Some of my best friends are journalists. And, as an Israeli, some of my worst enemies pretend to be journalists. They use their press vests to protect them not from shrapnel and stray bullets but from charges of supporting terrorism.
Such is the case of Al Jazeera reporter Anas al-Sharif, who posthumously sprang to global attention this week after he and four other so-called journalists working for the Qatari station were eliminated by Israeli forces in Gaza.
Sharif didn’t do things by half. He not only supported terrorism, but he also helped perpetrate it. According to the IDF, Sharif was responsible for advancing rocket attacks and had been a member of Hamas since 2013. As one of the best-known faces reporting from Gaza, he also carefully helped spread the Hamas narrative – the lies, libel, and distortion deliberately aimed at fueling incitement and attacks against Israel.
The IDF published details including Sharif’s name on Hamas salary slips, personnel rosters, and lists of terror training courses. There are also several selfies of Sharif being hugged by Hamas leader and October 7-mastermind Yahya Sinwar – that’s the same Sinwar who urged Palestinians to use “cleavers, axes, and knives” to attack Israelis.
On October 7, 2023, Sharif was part of a Reuters team that won a 2024 Pulitzer Prize in the category of Breaking News Photography for coverage of the Israel-Hamas war.
The media watchdog group HonestReporting noted early in the war that the Palestinian “photojournalists” who came from Gaza to cover the Hamas invasion of southern Israel on October 7 likely had advance warning of the terrorist organization’s mega-attack. They certainly made no effort to stop or distance themselves from the barbaric events – the murder, rape, mutilation, arson, and abductions. On the contrary. These photojournalists glorified the brutality.
In short, Sharif was not killed for being a journalist; he was killed for being a terrorist. There should be an obvious difference, but nowadays, it depends on what network you rely on to provide you with news, views, and talking points. There are a lot of media outlets out there determined that Israel should not receive fair press.
British investigative journalist David Collier, who specializes in exposing antisemitism and extremism, pithily posted on social media: “Isn’t it odd. Everyone is attacking Israel for killing a terrorist dressed up as a journalist. But I see no voices criticizing Qatar or @AlJazeera for giving cover to Hamas terrorists by giving them jobs and press jackets. Would have thought that was the more serious problem!”
Tellingly, while much of the world pretends Al Jazeera represents the free press, the station has been banned by the Palestinian Authority, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain. They are concerned that the station acts as Hamas’s mouthpiece, a voice for the offshoot of the jihadist Muslim Brotherhood.
FIVE ISRAELI journalists were among the 1,200 people murdered and 251 kidnapped on October 7: Ayelet Arnin, 22, who worked for Kan public broadcaster, and Shai Regev, 25, who worked for Maariv, were both murdered at the Supernova music festival; retired journalist Oded Lifshitz, 84, was abducted with his wife Yocheved from Kibbutz Nir Oz and murdered in captivity (Yocheved was released after two weeks); Israel Hayom photographer Yaniv Zohar, 54, was murdered along with his wife and two daughters in their home on Kibbutz Nahal Oz (only their 13-year-old son, who had gone for an early-morning run, survived); and Yediot Aharonot photographer Roy Idan, 43, was killed outside his home on Kibbutz Kfar Aza.
With natural photojournalistic instincts, before fully realizing what was happening, Idan first took photos of Hamas paragliders and reported the incident to the kibbutz security coordinator. Then he rushed back home to discover it had been invaded.
He was shot dead as he carried his three-year-old daughter, Abigail, in his arms. His wife, Smadar, had already been murdered. Their six-year-old daughter and 10-year-old son hid in a closet, near their mother’s body, for 12 hours.
In a particularly chilling twist, Abigail managed to crawl out from under the blood-soaked body of her father and, having seen both her parents shot, went to the home of a kindergarten friend. But nowhere was safe that dreadful day, and the toddler was kidnapped to Gaza along with her friend’s family.
Abigail was orphaned, separated from her siblings, and became a hostage on October 7, while Sharif was busy filming and celebrating the massacre perpetrated by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Abigail was released in a deal after 51 days in captivity and reunited with what remained of her family.
The Idans are just one tragic example of what happened on October 7. Never forget what triggered the war in Gaza – the mega-atrocity perpetrated by Hamas and their jihadist brethren. And Hamas could end the war today, tomorrow, or any of the previous 680 days. Israel isn’t fighting for revenge – Israel is trying to gain the release of the hostages and ensure that another attack doesn’t take place in the future. Hamas’s stated goals are the exact opposite.
SHARIF IS the model of a mobilized press. By now, the “Israel is deliberately starving Gaza” campaign has been so successful that the lie has become an Orwellian-like accepted truth. If you don’t periodically parrot it, you risk coming under attack – verbally or physically.
Adele Raemer, a resident of Kibbutz Nirim and an October 7 survivor, posted a piece on Facebook this week under the title: “Starvation as Strategy: How Hamas timed a hunger crisis to wage war on Israel’s image.” Raemer is the founder of the Facebook group “Life on the Border with the Gaza Strip,” which warned of the dangers from Hamas long before the terrorist organization’s 2023 invasion.
“It was not famine born of scarcity, but famine by design,” wrote Raemer. “Hamas orchestrated a calculated hunger campaign – measured in calories, timed to headlines – using both Gaza’s civilians and Israeli hostages as leverage.
“The goal was not to feed their people, but to feed a narrative: one that weaponized suffering, shifted blame, and sought political victories on the global stage.”
Sharif played his part in the charade – reporting on the deaths of children allegedly due to famine and claiming he, too, was finding it hard to work and survive with so little food.
Media monitor CAMERA did a good job of debunking an AFP claim that its photographers in Gaza were starving and barely able to lift their photography equipment – they managed, nonetheless, to produce hundreds of photos for foreign consumption and showed no signs of being malnourished in their own photos.
I haven’t seen photos or footage of Sharif looking thin, and none of the crowds of Gazan men filmed attending his funeral appear malnourished.
If you need a reminder of what true starvation looks like, go back to the videos Hamas and PIJ published last month of skeletal Israeli hostages Evyatar David and Rom Braslavski, held since October 7 in Gaza’s terror tunnels.
Sharif et al were killed in a precision strike on a tent next to a hospital. The location should come as no surprise to anyone who has followed Hamas’s deliberate use of hospitals, schools, mosques, and homes to provide a shield for its terrorist activities. You might have missed it, though, if you rely on Al Jazeera, BBC, and other outlets to provide you with facts and context. Their material comes from Gazan sources, tainted by the Hamas regime.
It’s worth recalling that three hostages rescued last year by Israeli forces said that their captors – who kept them in their home in Gaza’s Nuseirat neighborhood – included a prominent local doctor and his freelance journalist son.
Palestinian journalists are not being systematically targeted. Israelis are. Make that the entire State of Israel and the Jewish world. The starvation blood libel has added fuel to the already sky-high flames of antisemitism.
Sharif and his ilk have been deliberately carrying out a character assassination of the Jewish state. And it worked. Leaders of the UK, France, Canada, and Australia, among others, have declared they will recognize a State of Palestine at the UN in September. They have not made this conditional on the release of the remaining 50 hostages, of whom 20 are believed to be alive.
Sharif continues to be mobilized, now as a martyr. Beware the terrorist reporters using cameras as weapons. Framing Israel is their business and pleasure. They wear press jackets and come dressed to kill – one carefully crafted camera shot at a time.