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Aug. 21, 2025
Ah yes — the IDF has done it again. Another “surgical strike,” another “terrorist eliminated.” Only this time, the so-called terrorist had a Pulitzer Prize, a press badge, a microphone, and a camera — not a rifle. His name was Anas al-Sharif, and he was 28 years old. A husband. A father of two. A storyteller. A voice of a people being starved into silence.
But in Israel’s war lexicon, these details are irrelevant. Why? Because in this grotesque logic, every Gazan is Hamas. Every child is a “future terrorist,” every mother a “human shield,” every hospital a “bunker,” every journalist a “commander.” It’s the kind of elastic morality that could make Orwell rise from his grave just to say, “I told you so.”
The Assassination Disguised as Defense
Eleven days ago, Israel deliberately bombed a press tent outside a hospital in Gaza City. Not a weapons depot, not a secret tunnel — a press tent. The strike wiped out al-Sharif, four of his colleagues from Al Jazeera, and at least one freelance journalist. Israel didn’t even bother to hide its fingerprints on this war crime. Instead, it simply declared that al-Sharif wasn’t really a journalist — he was a Hamas “commander.”
No evidence, of course. No transparent investigation. Just a few screenshots of spreadsheets and “purported service numbers” — flimsy enough to make a lazy propagandist blush. Yet somehow, Western media dutifully parroted the Israeli line: “Journalist or militant? Israel says…” — as though truth itself were just another matter of perspective.
So let’s be clear: what Israel killed was not a Hamas commander. What Israel killed was one of the last remaining mirrors of Gaza’s suffering. And that was precisely the point.
Journalism as a Death Sentence
Anas al-Sharif didn’t start out dreaming of being the world’s window into Gaza’s apocalypse. He once wrote about weddings, hope, ordinary joy. He wanted to tell stories of life, not chronicle famine and rubble. But as his homeland was turned into an open-air graveyard, journalism chose him.
He kept reporting, even while exhausted, hungry, terrified, convinced he was being watched and hunted. He once admitted:
“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.”
And so they killed him. Not because he fired rockets — but because he fired truth.
The International Double Standard
When Saudi Arabia butchered Jamal Khashoggi, the world erupted in outrage. When Russia imprisons or kills journalists, the West calls it tyranny. But when Israel assassinates Palestinian journalists — nearly 200 killed since October 2023 — the response is a polite shrug, a muddled headline, maybe a cautious “both sides” paragraph.
Imagine, for a moment, if Ukraine’s Pulitzer-winning filmmaker Mstyslav Chernov had been blown up by Russia and then posthumously smeared as an “FSB agent.” The world would rally to his defense in seconds. Yet al-Sharif? His memory is spat on, his press vest recast as camouflage.
Apparently, press freedom is sacred only when the journalist is European, American, or working in a conflict the West already disapproves of.
Israel’s Convenient Myth: Hamas Everywhere
Israel’s propaganda relies on one magical incantation: Hamas. Whisper it, shout it, and every atrocity is justified. A starving child? Future Hamas. A bombed maternity ward? Hamas bunker. A journalist with a camera? Hamas commander.
This is not war; it’s semantic genocide. By erasing the category of “civilian,” Israel erases accountability itself. And the world — desperate not to offend the gatekeepers of Holocaust memory — swallows the narrative whole.
But let’s not forget the irony: the same Israeli government now claiming to “eliminate Hamas” spent years propping Hamas up — funneling Qatari suitcases of cash into Gaza, strengthening Hamas as a convenient excuse for endless war. Netanyahu needed Hamas alive, not dead. And now, after 62,000 corpses, he needs Hamas everywhere, so that everyone can be killed.
A War on Witnesses
Killing al-Sharif was not an accident. It was strategy. Gaza has been closed to foreign journalists for months. The only eyes left were local ones — young men and women with phones, cameras, and courage. So Israel set about removing them.
You see, it’s not enough to bomb hospitals, flatten neighborhoods, and starve a population. You must also erase the narrators. You must ensure that when history asks, “What happened in Gaza?” the only answer left is: “We don’t know.”
The message is loud and clear: if you dare to bear witness in Gaza, your press vest is not a shield — it’s a target.
The Ugly Truth
At the heart of this war lies a cruel logic: Gaza’s journalists were never going to be allowed to survive because they understood too much. They lived what they reported. They couldn’t retreat to safe hotel rooms in Tel Aviv or fly home to New York. They were rooted in Gaza’s soil — soil now mixed with the ashes of their families.
And that, in Israel’s eyes, made them guilty.
But here’s the inconvenient truth: without local journalists, there is no war coverage. There are only military press releases, sanitized statistics, and diplomatic platitudes. The erasure of Gaza’s journalists is the erasure of Gaza itself.
History Will Remember
When the dust finally settles, and Gaza lies in ruins, historians will sift through the fragments. And among them, they will find the voices of journalists like Anas al-Sharif — voices Israel tried to bury under rubble.
But killing the messenger does not kill the message. If anything, it makes it louder.
Israel can smear al-Sharif as Hamas. It can bomb every press tent in Gaza. It can kill 200 more journalists. But it cannot undo the fact that the world has already seen — in shaky videos, in broken voices, in the trembling hands of young reporters — the reality of genocide, live-streamed in real time.
And that reality will haunt Israel far longer than any Hamas commander ever could.
👉 Because here’s the final irony: if every Gazan is Hamas, then every journalist is a fighter. And if every journalist is a fighter, then every report, every dispatch, every last shaky video from Gaza is not just news. It’s resistance.
And Anas al-Sharif, Pulitzer Prize in hand, camera in the other, will be remembered not as a commander of Hamas — but as a commander of truth.
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