Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Israeli state by now has a long and sanguinary history of murdering writers and journalists in cold blood. In 1972, Israeli commandos murdered novelist, painter and short story writer Ghassan Kanafani in Beirut with a car bomb — the weapon of choice for terrorists ever since — killing his niece Lamis as well. Kanafani’s crime was to be an effective voice of the 1948 Palestinian Nakba or catastrophic expulsion from their homeland by the militant Zionist settler-colonialists and then by the newly formed Israeli army. Anyone who hasn’t read his Men in the Sun has a hole in their knowledge of the issue.
On May 11, 2022, an Israeli sniper was ordered to murder American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. The powerful Israeli propaganda machine (which is not different than that of Vladimir Putin or Donald Trump, and the effectiveness of which is plummeting) initially asserted that Palestinians had killed her. Then it “might” have been an Israeli sniper. Then it was an Israeli sniper but it was an unfortunate accident. If that was the case, why did Israeli authorities disrupt even her funeral (she was a Greek Catholic)? Her crime was to report on the Israeli slow colonization of the Palestinian West Bank for 17 years for Al Jazeera. As a careful journalist, she became a trusted narrator of what was being done to the occupied Palestinians. She was eliminated, rubbed out, whacked, by the Israeli army, deliberately and calculatedly, which lied about the hit job.
Now on Sunday comes the news that the Israeli army assassinated five journalists, one of them lead Al Jazeera reporter Anas al-Sharif, 28, who had become known as the “voice of Gaza,” watched by millions throughout the world. The Israeli military fired a rocket at the tent he and four other journalists were sheltering in near the al-Shifa’ Hospital in Gaza City.
They join 178 journalists killed by the Israeli military in Gaza. Most of these killings appear to have been deliberate.
Russia appears to have killed 18 journalists in the field since February 2022. It has killed other journalists, but they were fighting in the Ukrainian military as soldiers and so weren’t killed qua journalists. The Ukraine War is pretty vicious and Putin’s minions are ruthless. But they’ve only rubbed out 18 practicing journalists, versus 178 for Israel. This is not to mention that Ukraine has a population of 37 million, while Gaza’s at least used to be 2.2 million. So killing 178 journalists in Gaza would be like killing nearly 3,000 journalists in Ukraine.
Note that firing a rocket at a tent known to be inhabited by unarmed civilian journalists is an act of cowardice and is the sort of thing for which German and Japanese officers were tried at Nuremberg.
The Israeli propaganda charges against al-Sharif, that he was an active-duty Hamas commando in charge of firing rockets at Israel, would be laughable if they weren’t so sinister in a Kim Jong Un sort of way. We saw al-Sharif all day every day huddling in Gaza, undernourished, staring into the camera and reporting. Is he Superman, to sneak off and fire a rocket between screen appearances and intensive news gathering?
Al-Sharif had prerecorded a statement for this eventuality, which was released on Sunday:
- “This is my last will and testament, my final message. If these words of mine reach you, know that Israel has succeeded in killing me and silencing my voice. Peace, mercy, and blessings of God be upon you. God knows that I have exerted all my effort and strength to be a support and voice for my people, ever since I opened my eyes to life in the alleys and neighborhoods of Jabalia refugee camp.
“I have lived the pain in all its details, and I have tasted the pain and loss repeatedly. Despite this, I have never hesitated to convey the truth as it is, without falsification or distortion. May God be a witness against those who remained silent, those who accepted our killing, and those who held our breath and whose hearts were not moved by the remains of our children and women, nor did they stop the massacre our people have been subjected to for more than a year and a half.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, goaded on by the Israeli equivalent of neo-Nazis in his cabinet, announced Thursday that he intends to directly occupy Gaza City militarily in preparation for expelling its population once again to the south of the Strip. He clearly intends to commit more genocidal war crimes of the sort for which he has been indicted for by the International Criminal Court, and does not want any witnesses.
His attempt to blind the world to what he is doing in Gaza is pitiful in its hubris. And it comes a day late and a dollar short, since everyone knows about his Gaza genocide, even, apparently, Donald Trump, who angrily instructed Netanyahu to stop his ridiculous lying that no one is starving in Gaza.
Al Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif killed in Israeli attack in Gaza City
Al Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif killed in Israeli attack in Gaza City
I can’t do better than the statement by the Committee to Protect Journalists:
- “The Committee to Protect Journalists is appalled to learn of the killing today of Al Jazeera journalist Anas Al-Sharif, Mohammed Qreiqeh, camera operators Ibrahim Zaher and Mohammed Noufal, and an unnamed assistant by Israeli forces in Gaza. The journalists were killed in an attack on a tent used by media near Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City during an Israeli bombardment, according to Al Jazeera.
In a statement announcing the killing of Al-Sharif, Israel’s military accused the journalist of heading a Hamas cell and of “advancing rocket attacks against Israeli civilians and [Israeli] troops.” Israel has a longstanding, documented pattern of accusing journalists of being terrorists without providing any credible proof.
“Israel’s pattern of labeling journalists as militants without providing credible evidence raises serious questions about its intent and respect for press freedom,” said CPJ Regional Director Sara Qudah. “Journalists are civilians and must never be targeted. Those responsible for these killings must be held accountable.”
Al-Sharif had been one of Al Jazeera’s best-known reporters in Gaza since the start of the war and one of several journalists whom Israel had previously alleged were members of Hamas without providing evidence. Most recently, Al-Sharif had reported on the starvation that he and his colleagues were experiencing because of Israel’s refusal to allow sufficient food aid into Gaza.
In a July 24 video, Avichay Adraee, an Israel Defense Forces spokesperson, accused Al-Sharif of having been a member of Hamas’s military wing, Al-Qassam, since 2013 and working during the war “for the most criminal and offensive channel.”
Al-Sharif told CPJ in July: “Adraee’s campaign is not only a media threat or an image destruction; it is a real-life threat.” He said: “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.”
Since the start of the Israel-Gaza war on October 7, 2023, 186 journalists have been killed. At least 178 of those journalists are Palestinians killed by Israel.”
CHP quote licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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