over the world and the human rights all over the world.”
In his final message, Mr. Sharif shared, “Allah’s will prevailed, and His decree was fulfilled. I lived pain in all its details and tasted loss and grief time and again. Yet, I never hesitated for a single day to convey the truth as it is, without distortion or falsification, hoping that Allah would bear witness to those who remained silent, those who accepted our killing.
And those who besieged our breaths, unmoved by the remains of our children and women, and who did not stop the massacre that our people have been enduring for over a year and a half.”
He entrusted the people of the world with Palestine, his mother and his wife and two children. “If I die, I die steadfast in my principles, bearing witness before Allah that I am content with His decree, faithful in meeting Him, and certain that what is with Allah is better and everlasting,” he shared.