The targeted slaughter of their Palestinian colleagues still hasn’t shaken Western journalists from their cowardice.

By Schuyler Mitchell , Truthout

Published August 13, 2025

Photo: A woman holds a sign showing the names of journalists killed in Palestine, Lebanon, and Israel since October 7, 2023, during a protest in solidarity with journalists in the Gaza Strip and condemning the killing of Al Jazeera journalists days earlier, organized by Israeli and international journalists outside the Press House in Tel Aviv, on August 13, 2025.AHMAD GHARABLI/ AFP via Getty Images

Truthout is a vital news source and a living history of political struggle. If you think our work is valuable, support us with a donation of any size.

On November 9, 2023, just over one month into Israel’s genocide in Gaza, a group of U.S.-based journalists published an open letter. “We stand with our colleagues in Gaza and herald their brave efforts at reporting in the midst of carnage and destruction,” the letter’s authors wrote. “We also hold Western newsrooms accountable for dehumanizing rhetoric that has served to justify ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.”

Signed by 1,200 journalists in the first week of its publication, the letter called on reporters to “use precise terms” and “tell the full truth without fear or favor” — in other words, to do exactly what reporters are supposed to do. Instead, many Western newsrooms bristled at the demand for basic moral clarity and journalistic ethics. Coverage of employer backlash against the letter’s signatories quickly drowned out the contents of the letter itself. Facing disciplinary action, staff at The Associated Press, The Washington Post, Bloomberg, and other major media outlets requested their signatures be removed; the Los Angeles Times banned staff who signed the letter from covering Gaza for at least three months.

At the time of the letter’s publication, Israel’s four-week siege had killed at least 36 Palestinian journalists. As of August 11, 2025, that death toll has ballooned to more than 270 — and more journalists have been murdered in Gaza than in the U.S. Civil War, both world wars, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the wars in Yugoslavia and Afghanistan combined. Still, the widespread (and sometimes targeted) slaughter of their Palestinian colleagues has been unable to shake Western journalists from their cowardice. Hiding behind a mask of spurious objectivity, major outlets continue to shy away from words like “genocide” and “apartheid” while giving credence to the Israeli military’s oft-debunked talking points.

Twenty-two months into Israel’s dizzying, relentless assault on Gaza, it is easy to lose track of how much the goalposts have shifted. At the start of the genocide, Israel vehemently denied targeting journalists at all, despite ample evidence to the contrary. This week, Israel admitted to assassinating Anas al-Sharif, a 28-year-old Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter widely celebrated as “the voice of Gaza.” A targeted Israeli airstrike killed al-Sharif and five Al Jazeera staff and freelance colleagues while they were sheltering at a tent for journalists outside Al-Shifa Hospital.

Israeli officials claim, without providing evidence, that al-Sharif was a Hamas leader and therefore a legitimate military target. (No explanation was offered for the deaths of the rest of the Al Jazeera crew.) But Israel levies baseless accusations so often that credulously reporting such claims would be journalistic malpractice: If one were to believe the Israeli military’s accounting, throw a rock five feet into Gaza and you might hit a Hamas leader. The Jabalia refugee camp, destroyed by Israeli forces in late 2023? Israel claims it is a “Hamas stronghold.” The Al-Tabaeen school-turned-shelter, massacred in August 2024? “Hamas headquarters.” The Al-Shifa Hospital, raided in November 2023, and again in November 2024? “Hamas command center.” When the Israeli military gave 1.1 million Palestinians 24 hours to evacuate northern Gaza in October 2023, it said it was necessary to eradicate the Hamas members hiding in tunnels beneath Gaza City. Then, when Israel attacked the southern Gazan city of Rafah, it claimed it would eliminate Hamas’s last remaining military battalions. Hamas does not operate in the occupied West Bank, but since October 7, 2023, the Israeli military and settlers have killed at least 964 Palestinians there. The Israeli military has also expelled residents from refugee camps in the territory, installed checkpoints and roadblocks, and destroyed civilian homes and infrastructure. And even though Israel has already succeeded in killing Hamas’s key leaders — including Yahya Sinwar and Ismail Haniyeh, as well as top Hezbollah officials like Ibrahim Aqil in Lebanon — the siege on Gaza continues.

In October 2023, Western media spent weeks debating whether a deadly explosion at Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City was caused by an Israeli airstrike or a misfired rocket launched by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The furor over the one hospital blast looks quaint in hindsight: In 2025, only 19 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals remain operational and 94 percent have been damaged or destroyed after Israeli attacks.

As a Western journalist, I am ashamed to see my media colleagues engage in war crime apologia. The Israeli military directly threatened al-Sharif’s life for over a year: In November 2023, he reported receiving multiple phone calls from army officers instructing him to cease coverage and leave northern Gaza; shortly after, al-Sharif’s 90-year-old father was killed in an Israeli airstrike on their family home. This past October, Israel published a list of six Al Jazeera journalists, including al-Sharif, and accused them of having ties to militant groups. In July, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) called for al-Sharif’s protection, expressing concerns that the Israeli military’s public threats could be a precursor to the journalist’s assassination.

Despite the documented Israeli smear campaign, following al-Sharif’s assassination, Western news outlets have uncritically amplified Israel’s claims that Al Jazeera is a Hamas mouthpiece. A BBC presenter questioned whether al-Sharif was truly operating as an independent journalist, since Israel has banned international news outlets from entering Gaza. The racist line of argument obfuscates the fact that it’s Israel’s responsibility not to suppress the press. And if Israel’s ban on international journalists de facto discredits all of Gaza’s remaining reporters — by necessity, Palestinians — how can the people of Gaza expect to have a voice? Israel is able to legitimize its assault by proliferating propaganda to the West, and for nearly two years, Palestinian journalists have worked bravely and diligently to share the truth of what’s happening with the world. (Let us not forget, too, that in 2021, years before Hamas’s October 7 attack, Israel destroyed the Gaza building housing both The Associated Press and Al Jazeera offices.)

Israeli officials have been clear from the beginning that their military goals in the region are not limited to the return of the hostages taken on October 7, but the total expulsion of Hamas, and, for some members of the Israeli parliament, Israel’s takeover of Gaza. “Erase Gaza. Nothing else will satisfy us,” said Israeli Knesset Deputy Speaker Nissim Vaturi on October 9, 2023. Now, nearly two years later, Israel’s security cabinet has approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposal for the occupation of Gaza City, claiming it is the only way to defeat Hamas. It is notable that, ahead of the planned offensive, Israel wiped out al-Sharif along with Al Jazeera’s entire Gaza City crew.

“It is no coincidence that the smears against al-Sharif — who has reported night and day for Al Jazeera since the start of the war — surfaced every time he reported on a major development in the war,” CPJ’s Regional Director Sara Qudah said in a statement. “Israel is murdering the messengers.”

Since the journalists’ open letter was first published in November 2023, it has only become more painfully obvious that Israel is engaging in a campaign of ethnic cleansing. Western outlets should have been clear-eyed about this from the beginning. There is no pleasure, however, in this type of vindication. I feel only a deep admiration for the Palestinian journalists who continue to share their message with the world in the face of horrific violence and destruction.

After an Israeli airstrike killed Al Jazeera correspondent Ismail al-Ghoul in July 2024, Palestinian journalists, including al-Sharif, were filmed throwing their press flak jackets to the ground. Now that al-Sharif has been killed, too, I find myself returning to his words from that time.

“This press vest is the vest the global and local institutions preach about. This vest did not protect our colleague Ismail. Nor did it protect any of my colleagues,” said al-Sharif. “What did Ismail do? What did he do? Broadcast the image? Broadcast the suffering of people? Sorry Ismail, we will continue sharing the message after you.”

Schuyler Mitchell

Schuyler Mitchell is a writer, editor and fact-checker from North Carolina, currently based in Brooklyn. Her work has appeared in The Intercept, The Baffler, Labor Notes, Los Angeles Magazine, and elsewhere. Find her on X: @schuy_ler

This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)