Mourners gathered around two bodies of the journalists killed Sunday in Gaza at their funeral on Monday.Omar Ashtawy/APA/ZUMA
Since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza in October 2023, the Israeli military has killed nearly 200 Palestinian journalists, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
The latest deaths include six journalists—five for Al Jazeera and one freelancer—who the Israeli military killed on Sunday in Gaza City, according to CPJ. Those killed include correspondents Anas al-Sharif and Mohammed Qreiqeh; camera operators Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal, and Moamen Aliwa; and freelance journalist Mohammad al-Khaldi, CPJ says. The journalists were stationed in a tent across from Al-Shifa Medical Complex when they were struck, according to a statement from the news outlet; al-Khaldi, a local freelancer, was struck in a nearby tent, an eyewitness told CPJ.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed in a post on X that it targeted Al-Sharif, 28, alleging that he was a “Hamas terrorist” who “posed as an Al Jazeera journalist”—a claim that Al-Sharif denied when he was alive. The IDF has made similar unsubstantiated claims against other Al Jazeera journalists who the military killed, CPJ notes. Last month, the IDF accused Al-Sharif of being part of Hamas’s military wing since 2013, which Al Jazeera called a “campaign of incitement” and “a dangerous attempt to justify the targeting of its journalists in the field.” Al-Sharif told CPJ at the time, “I live with the feeling that I could be bombed and martyred at any moment,” adding that his family was also in danger.
In its statement on Monday, Al Jazeera called Al-Sharif “one of Gaza’s bravest journalists” and said the order to kill him and his colleagues “is a desperate attempt to silence the voices exposing the impending seizure and occupation of Gaza.” A compilation of his reports published by Al Jazeera on Monday shows him reporting from the front lines of the war. In one clip, he accompanied a rescue crew trying to free a man trapped under rubble; in another, he broke down crying, as a passerby told him, “Keep going, you are our voice.” His final report filed with the network was focused on the rise in starvation deaths in Gaza. On Sunday, Al-Sharif reported “intense, concentrated Israeli bombardment” in Gaza City on his X account.
The killings mark a uniquely gruesome period for members of the press covering the war. More than 190 journalists have been killed since the October 2023 start of the war, at least 184 of whom were Palestinians killed by Israel, CPJ says. Dozens were killed within the first month of the war alone. Eleven Al Jazeera journalists and eight freelancers who worked with the news outlet have been among those killed, according to CPJ data.
The journalists killed since the start of the war is more than the number of journalists killed worldwide from 2020 through 2022 combined, according to CPJ. (Gaza’s government media office, Reporters Without Borders, and Al Jazeera put the amount of journalists killed in Gaza since October 2023 higher, at more than 200.) An April report published by Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs says that, based on the estimates of more than 200 journalists killed, Israel’s war in Gaza has killed more journalists than the U.S. Civil War; the first and second World Wars; the Korean and Vietnam wars; both Yugoslav wars; and the post-9/11 US war in Afghanistan wars combined.
Press freedom groups condemned the latest round of killings and dismissed Israel’s terrorism allegations against Al-Sharif. In a statement, CPJ Regional Director Sara Qudah called the Sunday killings “murder,” adding, “Israel is murdering the messengers.”
“The world needs to see these deadly attacks on journalists inside Gaza, as well as its censorship of journalists in Israel and the West Bank, for what they are: a deliberate and systematic attempt to cover up Israel’s actions,” Qudah added.
Reporters Without Borders called for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council in response to the killings, pointing to a 2015 resolution that called on member states to enact protections for journalists reporting in conflicts. “This massacre and Israel’s media blackout strategy, designed to conceal the crimes committed by its army for more than 21 months in the besieged and starving Palestinian enclave, must be stopped immediately,” Thibaut Bruttin, the organization’s director general, said in a statement.
“The world needs to see these deadly attacks on journalists inside Gaza, as well as its censorship of journalists in Israel and the West Bank, for what they are: a deliberate and systematic attempt to cover up Israel’s actions,” Qudah added.
Despite all this, though, American officials have yet to condemn the Sunday killings. Spokespeople for the State Department and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Mother Jones on Monday afternoon.
In a final statement posted to his X account on Sunday, which Al-Sharif appeared to draft in April and requested be shared if he was killed, the journalist wrote that he “never once hesitated to convey the truth as it is, without distortion or falsification.” He urged support for his family, including his two children and his wife.
“If I die,” he added, “I die steadfast upon my principles.”