Statement from PYM & WAWOG on the Murder of Anas al-Sharif
GAZA CITY — Late Sunday night, a crowd of men moved through the dirt paths between tents, lit by the light of a few cell phones and carrying over their heads the body of beloved Palestinian journalist, Anas al-Sharif. As they laid him to rest, they chanted “there is no God but Allah.” Anas and four of his colleagues were martyred by a direct Israeli airstrike targeting the tent housing the Al Jazeera journalists in Gaza, outside al-Shifa hospital.
Media establishment, you’ve killed Anas. You’ve failed to confront Israel’s deceptions; instead, you publish its lies and defend its barbarity. You’ve published Israel’s kill lists without question, making yourselves bullhorns for Israel's tactical intimidation strategies which aim to target and eliminate Gaza’s voice. You’ve chosen to side with the perpetrator — defying the laws of language to obscure the facts of this genocide, manipulating syntax to shift the burden of responsibility onto Gaza, and using passive language to insulate Israel from criticism and advance its ambitions. Your keyboards are weapons in Israel’s arsenal, and your papers are shields against accountability.
With each headline as a brick, the Fourth Estate has built a fortress of apathy. The difference between a “murdered” child and one “found dead” is the difference between outrage and voyeuristic intrigue. When the reader encounters a Palestinian only amongst the rubble or behind a rifle, they’ve been primed by your linguistic violence to see our death as inevitable. Israelis, by contrast, author the articles, edit the papers, run the cited think tanks, and are thus afforded the final word.
There are a thousand ways you’ve killed these men and women, beginning with the decisions not to publish Palestinians, not to name genocide, and to run unverified claims by Zionists. But what’s happening is bigger even than that, you’re killing the world where truth matters.
Just moments before his murder, Anas posted a video of an awful light ripping through the sky as Zionist missiles raced towards the ground. This was the last image he saw: the approach of his death. He sent that image into our orbit, using the last moments of his life to do what journalists of the West refuse to do: report.
Anas, reporters Mohammed al-Khalidi and Mohammed Qreiqeh, and camera operators Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal and Moamen Aliwa, are not the first journalists to be massacred by the Zionist project during this genocide. Nor are they the first among 20 or 30 or 50. Their bodies, draped in white cloth, are morbid tallies that total over 230 Palestinian journalists murdered by Israel since October 7, 2023.
Before Anas there was Fatima Hassouna, and before her Hossam Shabat, Ismail al-Ghoul, and Hamza al-Dahdouh. And many, many more before, after, and between. And with each, you’ve turned away and refused to honor the work of their lives. You have been the facilitators of silence and erasure, working tirelessly to aid and abet Israeli slaughterers.
Israel has been murdering journalists for as long as journalists have been unmasking its vicious occupation of our people. Yet the record this serial-killer state writes in the wake of their crimes has shifted dramatically and alarmingly. In 2022, when Occupation soldiers shot and killed Shireen Abu Akleh, Israel initially denied the truth, eventually deflected, and finally attempted to smear her post-mortem. Today, Israel proudly boasts of their latest exploit, asserting — without credible evidence — that Anas was a member of the Palestinian armed resistance; your colleagues reported this credulously and dutifully. The hasbara three-step has quickened: Israel lies with impunity because the Western press has given it license and airtime to do so.
As Hossam Shabat wrote in July 2024, “[l]anguage is important. Language makes genocide justifiable. A reason why we are still being bombed after 243 days is because of The New York Times and most Western media.” Shabat was murdered while the very organizations he named printed articles manufacturing consent for his assassination.
To the silent so-called journalists of the West: People of conscience know that this designation should be reserved for those who bring truth to the public. We revoke you of that title, held instead by Anas, Hossam, and all of the martyred journalists who sacrificed their lives to broadcast the truth. while you serve the institutions that bring justification of Israel’s genocide to TVs and doorsteps around the world. Is this the legacy you envisioned for yourselves when you picked up the pen, the mic, or the camera? Did you think this is what it would come to, acting as the mouthpiece for the greatest criminals of the 21st century thus far? Do you know our names?
Every Zionist murder of a Palestinian journalist is a networked product: The missiles have manufacturers, the politicians have class interests, the Zionists have a playbook — in effect, the murderers have names. Your imperative is to speak truth to that power, not to propagandize extermination. Zionism is collapsing under its own weight. Where will you be when it falls?