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The Western media is complicit in Israel’s murder of Palestinian journalist Anas al-Sharif

Israel murdered Anas al-Sharif and his colleagues because genocide can only proceed without witnesses. Western media outlets have failed to condemn the systematic murder of Palestinian journalists, and in the process have become accomplices.

Ahmad IbsaisAugust 11, 2025

A Palestinian journalist inspect the scene after an Israeli airstrike on a journalists’ tent near the Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, Gaza on August 11, 2025, which killed Anas al-Sharif, Mohamed Qraiqea and three other Al Jazeera journalists. (Photo: Omar Ashtawy/APA Images)

I still remember the day Shireen Abu Akleh was martyred. My mother called me crying. She had grown up watching Shireen, who was an invited guest into her home every day while she lived in Palestine. I remember when my mom called me after Israel dropped their first bomb in Gaza, the same tears, a different type of violence. And yesterday, my mom called me again to talk about Anas. Anas al-Sharif’s voice was one I’ve come to intimately know over the last two years, and one we will never hear again.

Because, like the almost 300 journalists in Gaza that Israel has killed, Anas represented the truth. And truth is a threat to Israel.

On August 10, Israel deliberately assassinated five Al Jazeera journalists in Gaza City: Anas al-Sharif, Mohammed Qreiqeh, Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal, and Moamen Aliwa. They were working from a tent outside al-Shifa Hospital when Israel killed them in a targeted strike. How remarkable that in two years, no such precision could locate a single hostage. Israel’s military admitted to the killings, falsely claiming al-Sharif was a Hamas commander despite offering zero evidence. Again, Israel kills without evidence, without proof, without reason, but always with the world’s permission.

For 22 months, the international community has watched Israel systematically murder journalists and called it acceptable losses in a just war. Nearly 300 media workers have been killed, the deadliest conflict for journalists in recorded history. Yet the world’s response has been to write strongly worded letters while shipping more weapons. Where are the sanctions that followed Russia’s invasion? Where are the war crimes tribunals that prosecuted Rwandan generals? Where is the global media solidarity that should transcend borders and politics? Apparently that only exists when the victims are not Palestinian.

Under Article 79 of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions, journalists are explicitly protected as civilians in armed conflict zones. Intentionally directing attacks against civilians, including journalists, constitutes a war crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and amounts to grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions. The law is clear. The crime is obvious. But, Israel has transformed every Palestinian journalist into a “legitimate target” by simply calling them terrorists first. This pattern repeats because we have allowed it to become routine. Israel bans international journalists from entering Gaza, leaving only Palestinian voices to document the genocide. Then, systematically, it murders those voices while the world debates whether it was justified rather than demanding accountability.

We have allowed Palestinians to be transformed into mythical figures, martyrs by default, as if their superhuman capacity to endure suffering justifies our abandonment of them. Palestinians should not have to be martyrs. Palestinians should not have to accept their own martyrdom as inevitable. Anas was living separately from his children because he knew Israel would target him. They had told him so. In a text message to a friend, he wrote, “I will not leave Gaza unless it’s to heaven.”

This is the moral bankruptcy of our moment. We celebrate Palestinian resilience while enabling their extermination. We admire their courage while refusing to protect them. We consume their testimony while permitting their assassination. We have made Palestinians perform their own humanity for an audience that has already decided they deserve to die.

Western media institutions bear blood responsibility for this carnage. For decades, they have served as Israel’s public relations arm, sanitizing genocide with passive voice and false balance. They transform “killed by Israel” into “died in violence,” amplify every Israeli claim while demanding impossible proof from Palestinian witnesses, and bury Palestinian voices beneath endless Israeli explanations. How convenient that Israeli military spokesmen are always available for interviews while Palestinian journalists keep getting killed before they can speak. Every major outlet that has platformed Israeli propaganda without challenge, every journalist who has repeated hasbara talking points, every editor who has buried Palestinian voices beneath the fold, you are responsible for Anas. You are responsible for the hundreds of thousands murdered. Your bylines are written in Palestinian blood.

Now, Israel murders journalists after announcing plans to further occupy Gaza because murdering journalists allows genocide to proceed without witnesses. When media outlets failed to condemn this threat, they became accomplices.

I still remember when the ceasefire was announced in January, the way Anas took off his helmet and jacket, relieved that life might return. Today, Anas can rest, and I hope heaven is free of the burden he had to carry, the weight of the world he had to witness, and the dignity he maintained when the world abandoned Palestinians to their fate.

When international journalists finally enter Gaza, they must know their moral cowardice will follow them like a shadow. They will walk through the ruins of a genocide they failed to prevent, interview survivors they refused to believe, document atrocities they could have stopped by simply telling the truth. They will never possess the bravery of the Palestinian journalists murdered by Israel. The world may have abandoned Palestinian journalists, but Palestinian journalists will never abandon the world to its darkness.