Daily News

Israel has killed at least 237 journalists and media workers since it launched its war on Gaza. Many of them worked for Al Jazeera. Janine di Giovanni is the executive director of The Reckoning Project and a senior fellow in human rights at Yale University. She says she's worked 35 years as a war correspondent, but the genocide in Gaza is the worst she's ever seen.

Palestinians are struggling to survive on two fronts: the daily quest to find food in a strip devastated by a starvation crisis and Israel's nonstop bombardment - which has not let up. At least 13 Palestinians have been killed across the Strip so far on Tuesday.

Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif, 28, was one of Gaza’s most recognisable faces for his constant reporting of the reality on the ground over the last 22 months. The father of two was born in Jabalia refugee camp and graduated from Al-Aqsa University’s Faculty of Media. His father was killed by Israel in an air strike on the family home in December 2023.

Thameen Al-Kheetan, spokesperson for the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), stated that Israel’s killing of journalists in Gaza constitutes “a clear breach of international humanitarian law” and amounts to a “war crime.” Speaking to Al Jazeera, Al-Kheetan stressed that “any condemnations by member states must be followed by action,” urging countries with leverage over Israel to pressure it into halting its war on Gaza.

Israel’s latest killings of journalists in Gaza are an addition to a long list of criminality, said Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst Marwan Bishara. “We at Al Jazeera do not want to be the story; we are forced to be the story because of the criminality of the Israeli government,” he said. He said that while Al Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif was reporting “every minute of the day” and while Israeli claims he was a Hamas member were lies, several other journalists were killed alongside him even though Israel had not made any allegations against them. “Why assassinate him when he is among his colleagues? How many more journalists is it acceptable to kill as collateral damage?” Bishara asked. “There is something particularly psychopathic about the lie and about the crime.” He said al-Sharif is part of the fabric of Jabalia, the refugee camp where he comes from, whose residents have sacrificed their lives for the past six decades. Bishara said the timing of the killings was no coincidence either, as media reports have put Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu under significant international pressure as he plans to seize Gaza City.

Irene Khan, the UN special rapporteur on freedom of expression, said that Israel killed Anas al-Sharif over his work as a journalist and that Israeli claims he was a Hamas member are totally unsubstantiated. “If they had real evidence [of this], do you not think that they would put it out, up front, right away in the international arena? Of course they would. But why are they not doing that? Because they don’t have that evidence,” she told Al Jazeera. “They simply [say] that any journalist who is reporting on Gaza must be a ‘Hamas member’, just as anyone who criticises Israel has to be ‘anti-Semitic’. “That’s the way that Israel silences the world from criticising them or holding them to account.”

Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief, Wael Dahdouh, who has lost his wife and several other members of his family to Israeli attacks, has reacted to Israel’s latest deadly targeting of Al Jazeera journalists. “What is happening is unjustifiable and is not in line with any humanitarian law or any human values,” Dahdouh said. “This is astonishing. How can they target a tent where journalists were sheltering?” Dahdouh’s eldest son and fellow Al Jazeera journalist Hamza Dahdouh was killed by an Israeli missile strike in the western part of Khan Younis in southern Gaza in January last year. Dahdouh described working as a journalist in Gaza like navigating a “minefield”. Journalists “do their job in extreme fear”, he said, knowing they can “be targeted at any moment by the drones that are jamming the skies of Gaza”.

Antony Loewenstein is an independent journalist, and the author of a book called “The Palestine Laboratory”, which looks at Israel’s arms and surveillance industry. He says Western media has been largely complicit in what's happening in Gaza, including Israel's targeting and murder of journalists.

Israel has murdered five Al Jazeera journalists in Gaza, including correspondent Anas al-Sharif. They were targeted by a strike on their media tent outside al0Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, overnight. Al Jazeera Media Network has called it a “deliberate assassination” and urged the international community to act

Mustafa Barghouti is the Secretary General of the Palestinian National Initiative. He says the lack of international action and consequences has enabled Israel to continue its campaign in Gaza, including its targeting of Palestinian journalists and civilians.