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“A prominent Al Jazeera journalist, who had previously been threatened by Israel, was killed along with four colleagues in an Israeli airstrike on Sunday in an attack condemned by journalists and rights groups. Israel's military said it targeted and killed Anas Al Sharif, alleging he had headed a Hamas militant cell and was involved in rocket attacks on Israel…
“Al Jazeera, which is funded by the Qatari government, rejected the assertion, and before his death Al Sharif had also denied such claims by Israel… Israel's military had named Al Sharif in October as one of six Gaza journalists it alleged were members of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, citing documents it said showed lists of people who completed training courses and salaries.” Reuters
The left criticizes the killing, arguing that Israel has been deliberately targeting journalists.
“Israel denies it deliberately targets journalists. But the evidence shows otherwise. To date, Israel has provided no independently verifiable evidence that any of the journalists whom it has admitted deliberately targeting were terrorists. In one case, that of the Al Jazeera journalist Ismail al-Ghoul, the documents produced allegedly showed that al-Ghoul became the leader of a Hamas battalion – when he was 10 years old…
“The documents Israel has shared on al-Sharif, which it posted on X, show al-Sharif as receiving a Hamas salary in 2023. The documents do not provide evidence that he was an active member of the terrorist group although Israel said it had ‘current intelligence’ – which it did not publish – indicating al-Sharif was an active Hamas military wing operative… Al-Sharif is the 184th Palestinian journalist to have been killed by Israel since the start of the war.”
Jodie Ginsberg, The Guardian
“At just 28 years old, Anas had emerged as the most recognized Palestinian journalist still alive and reporting from Gaza. He remained in the north from the beginning of Israel’s onslaught of the enclave and became a near-constant presence on television and online, reporting almost every day on airstrikes, shelling, massacres, displacement, famine, death, and dismemberment—while relaying glimpses of hope and accounts of Palestinian resilience whenever he could.”
Sharif Abdel Kouddous, Drop Site News
“Israeli officials have bragged of killing Mr Sharif, whom they have claimed was the head of a Hamas terrorist cell, planning rocket attacks against Israeli civilians. Mr Sharif and Al Jazeera had already denied this. It would surely be hard for such a prominent figure to combine reporting with command of such a unit. The documents offered up by Israel as evidence end two years before the war began, and were reportedly screen grabs of electronic spreadsheets, not independently verified…
“Mr Sharif’s 90-year-old father was killed in an airstrike on their home in late 2023, after Israeli military officials called the journalist telling him to stop reporting and leave Gaza. Israeli claims that he was a Hamas fighter resurfaced last month after his emotional reporting on starvation went viral. He was killed as outrage mounted over Gaza’s famine and shortly after Israel announced its plan to launch a ground offensive in Gaza City, which would only deepen the catastrophe… The deaths of the Al Jazeera team in the city ensure few are left to bear witness to what unfolds.”
Editorial Board, The Guardian
The right defends the killing, arguing that Al-Sharif appears to have been a member of Hamas.
The right defends the killing, arguing that Al-Sharif appears to have been a member of Hamas.
“IDF Arabic Spokesperson Avichay Adraee published a selfie Al-Sharif took with Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar and Khalil al-Hayya… Mere hours after the October 7 massacre had begun, Al-Sharif took to Telegram, declaring: ‘9 hours and the heroes are still roaming the country killing and capturing… God, God, how great you are.’… As Daniel Rubenstein quipped after news of his death broke, ‘Hamas content creators are not journalists.’ Perhaps legacy media should take note.”
Scott Johnson, Power Line Blog
“There’s been a lot of talk recently about how Israel is badly losing the propaganda war. And I don’t necessarily disagree. But I’m just not sure how Israel would turn it around: Have IDF soldiers wear press vests? Ultimately the challenge here is that the world contains a great many people who want to see the state of Israel destroyed, or at least defeated. And that’s why they pretend that anybody with a press vest is a journalist…
“The propaganda debate over the war is reminiscent of MSNBC’s Joy Reid once explaining that ‘The enemy of the far-right, in their own words, are Antifa, meaning anti-fascist. So, they are anti-anti-fascist by their own reckoning.’ If you oppose a group called anti-fascist, you are a fascist. Magnify this galactic stupidity by a thousand and you have something like what Israel is facing.”
Seth Mandel, Commentary
“EVERY ‘journalist’ in Gaza is tied to Hamas in one way or another, just as all the statistics coming out of the ‘Gaza Health Ministry’ that are so prominent in every news story are made up by Hamas. The ‘Gaza Health Ministry’ IS Hamas…
“You may recall that the Associated Press submitted a photograph taken by one of its stringers for the Pulitzer Prize. The ‘photojournalist’ was a participant in the October 7th attacks, which explains how he got such compelling photos… No doubt we will be treated to ‘journalists’ expressing moralistic outrage on the cable news channels and further accusations that journalists are being targeted by Israel, but at this point, it is just background noise…
“In a sane world, journalists would be outraged that terrorists (or members of any military) would claim a status as a ‘journalist’ in order to make themselves immune from attack. After all, that places all journalists at risk. Just as it is a war crime to pose as a doctor and use ambulances as mobile fighting bases, station soldiers at hospitals, schools, and among civilians, or to use civilians as human shields, journalists should value their neutral status as a partial shield.”
David Strom, Hot Air
