The Western media are failing Gaza
Summary: Francis Ghilès pays tribute to the Al Jazeera journalist Anas Al Sharif, who was assassinated by the Israel Defence Force after he posted a powerful statement on journalism. He argues that the deliberate targeting of journalists in Gaza, combined with Israel's ban on international reporters, reveals a hypocritical stance by Western governments and media who are subservient to the US and fail to hold Israel accountable for the devastating human and physical cost of the conflict.
“I lived through pain in all its details, tasted suffering and loss many times, yet I never once hesitated to convey the truth as I see it without distortion…I will not leave Gaza except for the sky…I will not leave Gaza even if I am killed.” The Al Jazeera journalist Anas Al Sharif posted what must rank as one of the most noble definitions of journalism on his X account on August 6, 2025. Just four days later, he was assassinated by the Israel Defence Force inside a tent for journalists outside the Al Shifa hospital in Gaza City.
As a former Financial Times journalist and regular contributor to the BBC World Service, I share Anas Al Sharif’s view, though I have never faced anything like the conditions in Gaza.
278 journalists and media workers have been killed by Israeli attacks in Gaza in 22 months of war – or about 13 journalists every month – according to a tally by Shireen.ps, a monitoring website named after Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who was shot and killed by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank in 2022. Just yesterday another five journalists were among 20 people killed in an Israeli attack on Nasser Medical Complex in southern Gaza: Al Jazeera photographer Mohammad Salama; Hussam al-Masri, who worked as a photojournalist for the Reuters news agency; Mariam Abu Daqqa, who worked as a journalist with several media outlets, including The Independent Arabic and The Associated Press news agency; and journalist Moaz Abu Taha. Palestinian correspondent Hassan Douhan, a journalist and academic who worked as a correspondent for Al-Hayat al-Jadida publication, was also killed in a separate incident in Khan Younis later Monday, bringing the death toll of journalists to six.
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), however, only 21 Palestinian journalists have been ‘murdered’ during the last two years. This yawning discrepancy is down to CPJ’s 'methodology' which is based on their own unpublished research and not subject to peer review. The result is that while over 75% of journalists deaths in Haiti, for example, are categorised by the CPJ as ‘murder’, when it comes to Palestine the CPJ categorises just 13% the same way. The rest are found to have died as a result of a ‘dangerous assignment’, in ‘crossfire’ or not counted at all. Unfortunately, the CPJ - which is funded mainly by US philanthropic institutions like the Bloomberg endowment - is just another once highly regarded mainstream western media source that has been revealed to be more than happy to throw the rule book out the window when it comes to reporting the genocide in Palestine.
As has become customary, the Israel Defence Force claimed responsibility for the killing of Anas on the basis that he was a ‘terrorist’. The Israeli outlet +972 Magazine explains how this strategy works:
The Israeli military has operated a special unit called the “Legitimization Cell,” tasked with gathering intelligence from Gaza that can bolster Israel’s image in the international media, according to three intelligence sources who spoke to +972 Magazine and Local Call and confirmed the unit’s existence.
Established after October 7, the unit sought information on Hamas’ use of schools and hospitals for military purposes, and on failed rocket launches by armed Palestinian groups that harmed civilians in the enclave. It has also been assigned to identify Gaza-based journalists it could portray as undercover Hamas operatives, in an effort to blunt growing global outrage over Israel’s killing of reporters... According to the sources, the Legitimization Cell’s motivation was not security, but public relations. Driven by anger that Gaza-based reporters were “smearing [Israel’s] name in front of the world,” its members were eager to find a journalist they could link to Hamas and mark as a target, one source said.
After he was murdered pro-Israeli advocates on social media published old photos of Anas with former Hamas leader Yahia Sinwar in an attempt to buttress the allegations. Reuters ran a report titled: “Israel kills Al Jazeera journalist it says was Hamas leader”. They chose that headline despite the fact al-Sharif used to work for them – he was part of a Reuters team that won a 2024 Pulitzer Prize.
Palestinian Authority media also played a key role in Anas’ assassination: in the months leading up to his murder English and Arabic language media accounts loyal to the PA repeatedly regurgitated the Israeli claims that he was a terrorist which is remarkable when one considers that Al Jazeera has done more than any other news network in terms of covering the plight of the Palestinians.
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Britain’s ‘public service broadcaster’ is keeping the public in the dark about UK support for Israel’s assault on Gaza [photo credit: Declassified.org]
Veteran BBC journalist John Simpson has called for Gaza to be opened up to international media, stating on his X account that “the world needs honest, unbiased witnesses reporting to help people make up their minds about the major issues of our time. This has so far been impossible in Gaza.” This is a racist statement that ignores the hundreds of Palestinian journalists in Gaza who have been covering the conflict since it began (hundreds of whom the Israelis murdered) while implying they are not honest. The BBC could have easily hired Palestinian journalists in Gaza to bring us the news, like Al Jazeera has done. Instead, like the CPJ, it chose instead to systematically eviscerate its own reputation by manufacturing consent for the genocide.
According to the Costs of War Project at Brown University, more journalists have been killed in Gaza than in the US Civil War, World War I, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the wars in Yugoslavia, and the US wars in Afghanistan combined. While most Western media outlets publicly criticise and campaign for journalists harassed or imprisoned by adversaries like Russia, China, or Iran, they are largely silent when it comes to Israel.
The “grave concern” expressed by Sir Keir Starmer’s spokesperson about “the repeated targeting of journalists in Gaza” rings hollow, as do similar statements from most of his European peers. Whimpering at Netanyahu after growling at Putin does not make the British prime minister a world-class statesman. Until recently, Western European states have hidden behind the pretense that Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute self-defence. However, it's doubtful they truly believe this as the right to resist an occupation by force is specifically endorsed under international law and they have never seriously protested Israel’s decision to ban international journalists from entering Gaza—a rare instance in modern history where reporters have been denied access to an active war zone. The burden of bearing witness has fallen almost entirely on Palestinian reporters.
The democratic values that Western media and political leaders claim to cherish are further eroded when we consider that the government of Israel can “genuinely say that its policies reflect the will of most Israelis. The carnage in Gaza is not the work of authoritarians or demagogues but bears the imprimatur of democracy” wrote Robert A. Pape in Foreign Affairs. The true Palestinian death toll could exceed 186,000, according to an extensive analysis published in the British medical journal The Lancet. Israel’s war on Gaza has led to the death of between 5% and 10% of the pre-war population of about 2.2 million. Of the 40 campaigns that used air power to inflict harm on civilians that Pape described in his 1996 book, Bombing to Win, only five resulted in civilian deaths greater than 1% of the population: four in and around World War II and the Soviet attack on Afghanistan from 1979 to 1988.
The primary purpose of banning international journalists appears to be hiding the stunning physical and human devastation the Palestinians have suffered. More people are beginning to understand that Europe’s complicity in preventing the true consequences of the war from reaching a wider public is destroying the very moral foundations on which European countries, let alone the European Union, are built.
The Israelis are undermining their own security because their advancements in technical intelligence, cyber-attacks, pager-detonations, and mass civilian carnage will be adopted by others. This points to a regression to older forms of tribalism. “Eradicating terrorists” has been a favoured rhetoric of numerous Western leaders, a rhetoric that has killed millions and left untold human and physical destruction in its wake.
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