The Enraging Betrayal of Murdered Palestinian Journalists

May the elite media's shameful treatment of their fallen colleagues haunt them forever.

Yousef Al Zanoon/Anadolu via Getty Images

On Sunday, Israel carried out the deadliest single attack on journalists in Gaza since the genocide began, murdering five Al Jazeera journalists and one independent reporter in an airstrike. Among the dead was Anas al-Sharif, who had become one of the most prominent reporters in Gaza over the past two years, and had repeatedly been threatened with murder by Israel.

It is hard to describe the pictures taken of al-Sharif’s body after the strike. The most I’ll say is that they’re too horrible for me to put here.

Israel has killed, conservatively, nearly 200 journalists in Gaza since the start of the genocide. Other figures put the toll much higher, near 300.

According to Brown University’s Cost of War Project, “The war in Gaza has, since October 7, 2023, killed more journalists than the U.S. Civil War, World Wars I and II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War (including the conflicts in Cambodia and Laos), the wars in Yugoslavia in the 1990s and 2000s, and the post-9/11 war in Afghanistan, combined.”

Combined. Think about that for a second. Think about how many millions and millions of people died in those wars—how indiscriminate the slaughter was, how vast the field of battle, how all-encompassing the conflicts. And fewer journalists were killed across that huge ocean of death than have died in the tiny Gaza Strip in less than two years. That is what Israel has done. Now it has killed more journalists in a single day than at any point since October 7.

Here is how NBC News decided to cover this story.

Here’s how the story starts:

Five Al Jazeera journalists were killed in a targeted Israeli airstrike in Gaza on Sunday, the network said, with the Israel Defense Forces claiming one was a Hamas leader posing as a journalist.

It takes 10 paragraphs into a 24-paragraph piece for NBC’s Phil Helsel to note blandly that “al-Sharif and Al Jazeera have previously denied accusations that he was a terrorist.” It takes another few paragraphs after that for him to mention that “the Committee to Protect Journalists said that Israel has a longstanding practice of accusing journalists of being terrorists without providing credible evidence.” You’d think these facts—along with the fact that Israel lies all of the time, continuously, about what is happening in Gaza—would cause NBC to try and prevent its news operation from helping Israel defame al-Sharif even in death. But you’d be wrong to think that.

For a clue as to why this is the case, let’s look at another little moment from the aftermath of al-Sharif’s murder, this time from the BBC:

And there you have it. Because al-Sharif and the hundreds of other reporters killed in Gaza are local Palestinians, and not from “international organizations” like the BBC, their independence must be questioned. Their ability to do their jobs must be doubted. They must be discussed in these cruel terms even after their killing. This is how it’s been since the genocide began.

The U.S. Media Is Ignoring Israel’s Slaughter of Palestinian Journalists

I struggle to find the words to convey how enraging this all is, and how sickening. These are some of the bravest and most important journalists in modern history, and they are being mowed down deliberately by a genocidal government, and their murders are minimized and dismissed and their lives traduced this way by people living in comfort and security.

May the shame haunt those people forever.