Israel is running two Gaza campaigns: one for military control of the strip, another for narrative control of how the world understands what happens there.
In theory, Palestinian journalists and social media influencers documenting starvation, mass killing and other Israeli war crimes in Gaza are protected civilians under international law.
However, those paper protections have meant little on the ground in Gaza, by far the most dangerous place in the world to be a reporter, where more than 180 Palestinian journalists have been killed in 22 months of war, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
Illustration: Mountain People
Even though it is illegal to target journalists, the CPJ said that over the same period 26 reporters were victims of targeted killings, which it described as murders. The most recent was the 28-year-old al-Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif, killed on Sunday in his makeshift newsroom outside a hospital, along with four colleagues.
Press freedom groups and journalists say those killings are part of a campaign of intimidation to shut down vital reporting, which Israel has justified internationally with smears and false claims that the targets were undercover Hamas fighters.
With international reporters barred from independent reporting in Gaza — a handful have been allowed in under Israeli military escort, but they are not allowed to move freely or speak to Palestinians — the work done by journalists in Gaza is critical.
“I have no doubt that the prevention of international access, the killings of journalists, the targeting of media facilities, the punishment of [Israeli] outlets like Haaretz is part of a deliberate strategy on the part of Israel to conceal what is happening inside Gaza,” CPJ chief executive Jodie Ginsberg said.
She pointed to a recent incident when a BBC crew reported from a Jordanian military plane dropping humanitarian aid into Gaza — but was barred by Israel from filming the devastation below.
“We had the example of the international news crews being allowed to film the airdrops, but not the devastation when the doors opened,” she said.
Last month, al-Sharif, one of the most prominent journalists still working in Gaza, went viral on social media when he broke down on air covering starvation. Passersby urged him to keep going, because he gave Gaza a voice.
Soon after, an Israeli military spokesperson revived allegations — first aired last year — that he was a militant, including accusing him of faking mass hunger in a “false Hamas campaign on starvation.”
The CPJ issued a stark warning that those Israeli claims were a death threat.
“These latest unfounded accusations represent an effort to manufacture consent to kill al-Sharif,” CPJ regional director Sara Qudah said at the time. “This is not the first time al-Sharif has been targeted by the Israeli military, but the danger to his life is now acute.”
Al-Sharif had also anticipated his own death and described it as retaliation for his reporting in a statement released on social media.
“If these words reach you, know that Israel has succeeded in killing me and silencing my voice,” he wrote.
Israel has published a dossier of documents it says were recovered from Gaza and link al-Sharif to Hamas. They end in 2021, two years before the war began, and do not even attempt to address his regular appearances live on camera.
A role as one of the most prominent journalists in one of the most closely surveilled places on Earth would be strikingly difficult to combine with command of a Hamas unit during an all-out war.
Documents Israel published after killing another al-Jazeera journalist last year claimed Ismail al-Ghoul was given a military rank when he was 10 years old.
While they marshaled contradictory and unconvincing evidence, the existence of those files reflected Israeli concerns about pressure from Western allies, and the need for at least the appearance of compliance with international law.
Despite international pressure, Israel has not offered any explanation for the deaths of al-Sharif’s four colleagues, protected civilians killed in their workplace.
Ginsberg said she feared that was a warning that already unimaginable risks had escalated further.
“What’s astonishing to me is they’ve not even attempted to justify the other killings,” she said. “So they’re admitting to murdering those journalists, knowing they were journalists.”
“I think this is deliberately intended to have a chilling effect to show that Israel can do what it likes, and nobody will take any action.” she said. “If we are now at a stage where Israel can so brazenly target an entire news crew, what does that mean for the safety of any of the other journalists who are operating there? Who is next?”
French historian Jean-Pierre Filiu, given rare permission to enter Gaza for academic research during the conflict, said a month researching there had also convinced him that Israel is trying to silence reporting from Gaza.
“Now I understand why Israel is denying the international press access to such an appalling scene,” he said in an interview with Haaretz after the trip.
“Even though I have been in a number of war zones in the past, from Ukraine to Afghanistan, via Syria, Iraq and Somalia, I have never, but never, experienced anything like this,” he said.
Emma Graham-Harrison is the Guardian’s chief Middle East correspondent, based in Jerusalem.
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