Israel is targeting journalists to control the story, erase witnesses

Journalists and media workers from Barcelona protest and express solidarity with the Al-Jazeera journalists and cameramen killed in Gaza while resting in their tent. [AFP]

Anas al-Sharif, one of Al Jazeera's most recognisable voices in Gaza, was executed in plain sight on Sunday night, killed inside a press tent outside Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.

We must reject any definition of democracy hollowed into empty rituals, theatre designed to sanctify a bureaucratic apparatus whose real function is to control and pacify. This is not the safeguarding of freedom; it is its systematic suffocation. In Britain, we now watch elderly citizens dragged away by police for the "crime" of condemning the raw, inhumane, and bestial violence being inflicted on Palestinians.

Israel no longer even pretends to obscure its actions. The self-branded "most moral army in the world" now openly acknowledges targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure. Hours after the strike that killed al-Sharif and his colleagues, the Israeli military claimed responsibility. Alongside al-Sharif died correspondent Mohammed Qreiqeh, cameramen Ibrahim Zaher and Moamen Aliwa, and their assistant Mohammed Noufal.

The attack hit a press tent beside Al-Shifa Hospital, a hospital already assaulted multiple times, once occupied by Israeli forces under the unproven claim that Hamas operated a headquarters beneath it. In the process, they demolished large sections, forced patients from their beds, and arrested doctors. To this day, no evidence has been presented.

Last month, IDF spokesperson Avichay Adraee publicly accused al-Sharif of belonging to Hamas' military wing, an allegation the UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression condemned as "unsubstantiated" and "a blatant assault on journalists." Even after admitting to killing the journalists, Israel has produced no evidence to support the claim.

When pressed on why it continues to bar foreign journalists from Gaza, Prime Minister Netanyahu feigned confusion before boasting about plans to bring in more "embedded" reporters, journalists operating under military supervision. This is not press freedom; it is state-managed propaganda.

Israel's security cabinet has now approved a plan to seize Gaza City, a move condemned by world leaders and the UN as certain to cause massive forced displacement and more killing of innocents. Even within Israel, it faces fierce opposition from military officials and hostages' families.

The targeting of local journalists and the silencing of foreign ones is not collateral damage; it is strategy. The goal is simple: To control the story, to erase the witnesses.

This is the moment for the world's free press to decide whether it will stand up or kneel. Journalism cannot be reduced to recycling official statements from a government accused by the UN of genocide, a government actively isolating itself as a pariah state.

Self-proclaimed moral and legal authority to wage war must be tested in daylight, and allegations of grave crimes must be met with scrutiny. That requires eyes on the ground, free from military handlers.

If the press does not demand independent, unrestricted access to Gaza, it will betray its most essential mandate: To ensure that those who commit crimes are held to account.

Mr Andre is a photojournalist and coordinator of the Freedom to Report Initiative