Eleven days ago, Israel assassinated a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, a young man who had suddenly become the face and voice of the desperate people of his homeland, Gaza.
In gripping dispatches on Al Jazeera and his social media feeds, that journalist, Anas al-Sharif, documented the relentless Israeli assault on civilians, breaking down on camera as he reported on the gathering famine. He was 28 years old, a husband and the father of two young children. He, four of his colleagues from Al Jazeera and at least one freelance journalist were killed in an Israeli airstrike that targeted a press tent outside a hospital in Gaza City.
The Israeli military made no attempt to obscure this brazen strike on civilians, which is a war crime. Instead, it argued that al-Sharif was not a civilian at all. It claimed with no credible evidence that he was the commander of a Hamas cell and that his journalism was merely a cover for that clandestine role. Those killed alongside him — Mohammed Qreiqeh, Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal, Moamen Aliwa and Mohammad al-Khaldi — were presumably acceptable collateral damage in pursuit of this target.
Since the gruesome Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7 that killed about 1,200 Israelis, Israel has waged a pitiless war in Gaza. More than 62,000 people have been killed, including some 18,500 children, according to local health authorities, in what is considered by many experts to be an undercount. Most of the tiny enclave is now rubble; almost all of Gaza’s two million people have been forced to flee their homes, many repeatedly. Since Israel ended the latest cease-fire in March, it has sharply curtailed the amount of humanitarian aid reaching Gaza. Most of its population, according to the United Nations, is experiencing or staring down starvation.
Amid so much suffering, the targeting of a single journalist may seem like an individual tragedy. But coming as Israel begins an all-out assault to capture Gaza City and as Benjamin Netanyahu has said he intends to occupy all of Gaza in the face of growing global condemnation, the killing of al-Sharif, like the killing in March of his fellow Al Jazeera correspondent Hossam Shabat, marks an ominous new phase in the war.
To justify its pitiless pulverizing of Gaza, Israel has endlessly invoked the threat of Hamas, supposedly lurking in schools, hospitals, homes and mosques. Now it has begun not only accusing individual journalists of being Hamas fighters but also openly admitting to killing them in targeted attacks, based on purported evidence that is all but impossible to verify.
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The post Israel Says It Killed a Hamas Commander. It Killed a Pulitzer-Winning Journalist. appeared first on New York Times.
