After sealing Gaza off from international reporters and blocking the world’s eyes from its genocide, Israel has moved to the next phase of its blackout strategy: hunting down Palestinian journalists inside Gaza. The goal is obvious: silence the last independent witnesses so that the genocide and starvation of an entire people proceed unseen, unrecorded, and unchecked by the global community.
The latest murder of two of Gaza’s most prominent TV correspondents, Anas Al-Sharif, Mohammed Qreiqeh, as well as four other reporters in a tent housing journalists outside a Gaza hospital. This brings the number of Palestinian media workers killed by Israel to more than 230, the highest number killed in any world conflict.
This is not just in Gaza, let us not forget Israel’s cold-blooded murder of American-Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in May 2022 in the West Bank. Then, as now, Israel followed the same familiar playbook pattern: lie, deny, and distort the truth, before claiming, months later, that Abu Akleh was “accidentally” killed by a sniper’s bullet.
Israel bars international journalists from covering its atrocities, and when local reporters defy the blackout, silencing them becomes a calculated item on its “to-do list”: erasing truth-tellers and blinding the world. By this, Israel sends a clear message with every murder to those still breathing: report the truth and you will join them.
Political Zionism, from its inception, has perfected the art of pairing the crime with the lie. After murdering a journalist, all it needs to say is: he was Hama. No evidence is needed, no investigation is demanded. Israel fabricates evidence, if any, then Western media, unquestionably, market the lie. For example the headlines for Reuters was: “Israel kills Al Jazeera journalist it says was Hamas leader.” Instead of highlighting the documented Israeli death threats against the journalist or the fact that Al-Sharif’s father was murdered by Israel in December 2023, Reuters, NBC, BBC and others chose to privilege the unverified Israeli narrative.
This is not unique, Western media almost always treat Israeli statements with a nuance of credibility they deny non-Westerns. Consider Benjamin Netanyahu, a proven habitual liar, not by his enemies but by his close allies. He claims, Israel wants to “liberate” Gaza from Hamas and relocate civilians to so-called “safe areas.” Despite his proven record of deceit, Netanyahu’s false assertions are well covered, and repeated uncritically by Western media outlets.
Contrast this with the treatment of Russia’s claims that its war in Ukraine is to “liberate” the country from neo-Nazis. Those claims are met with great skepticism, fact-checks, and ridicule. Why does the same media grant Israeli lies a pass? Is it because of bias in favor of Israel, or an anti-Russian bias? Either way, it is hypocrisy, and it eats on the very principles that journalism is supposed to uphold.
Just over a year ago, an Israeli drone strike murdered Al-Sharif’s colleague Mohamed El Ghoul, along with his coworker inside a clearly marked press car. Israel, made the same claim then: a Hamas member to kosher its murders. If Russia did this to reporters in Ukraine, the outrage would never end. But when Israel kills journalists, the story is framed, softened, or buried.
Excerpted: ‘The Killing of Journalists in Gaza:
Israel’s War on the Soul of Humanity’.
Courtesy: Counterpunch.org
