‘Israel Says’ Is Not Journalism

Anas al-Sharif, Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal, Moamen Aliwa and Mohammed Qreiqeh (photo credit: Al Jazeera)

Late last Sunday, a targeted Israeli attack killed prominent Al Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif alongside several colleagues. They were in a tent outside the main gate of Gaza City’s al-Shifa hospital. Also killed were Al Jazeera correspondent Mohammed Qreiqeh and camera operators Ibrahim Zaher and Mohammed Noufal, together with freelance cameraman Momen Aliwa and freelance journalist Mohammed al-Khalidi. Al-Sharif was previously part of a Reuters team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2024.

Western ‘mainstream’ news outlets prominently featured Israel’s claim that Anas al-Sharif was a Hamas operative. This televised BBC News segment was typical:

‘Israel says Anas Al-Sharif was a member of Hamas, a claim long rejected by the news network, his family, and the Committee to Protect Journalists.’

Although scepticism was indicated, the Israeli propaganda claim skewed reporting by disrupting the reality that Israel had just deliberately murdered several journalists and media workers. This was exactly as Israel wished, diverting attention from its killings to addressing the presented ‘evidence’ of one victim being an active Hamas operative. This is part of a longstanding Israeli pattern of lies and deception since the genocide began in October 2023.

Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch, said:

‘Israel keeps killing journalists, usually accusing them of being part of Hamas’s military, rarely offering any proof beyond its own worthless assertions.’

Irene Khan, the United Nations special rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression, said:

‘This is a pattern the Israelis have used over the last 20 months…to assassinate and silence independent reporting on Gaza…they are running a carefully planned program of assassination.’

The Financial Times had a straightforward headline:

‘Israel kills famous Al Jazeera reporter in Gaza’

By contrast, the Daily Telegraph headlined:

‘Israel kills Al Jazeera journalist it accused of leading Hamas terror cell’

There was a follow-up piece by the paper’s Jerusalem correspondent, Henry Bodkin:

‘Why Israel believes Al Jazeera reporter killed in Gaza was a terrorist’

How does a journalist without mind-reading powers know what Israel ‘believes’, rather than what it claims or asserts?

The Daily Mail included the Israeli claim in its headline:

‘Five Al Jazeera journalists are killed in Israeli strike on tent in Gaza: IDF says it was targeting and struck “Hamas cell leader posing as correspondent”’

When not actually featured in newspaper headlines, Israel’s claim that Anas al-Sharif was active in a Hamas cell was prominent in reporting. The second line of a Sun news article was typical:

‘Anas al-Sharif, 28, was hit in the strike after the IDF claimed he was the “head of a terrorist cell in Hamas”.’

The UK-based Centre for Media Monitoring (CfMM) noted of media coverage:

‘Unlike the FT, many major outlets have centred Israeli propaganda that Al Jazeera’s Anas al-Sharif was working for Hamas. Here’s how the media should be reporting things, beginning with the fact that Israel just killed four Al Jazeera journalists in a targeted strike.’

CfMM then pointed out that media outlets should have provided basic context in their reporting, including:

‘- The timing of this attack (on the eve of its latest expected assault on Gaza)

– Targeting of journalists not a one-off (some 240 killed by Israel so far – more than any other conflict)

– Israel doesn’t allow foreign journalists into Gaza’

Responsible journalism should also:

‘Humanise the victims. These journalists had been pivotal in sharing stories out of Gaza. Share their families’ and friends’ pain.’

CfMM also observed that reporting should have indicated prominently that Israel had already threatened al-Sharif, and that the Committee to Protect Journalists had warned that any attack on journalists is clearly unacceptable.

Finally, said CfMM, Israeli claims about al-Sharif needed to be put in proper perspective: that the claims are not supported by the ‘evidence’ presented.

In fact, responsible journalists should go further and explain to audiences that Israel has a long history of lying, fabrication and deceit. Since the genocide began, there has been a litany of lies that the ‘mainstream’ media have propagated and, when exposed, ignored or downplayed. Mehdi Hasan, founder of independent outlet Zeteo, powerfully debunked ten of the most egregious Israeli lies in a clip lasting just three minutes:

In summary, ‘Israel’s top 10 lies about its Gaza genocide’ presented by Hasan are:

1. Hamas systematically steals aid coming into Gaza.

2. It’s all about the hostages, i.e. if Hamas released the hostages, Israel would stop the genocide.

3. 40 beheaded babies, and babies in ovens or hung on clotheslines.

4. Mass rape on 7 October 2023 as a weapon of war.

5. Hamas ‘command and control centre’ under Al-Shifa hospital.

6. A schedule found for Hamas guards in Rantisi hospital (it was an Arabic calendar).

7. UNRWA, the UN relief agency for Palestinians, is a front for Hamas.

8. You cannot trust the ‘Hamas-controlled’ health ministry.

9. Israel didn’t kill those 15 aid workers or 100 people waiting for flour.

10. Hamas uses human shields.

Following Israel’s targeted killing of Al Jazeera’s entire reporting team in Gaza City, Muhammad Shehada, a Gazan political analyst and Visiting Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, created this new brief summary of Israeli lies. Running at just over two minutes, Shehada observed that he kept going until he ran out of breath, but barely scratched the surface of Israeli deceit.

In his introduction, he said:

‘One thing that you need to keep in mind is that Israel has been lying incessantly since the beginning of the genocide. It’s been the cornerstone of Israel’s genocidal campaign to lie every single day about everything possible.’⁠

Other than the Israeli lies cited by Hasan above, examples given by Shehada included: Israeli use of white phosphorus weapons; deliberately starving Gazans; gassing Israeli hostages; killing women and children with white flags; mass rape of Palestinians; non-existent tunnels under graveyards; Israeli snipers targeting children in the head; breaking the ceasefire; blowing up Gazans fleeing south; blowing up and destroying Kamal Adwan hospital; claiming that dead Gazan children are fake plastic dolls; creating alleged safe zones that they push people into and then bomb; Red Crescent staff participated in the 7 October attacks; designating journalists as Hamas militants (such as al-Sharif); Hamas hid giant supplies of fuel under Rafah; and on and on.

In conclusion, said Shehada:

‘You should attach as much value to Israel’s allegations about Anas al-Sharif, as to the dust on the floor.’

Western Media Complicity In The Slaughter Of Journalists

You might think that, with so much evidence of Israeli deception and outright lies, journalists would treat Israeli claims with extreme scepticism, while explaining to audiences why. This should especially apply to BBC News, the national broadcaster that is funded by a public licence fee and which is supposed to uphold the highest journalistic values as enshrined in the corporation’s Editorial Guidelines, and promised by its Royal Charter.

Of course, as is widely known by now, the credibility of BBC News has nosedived since the genocide began and there has even been significant discontent within its own newsrooms.

How did the BBC treat Israel’s targeted killing of Anas al-Sharif and his Al Jazeera colleagues in Gaza City? As we saw earlier, BBC news broadcasts prominently featured wording such as, ‘Israel says Anas Al-Sharif was a member of Hamas’.

When the BBC interviewed Martin Roux, head of the crisis desk at Reporters Without Borders, the BBC presenter inevitably began with, ‘Israel says…’.

Here is another BBC example that was broadcast live:

‘Let’s bring in our colleague Yolande Knell who is in Jerusalem. The accusation from Israel is that Anas al Sharif had a dual role, he was both in their words journalist and terrorist…’

There followed almost two minutes of bland, emotionless newspeak from Knell with only perfunctory scepticism about Israeli claims, and zero context about the longstanding Israeli pattern of denials, deceits and deceptions.

As media activist Saul Staniforth noted:

‘The IDF assassinated him. Now the BBC assassinates his character.’

The flagship BBC News at Ten actually broadcast a segment in which BBC correspondent Jon Donnison, reporting from Jerusalem, made this outrageous observation:

‘There’s the question of proportionality. Is it justified to kill five journalists when you were only targeting one?’

As Jonathan Cook noted, the comment was ‘obscene’. If you cannot grasp that, imagine that five well-known BBC journalists were killed in a targeted Russian strike inside Ukraine: perhaps Jeremy Bowen, Lyse Doucet, Yolande Knell, Lucy Williamson and Jon Donnison working together from a makeshift base in Ukraine. Imagine that one of them, Donnison perhaps, had allegedly been secretly working for Ukraine, passing on intelligence information about Russian troop movements. If all five had been killed in a Russian attack, would that have been framed in BBC reporting as:

‘There’s the question of proportionality. Is it justified to kill five journalists when you were only targeting one?’

Of course not.

Consider also a press review segment on Sky News in which one of their journalists extensively recounted Israel’s claims about Anas al-Sharif’s active Hamas involvement ‘at the time of his elimination’, followed by:

‘Sharif himself had denied it. Al Jazeera deny it too. So, you know, you’re left with two sides here again’.

As journalist Afshin Rattansi, Going Underground presenter, observed:

‘The two sides:

‘An ethno-state perpetrating genocide that lies as much as it kills

‘A slain journalist who has shown the horrors of the genocide

‘And there’s “journalists” seemingly still can’t figure out that Israel had every motivation to kill a Palestinian journalist to stop him from showing the world the horror of the genocide they are perpetrating…

‘Bear in mind these people are paid well to be this awful at their jobs’

Karishma Patel, a former BBC News journalist who resigned over the broadcaster’s biased coverage of Gaza, said on X:

‘For nearly 2 years, I have been asking @BBCNews to critically engage with its sources over Gaza. Israel is a bad source. Uncritically repeating its claims, even with the caveat that they’re denied, is not journalism. Do your job. Verify.’

She continued, addressing the BBC:

‘You have put Palestinian lives at risk by legitimising Israeli claims that have laid the groundwork for its attacks. You have created the conditions under which Israel could kill AJ’s entire team in Gaza City. All you have ever had to do was follow the evidence.’

Journalist and documentary filmmaker Richard Sanders observed:

‘Israel last night murdered the entire Al Jazeera team in Gaza City. Western media should long ago have united to bring serious pressure on the Israelis to end the slaughter of journalists. Their failure to do so makes them complicit.’

Al Jazeera noted recently that Israel has killed nearly 270 journalists and media workers since 7 October 2023, listing all their names here.

‘An Insult To Journalism And A Stamp Of Disgrace For Humanity’

Tanya Haj-Hassan, a Toronto-based paediatric intensive care and humanitarian doctor who has worked in Gaza, told the UN last November:

‘Incredible Palestinian journalists covering the genocide of their own people have been repeatedly targeted by Israel and discredited, while both their reporting and their murder[s] have been largely ignored by mainstream Western media.’

She added:

‘Spend just five minutes in a hospital there [in Gaza] and it will become painfully clear that Palestinians are being intentionally massacred, starved and stripped of everything needed to sustain human life’.

The public have been moved by such authoritative testimony from many doctors, as well as countless, extremely harrowing scenes of devastation and suffering from Gaza, and are well aware that ‘mainstream’ media are protecting Israel. Reporting from a protest in Washington DC for Al Jazeera English, Shihab Rattansi said:

‘Several hundred demonstrators gathered outside the headquarters of various media organisations in this building: NBC, Fox News, ITN, the Guardian. They say that their coverage of the Gaza genocide has given Israel the room to kill so many, and notably so many journalists.’

Rattansi added of the protesters:

‘They’re trying to disrupt the narratives that are being told on these programmes. That message is, “Look, you’re no longer the gatekeepers. We know what’s happening in Gaza. We know about the genocide, despite your best efforts.”’

Mariam Barghouti, a US-born Palestinian journalist and policy analyst, stated via X:

‘We are no longer waiting for international journalists to condemn Israeli practices against children, civilians, and their own peers.

‘We condemn these journalists in their entirety. We condemn them for their journalistic malpractice, their ineptitude to fulfill their obligation to the world, and for engineering the narrative of victimhood for Israel.’

Barghouti added:

‘From correspondents to editors to producers, across Sky news to CNN, BBC, NYT and others. You’re an insult to journalism, and a stamp of disgrace for humanity.

‘You have wielded so much power, and at every juncture chose to abuse it. And here we emphasize and remember, it was a choice, because real journalists- like those in Gaza,- did not acquiesce and chose to report the truth even as their body began to eat itself from hunger & the bombs rained on them.’

Hind Khoudary, a Palestinian journalist based in Gaza, said:

‘I will not speak to foreign media about the killing of Palestinian journalists.

‘I will not sit on your global channels to be part of a segment you’ll forget by tomorrow.

‘To you, we are just a headline — a tragedy to consume, not colleagues to defend.

‘We are being hunted and killed in Gaza while you watch in silence. For two years, your fellow journalists here have been slaughtered. What did you do?

‘Nothing.

‘Or maybe it’s because we are Palestinian journalists — we don’t count as “real” colleagues in your eyes.’

Perhaps it is also because Palestinians are presented by western media as lesser humans than the rest of us.

Investigative journalist Matt Kennard has raised serious questions for well over a year about British complicity, indeed participation, in Israel’s Gaza genocide. Together with Palestine Deep Dive and Declassified UK, he has reported UK spy flights over Gaza: something the ‘mainstream’ media, in part, has only recently addressed (although notably not the BBC, so far).

Kennard noted via X on 11 August:

‘Likely that UK had a mercenary spy plane in the sky over Gaza when Israel targeted and killed 5 Al Jazeera journalists, including Anas al-Sharif, last night. The intelligence gathered by this plane goes directly to Israeli military in real-time. How long will we tolerate this?’

Declassified UK noted that the Hind Rajab Foundation has now identified Israeli air force commander Tomer Bar as one of those responsible for killing the Al Jazeera team in Gaza. Last month, Declassified UK revealed that Keir Starmer’s government had allowed Bar to visit Britain in July. He reportedly met with RAF commanders and attended the Royal International Air Tattoo event. Around the same time, air chief marshal Sir Rich Knighton, head of the RAF, was confronted by Phil Miller of Declassified UK:

‘Why are you still sharing intelligence with Benjamin Netanyahu while he’s wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes in Gaza?’

Knighton refused to answer while his colleague, squadron leader Ryan Kerr, repeatedly tried to stop the interview by shoving Miller.

How long will ‘mainstream’ British journalists treat Israeli claims with minimal scepticism, indeed repeat and amplify Israeli lies and deceits?

How long will the British media broadcast Benjamin Netanyahu’s words, without pointing out that he is wanted by the ICC for war crimes and crimes against humanity?

How long will UK media outlets soft-pedal challenges to Keir Starmer, David Lammy and other government ministers over their role in the Gaza genocide?

History will condemn them all.

DC