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SvennoJ on 11 August 2025
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Gaza hospital director says Israel killed journalists to hide planned ‘massacre’

Israel has killed the Al Jazeera journalists to prevent coverage of atrocities it intends to carry out, the director of al-Shifa Hospital says.

“The [Israeli] occupation is preparing for a major massacre in Gaza, but this time without sound or image,” Dr Mohammed Abu Salmiya told Turkiye’s Anadolu news agency.

“It wants to kill and displace the largest number of Palestinians in Gaza City but this time in the absence of the voice of Anas, Mohamed, Al Jazeera and all satellite channels,” he said.

As we’ve been reporting, Israel has announced plans to seize Gaza City, which is expected to forcibly displace nearly a million Palestinians.


Israeli claims about Anas al-Sharif ‘don’t make sense’

Meron Rapoport, a veteran Israeli journalist and editor of the Local Call news site, has said the Israeli military’s accusation that Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif was a Hamas member “doesn’t make sense at all”.

“The Israeli explanations are, at best, very lacking,” Rapoport told Al Jazeera from Tel Aviv. He said that if the claims were true, Israel would have been expected to have targeted or arrested al-Sharif a long time ago.

He said Israel likely targeted al-Sharif now because of two main factors – first, his important role in “telling the world that there is famine in Gaza”, which “really hurt Israel internationally”; and, second, because of the planned upcoming invasion of Gaza City, which Israel wants to minimise coverage of.

“We don’t know exactly when, but Netanyahu promised it will come – and the less eyes and the less cameras and the less voices that will document this, what could be really a slaughter … is better for Israel,” Rapoport said.


RSF denounces Israel’s killing of Al Jazeera staff, urges UNSC meeting on protection of journalists

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is the latest organisation to condemn Israel’s killing of the five Al Jazeera staff in Gaza.

In a statement, the press freedom group said it “strongly condemns the murder of Al Jazeera reporter Anas al-Sharif, claimed by the Israeli army, in a targeted strike on a tent sheltering him near al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza, which killed five other media professionals and wounded three others”.

RSF said Israel tried to justify the killing by using the “well-known tactic” of accusing its target – in this case al-Sharif – “of being a terrorist, without producing any solid evidence”.

RSF, which previously warned that “unfounded accusations” against al-Sharif put him “at high risk of being targeted” by Israel, blamed the European Union, United Kingdom and United States for turning “a deaf ear”.

“The United Nations Security Council must hold an emergency meeting on the basis of Resolution 2222 of 2015 on the protection of journalists in armed conflict,” the group said.

“Without strong action by the international community to stop the Israeli army, which is the subject of four complaints filed by RSF with the International Criminal Court for war crimes committed against journalists in Gaza, we risk seeing more such extrajudicial killings of media professionals.”


‘Israel has turned Gaza war into a slaughterhouse for Palestinian journalists’

The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor has also expressed its condemnation of the killing of Al Jazeera’s journalists, reporting that its field team in northern Gaza said Israel used a drone strike to carry out the assassinations.

“Israel’s claim of responsibility for killing Anas al-Sharif underscores its blatant disregard for international law and starkly illustrates the consequences of impunity fostered by the international community’s policy of support and silence,” said the Geneva-based monitor.

“Israel has turned its horrific 22-month war on the Gaza Strip into a slaughterhouse for Palestinian journalists, systematically targeting them and their workplaces in an effort to enforce a total media blackout across the enclave.”