“I have lived pain in all its details and I have tasted pain and loss repeatedly. Despite this, I have never hesitated to convey the truth as it is, without distortion or falsification. May God be a witness against those who remained silent and accepted our killing, and against those who choked our breath and whose hearts were not moved by the scattered remains of our children and women, and who did nothing to stop the massacre our people have faced for more than a year and a half.”
This is what Anas al-Sharif wrote in his “will” prepared four months before his martyrdom. It was posted on his social media account several hours after an Israeli strike killed him and journalists Mohammed Qreiqeh, Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal and Moamen Aliwa at a media tent near al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.
Anas al-Sharif was one of Gaza’s heroes. He was – without a doubt – the journalist closest to all our hearts.
People here in Gaza often hate the media. They see journalists either exaggerate and portray us as superhumans, able to withstand relentless bombing, the deprivation of food and water, and the loss of loved ones; or demonise us as “terrorists”, justifying the killing of our families and the destruction of our homes.
Anas was different; he did not distort the truth. He was one of us: raised in our refugee camps, suffering with us under bombs and amid starvation, mourning his loved ones, refusing to leave his community. He stayed behind in Gaza, steadfast like an olive tree, a living example of a true Palestinian.
Advertisement
Anas started reporting for Al Jazeera at the start of the genocide, but he quickly became a familiar face. He and Ismail al-Ghoul did not stop broadcasting from northern Gaza even when they faced constant threats. Their warm friendship, and the funny and sad moments they shared, made us feel closer to them.
After the martyrdom of Ismail last year – may God have mercy on him – we felt we had lost a dear brother, and were left only with Anas.
Last month, when Anas broke down on camera while reporting on the starvation, people told him: “Keep going, Anas, don’t stop, you are our voice.”
And indeed, he was our voice. We often imagined that when the end of the genocide comes, we will hear it announced by Anas al-Sharif’s voice. There was no journalist in the world more deserving of declaring that moment than Anas.
For me, Anas was more than just a reporter. He was an inspiration. He was the reason I picked up my pen every time I lost hope that anything would change because of what I write. I saw Anas reporting tirelessly – hungry or full, in summer or winter, threatened with death or surrounded by cameras.
His persistence convinced me I was wrong to believe that documenting the genocide was not moving anyone outside. Anas made me believe our story can reach where we cannot, crossing seas and oceans to every part of the world. And his resilience, working every day, every hour, forced me to hope … hope that if we kept speaking, someone might listen.
Anas is now gone, and I feel I was wrong to hope, wrong to believe in the justice of this world, watching him appeal – with eyes overflowing with tears – to a global conscience that proved to be low and selective.
They did not deserve your tears, Anas! They did not deserve your self-sacrifice so they would know our story. They do not hear because they refuse to.
You raised your voice, Anas, but you were calling out to those without conscience.
I wished the war had ended before you were martyred so I could go find you in Gaza and tell you that our voices had succeeded, they had reached to the outside world and driven change. I would have told you that you were my role model and your work kept me going. And if at that moment, you had smiled and called me your colleague, I would have cried with joy.
Your coverage ended, Anas, but the genocidal war did not. Today, we look helplessly at the vile occupation boasting about targeting you before the entire world – the same world you pleaded with until your last breath. Countries around the world remain silent; for them, economic deals and political interests are worth more than human lives.
Advertisement
Yet, the occupation will not silence us, Anas. It wants us to die without a voice because our voice, while we groan in pain and cry from loss, disturbs it, interferes with its genocidal drive.
Gaza will not give birth to another like you, Anas, nor someone like writer and poet Refaat Alareer, nor like hospital director Marwan al-Sultan. The occupation is targeting the best and brightest, those who have raised their voices and shown the world what Palestinians of dignity and integrity can do.
But we will not stay silent after these violent murders. Even if we know the world will not listen, we will keep speaking – because it is our fate and duty. We, the living Palestinians who survived this genocide, have to carry the legacy of our martyrs.
For me, that means speaking, writing, and exposing the crimes of this bloody and brutal occupation … until the day you dreamed of, Anas – the day this genocide, the most horrific in modern history, ends. The day you return to your ancestral home in al-Majdal and I return to my village, Yibna.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.