My Take | Our bravest journalists today are all working and dying in Gaza
Palestinian reporters are being murdered before their own cameras to expose true horrors to an indifferent or even pro-genocidal world
Let this column be a tribute to slain Al Jazeera journalists and technicians Anas al-Sharif, Mohammed Qreiqeh, Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal and Moamen Aliwa, and independent journalist Mohammed al-Khaldi. They were deliberately murdered by the Israeli military in a surgical strike on Sunday.
Besides being an Al Jazeera star reporter, Sharif was part of a Reuters team that won a Pulitzer Prize last year. They defied death for almost two years to bring heartbreaking news to an indifferent or even pro-genocidal world.
They represent the bravest and most honourable of what our mostly sordid and miserable profession has to offer.
At the opposite end are those who produced such mendacious headlines and stories, from the most respected Anglo-American newspapers: “Israel has killed a prominent Al Jazeera correspondent it accuses of leading a Hamas terror cell in Gaza.”
“Israel killed five Al Jazeera journalists in airstrike, network says. Israel accused Anas al-Sharif, one of Gaza’s most prominent journalists, of heading a Hamas cell.”
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) warned last month of “acute danger” to Sharif after the Israeli military claimed he was a Hamas fighter, which Reporters sans frontieres (RSF) and CPJ dismissed as baseless. Irene Khan, the UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression, denounced the Israeli threat.