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UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini gives a speech in Ankara, Turkiye, on January 8, 2026. [Fatih Kurt – Anadolu Agency]
UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said on Sunday that the Gaza Strip has become the world’s most dangerous place for journalists and humanitarian workers, warning that continued restrictions and attacks are undermining efforts to document events and deliver aid.
In a press statement, Lazzarini said more than 230 journalists have been killed in Gaza, stressing the need to ensure freedom of access for the media and to protect journalists in line with international humanitarian law.
He argued that preventing international journalists from entering the Gaza Strip contributes to the spread of misinformation and extremist narratives, and weakens the ability of the international community to understand the scale of the humanitarian crisis on the ground.
Lazzarini also said that ongoing attacks on journalists and humanitarian personnel represent a serious violation of international law, calling for urgent measures to provide them with protection and to allow media organisations to operate freely and without restrictions.
Separately, Gaza’s government media office said last Wednesday that the number of journalists killed since the start of the Israeli war has risen to 260, following the killing of three journalists linked to an Egyptian committee.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAKeir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
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Numerous citizens, relatives and colleagues of journalists Enes Ganim, Abd Shaat, and Muhammed Kashta who died as a result of the Israeli ceasefire violating attack on Netzarim Corridor attend the funeral ceremony after bodies were taken from Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, Gaza on January 21, 2026. [Abed Rahim Khatib – Anadolu Agency]
Eleven Palestinians, including three journalists, were killed in Israeli attacks across the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, in the latest violation of a ceasefire agreement, the Health Ministry said.
A ministry statement said six people were also injured in the attacks that targeted multiple areas across the Gaza Strip, without providing details about the locations of the attacks or the identities of the victims.
Munir al-Bursh, the director-general of Gaza’s Health Ministry, told Anadolu that three journalists were among those killed in the Israeli attacks in southern Gaza.
Witnesses earlier said that Israeli army forces shelled the eastern parts of the Deir al-Balah city, killing at least three people, amid daily Israeli violations of the ceasefire deal in place since Oct. 10. Airstrikes also targeted eastern neighborhoods of Gaza City.
Medical sources also said that three more people were killed in Gaza City and three others in southern Gaza.
Local sources said two powerful explosions rocked northern Gaza and Gaza City after Israeli forces demolished remaining buildings and facilities east of the Sheikh Zayed area in the north.
Israeli naval vessels also fired machine guns toward the Gaza City coastline, while a helicopter and military vehicles opened fire on the city’s eastern parts.
In southern Gaza, Israeli military vehicles fired heavily toward the eastern areas of Khan Younis, according to eyewitnesses.
The Israeli army continues to control southern and eastern buffer zones in Gaza, as well as large parts of northern Gaza, occupying more than 50% of the territory.
Israel’s military campaign since Oct. 8, 2023, which lasted two years, has killed more than 71,000 Palestinians and wounded over 171,000, and destroyed about 90% of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure.
Since the ceasefire took effect Oct. 10, 2025, Israeli attacks have killed 483 Palestinians and wounded 1,287 others, while Israel has severely restricted the entry of food, shelter supplies and medical aid into Gaza, where about 2.4 million Palestinians live in dire conditions.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAKeir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
Israel’s targeted assassination of six Palestinian media members in the Gaza Strip on August 10 sent shockwaves through the journalism community. Though the murder of journalists has been a common tool of the Israeli’s government’s suppression of information coming out of Gaza, the loss of Al Jazeera‘s Anas al-Sharif was particularly harrowing.
Many of us had been moved by al-Sharif’s heart-wrenching coverage, from watching him remove his press vest in relief when a ceasefire was announced (1/19/25), to seeing a languid al-Sharif reporting on the famine (7/21/25) as people fainted around him. “Keep going, Anas, don’t stop,” said a voice off-camera. “You are our voice.”
Three of the victims were al-Sharif’s colleagues at Al Jazeera, one of the few media outlets that was able to keep journalists reporting in Gaza despite Israel’s blockade. As millions around the world grieved not just for al-Sharif but for his colleagues Mohammed Qreiqeh, Mohammed Noufal and Ibrahim Zaher, and freelancers Moamen Aliwa and Mohammad al-Khaldi, we were also gravely concerned about the vacuum their murders created of on-the-ground coverage of the genocide.
Establishment media, however, used these courageous journalists’ murders as an opportunity to continue parroting the same Zionist talking points that contributed to manufacturing consent for their killings. FAIR looked at 15 different news outlets’ initial coverage of the murders: the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox, BBC, Politico, Newsweek, Associated Press and Reuters.
We found that they overwhelmingly centered Israel’s narrative, attempted to delegitimize pro-Palestinian sources, and failed to contextualize the killings within the larger context of the genocide.
Prioritizing Israel’s pretext
Fox News (8/11/25) went farthest in embracing Israel’s “terrorist” narrative.
Four of the 15 articles (New York Times, 8/10/25; NBC,8/10/25; Fox, 8/11/25; Wall Street Journal, 8/11/25) mentioned the allegations in either the headline or subhead. “Israel Kills Al Jazeera Journalists in Airstrike, Claiming One Worked for Hamas,” was NBC‘s headline, with Israel’s smear that al-Sharif “posed as a journalist” in the subhead. Fox offered “Israel Says Al Jazeera Journalist Killed in Airstrike Was Head of Hamas ‘Terrorist Cell.’”
Reuters’ original headline (8/11/25) was “Israel Kills Al Jazeera Journalist It Says Was Hamas Leader,” only later changed to “Israel Strike Kills Al Jazeera Journalists in Gaza.”
Al-Sharif had been targeted and smeared by the Israeli Defense Forces for months prior to his murder, and had written a statement in anticipation of his killing. “If these words reach you, know that Israel has succeeded in killing me and silencing my voice,” he wrote. He asked the world to continue fighting for justice in Palestine: “Do not forget Gaza.”
Six of the articles (ABC, 8/11/25; BBC, 8/11/25; New York Times, 8/10/25; NBC, 8/10/25; Fox, 8/11/25; Wall Street Journal, 8/11/25) completely omitted references to or quotes from al-Sharif’s final statement. Of those six articles, the New York Times, BBC, NBC and Fox did include quotes from Israeli government representatives—perplexingly choosing to prioritize the voices of al-Sharif’s killers over his own.
The New York Times (8/10/25) gave the Israeli government ample space to smear one of the journalists it had just killed, claiming he was “the head of a terrorist cell” who was “responsible for advancing rocket attacks against Israeli civilians.”
Coverage by the Wall Street Journal and New YorkTimes devoted the most space to advancing Israel’s pretext for the killings. The Journal’s Anat Peled dedicated the first three paragraphs of her article to detailing al-Sharif’s supposed Hamas affiliation. Ephrat Livni of the Times also spent three paragraphs on the bogus allegations, allowing only one paragraph for a rebuttal from Al Jazeera and CPJ.
Every article except the ones from the New York Times (8/10/25) and Fox (8/11/25) cited the historically high number of Palestinian journalists that have been killed since October 7, 2023. The death toll currently stands at 192, according to the CPJ. However, only four articles (ABC, 8/11/25; CNN, 8/10/25; Politico, 8/11/25; Wall Street Journal, 8/11/25) listed Israel as the primary perpetrator of these murders. More typically, the AP (8/11/25) wrote that “at least 192 journalists have been killed since Israel’s war in Gaza began,” leaving the identities of both these journalists and their killers unmentioned.
Six (ABC, 8/11/25; BBC, 8/11/25; Newsweek, 8/10/25; Fox, 8/11/25; CBS, 8/11/25; Wall Street Journal, 8/11/25; LA Times, 8/11/25) of the 15 articles failed to mention Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and none mentioned the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant against him for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder and intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population.
Critically, only two articles (Wall Street Journal, 8/11/25; Washington Post, 8/11/25) even noted the fact that the other five slain journalists had not been accused of belonging to Hamas. With this omission, the other outlets accepted and transmitted to audiences Israel’s premise that any number of bystanders can legitimately be killed in order to target a supposed Hamas member.
Unnecessary qualifiers
Including the October 7, 2023, breakout as background for the killing of journalists, NBC (8/10/25) specified that “many of the targets of those attacks were civilians, including people attending a music festival.” Palestinians killed subsequently by Israel, by contrast, were just described as “people…in the Hamas-run enclave.”
A common practice for Western media has been the use of unnecessary qualifiers to delegitimize information that comes from Palestinian sources. The coverage of al-Sharif’s assassination was no exception.
The BBC (8/11/25) wrote, “More than 61,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the Israeli military operation began, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.” Western media have taken it upon themselves to seemingly rename the Gaza Health Ministry (GHM) in order to cast doubt on the extent of Israel’s atrocities. They rarely note that a Lancet study (2/8/25) has found that the death toll could be up to 40% higher than what the GHM is reporting. The New York Times (8/10/25) and Reuters (8/11/25) also utilized “Hamas-run” to describe figures from the Gazan government.
These outlets also showed a clear bias as to how they characterize casualties. The New York Times (8/10/25), when reporting on the death toll in Gaza, wrote that the GHM doesn’t “distinguish between civilians and combatants.” Later on, the Times reported on Israeli deaths—and failed to distinguish between Israeli civilian and combatant deaths.
The implication is that some Palestinian deaths might be considered to be of lesser importance, or even justified, based on victims’ potential “combatant” status. Israeli deaths, meanwhile, are to be counted simply as human beings. The Washington Post (8/11/25) exhibited the same double standard in its reporting.
NBC (8/10/25) wrote, “Many of the targets of [the October 7] attacks were civilians, including people attending a music festival.” When reporting Palestinian deaths, NBC made no mention that over half of those killed by Israel have been women, children and the elderly. A more recent investigation found that civilians make up 83% of deaths, according to the IDF’s own data. The report also didn’t describe what Palestinian victims might have been doing when they were killed, such as the almost 1,400 who have been shot while seeking aid.
In addition to the usual rhetoric, eight of the 15 articles cast doubt on Al Jazeera by repeatedly mentioning its ownership by the Qatari government. (Qatar, like Israel, is one of 20 countries worldwide officially designated as a “major non-NATO ally” by the United States.) Three of the articles (New York Times, 8/10/25; Wall Street Journal, 8/11/25; LA Times, 8/11/25) mention the Israeli government’s adversarial relationship with Al Jazeera, with the New York Times and the Journal dedicating several paragraphs to the outlet’s alleged ties to Hamas as the presumed basis for the conflict, rather than Al Jazeera‘s critical coverage of Israeli actions.
False equivalences
Reuters‘ original headline (8/11/25) was written from the point of view of al-Sharif’s killers.
Only three of the articles use the word “famine” (Financial Times, 8/10/25; CNN, 8/10/25; Newsweek, 8/10/25), and only the Financial Times mentions the word outside of quotes. Reuters (8/11/25) and the Wall Street Journal (8/11/25) called the situation “a hunger crisis” and “a humanitarian crisis that has pushed many Palestinians toward starvation,” respectively.
Media outlets continue to push the narrative that this so-called conflict began less than two years ago, as when NBC (8/10/25) wrote, “Israel launched the offensive in Gaza, targeting Hamas, after the Hamas-led terror attacks against Israel on October 7, 2023.”
Though the rate of killing greatly escalated after the October 7 operation, Israeli violence against Palestinians goes back to before the founding of the state, as many historians have carefully explained. In the decades immediately prior to the Hamas operation, the Israeli human rights group B’tselem counts more than 10,000 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces between September 2000 and September 2023—most of them noncombatants, over 2,400 of them children under 18. (Over the same period, some 1,300 Israelis—civilians and military—were killed by Palestinians.)
The Financial Times (8/10/25) described the ongoing genocide as “triggered” by the October 7 attacks, as if the al-Aqsa Flood operation were a random act of violence unrelated to the apartheid system that Israel imposes on Palestinians. The BBC (8/11/25) described Israeli violence as a “response to the Hamas-led attack,” completely erasing Israel’s history of occupation and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians that long precedes the existence of Hamas. Obscuring this sort of context is part of the motivation for Israel’s systematic murder of Palestinian journalists, including al-Sharif and his colleagues.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAKeir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
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A view of the Ofer Military Prison after the transfer of Palestinian prisoners to be released in Ramallah, West Bank on October 12, 2025. [İssam Rimawi – Anadolu Agency]
Beneath the world’s silence, Israel’s prisons consume lives like black holes — devouring the living and releasing only broken bodies and haunted souls.
Behind those walls are more than 9,100 Palestinians: around 400 children and 75 women, as well as doctors, teachers and journalists whose only act was to serve their people with a stethoscope, a pen or a camera that revealed the occupation’s cruelty.
Among them are Dr Husam Abu Safiya and Dr Marwan al-Hams, respected medical and humanitarian figures, both taken from their hospitals without trial or charge. The same occupational power that has long seized land now seizes human beings — a grotesque reality playing out in the twenty-first century while Western capitals continue to preach the language of “freedom” and “international law”.
Palestinians have long lost faith in Israel’s so-called judiciary, a system that operates as part of the same machinery of repression. These are military tribunals where a civilian stands before a judge, an officer and soldiers from the very army occupying his land. Through administrative detention, Israeli authorities can imprison anyone indefinitely, without charge or evidence — a practice that violates every principle of justice and human dignity.
What cuts deeper than the bars themselves is the willful silence of the Western media. The same outlets that fill their screens with stories of prisoners elsewhere have turned Palestinians into faceless, nameless statistics.
There are no reports of children robbed of their childhoods behind bars, no interviews with mothers waiting years for a word from their sons, no images of those released — hollow-eyed, their bodies ravaged by disease after months of neglect.
Doctors who have examined recently freed detainees describe rampant skin infections, severe malnutrition and trembling hands — not merely from cold, but from the lasting scars of months spent in shackles.
If any other state were responsible for such abuse, Western newsrooms would erupt with outrage. Reporters would stand outside prisons demanding accountability. But when the victim is Palestinian and the perpetrator Israeli, the moral compass twists: condemnation becomes silence, and the oppressor is gifted the vocabulary of “self-defence” while the victim is accused of exaggeration.
The imprisonment of thousands of Palestinians amounts to a crime against humanity. The international community — foremost the International Committee of the Red Cross — must act now: visit every Israeli detention centre, document the conditions, ensure medical care and permit lawyers and independent observers inside.
All Palestinian detainees — men, women and children — must be released without delay, and those responsible for torture, abuse and enforced disappearance must face justice. The policy of administrative detention must end, once and for all.
Anyone who has witnessed the genocide and deliberate starvation in Gaza will not be shocked by what takes place inside these prisons. The same hand that presses the trigger of a bomb tightens the chains around a prisoner’s wrists.
And yet, even in darkness, these detainees endure — living witnesses to the brutality of occupation and to the moral collapse of a world that has lost its conscience. Only a few still dare to say aloud: freedom is a right, and dignity is not negotiable.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.
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Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAOrcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Hundreds of demonstrators carrying flags, banners gathered at Placa de Sant Jaume to protest the recent killing of Palestinian journalists in Gaza during Israeli attacks in Barcelona, Spain on August 27, 2025. [Lorena Sopena – Anadolu Agency]
Reuters Editor-in-Chief Alessandra Galloni and AP Executive Editor Julie Pace on Thursday renewed calls for accountability on the one-month anniversary of Israeli strikes on Nasser Hospital in Gaza that killed five journalists, Anadolu reports.
“On the one-month anniversary of the Israeli strikes on Nasser Hospital in Gaza, we renew our demand for a clear account from the Israeli authorities and urge the government to uphold its obligations to ensure press freedom and protection,” the editors said in a joint statement.
The strikes killed Reuters cameraman Hussam al-Masri, visual journalist Mariam Dagga, who worked for AP and other outlets, and freelance journalist Moaz Abu Taha, whose work appeared in Reuters.
“We remain devastated and outraged by their deaths,” Galloni and Pace said.
They stressed that “the strikes that killed them occurred at a hospital, a location protected under international law and one that was widely known to be crucial for news coverage out of Gaza.
“These journalists were acting in their professional capacity, doing eyewitness reporting,” the statement said. “An incident of this gravity requires a prompt and clear explanation, followed by accountability and concrete actions to ensure such attacks are never repeated.”
More than 200 journalists and media workers have been killed in the region since Oct. 7, 2023, according to different media watchdogs, which the editors described as “an alarming toll that underscores the escalating risks for those reporting on the ground.”
“We again call on the government of Israel to explain the deaths of these journalists and to take every step to protect those who continue to cover this conflict,” the statement said.
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Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAVote Labour for Genocide.
