Gaza has become 'worst graveyard' for journalists: The Guardian

By Al Mayadeen English
Source: The Guardian
Today 12:44

As “Israel” kills journalists in Gaza, global silence enables impunity, threatening not only Palestinian voices but the future of press freedom worldwide.

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People light candles to demand justice for Palestinian correspondent Anas al-Sharif and other journalists killed in an Israel airstrike in Gaza, at a vigil in Mexico City, Tuesday, Aug. 12, 2025. (AP)

Anthony Bellanger, a French-Belgian journalist, trade unionist, and historian, delivered a searing reflection in The Guardian, channeling the outrage of media workers worldwide as they watch colleagues in Gaza being killed with what he describes as Israeli impunity.

For Bellanger, history will remember the witnesses. In Gaza, that means remembering Anas al-Sharif, a young reporter killed on August 10, 2025, and the 222 other Palestinian journalists slain over the past two years, according to data from the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ). Those who sought to silence these voices, he writes, will carry condemnation forever.

For two years, Gaza has been the most dangerous place on earth to practice journalism. "Israel" has barred foreign reporters from entering, leaving Palestinian journalists, most of them members of the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate, affiliated with the IFJ, as the sole chroniclers of the war. They work without protection, often with their families equally exposed, and too often under direct Israeli fire.

'Israel' turns Gaza into largest graveyard for journalists in modern history

The scale of the loss is unprecedented. Since its founding in 1926, the IFJ has not recorded such mass killings of journalists, not during World War II, nor in Vietnam, Korea, Syria, Afghanistan, or Iraq. Gaza, Bellanger argues, is now the largest graveyard for journalists in modern history.

He insists these killings are not random. They represent a deliberate strategy: eliminate the witnesses, seal Gaza off from international eyes, and control the narrative. With Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu openly vowing to “recolonize” Gaza, information warfare is seen as inseparable from military conquest. Colonization, Bellanger writes, also means erasing the ruins, the victims, and those who dare to tell their stories.

Displacement has only deepened the crisis. Hundreds of thousands have fled southward, but the south offers no sanctuary, only overcrowding, bombardment, and entrapment between the sea and the siege. Journalists share this suffocating reality, working inside an enclave where each day of survival is more uncertain than the last.

Meanwhile, the international community’s response has been little more than symbolic. Recognition of Palestinian statehood at the UN, while historically significant, comes too late to save the living or deliver justice to the killed. The UN remains paralyzed, major powers complicit through silence and arms sales, and Palestinian reporters continue their mission alone, often to the point of death.

The IFJ has attempted to fill the void, channeling aid through its International Safety Fund, documenting the lives of journalists like Sami Abu Salem and Ghada al-Kudr, and calling for a UN convention to compel states to protect journalists and punish their killers.

Without such a framework, Bellanger warns, impunity will endure and shield those responsible in "Israel".

'No story is worth a human life'

The IFJ’s long-standing mantra, “No story is worth a human life,” is more than a slogan. It is a survival rule. Journalists are not meant to die as martyrs; they are meant to report in safety. Protection, whether helmets, bulletproof vests, or safety training, is a collective responsibility of the global press community.

And yet despair runs deep in Gaza. “What is the point of continuing?” many ask, as evidence and testimonies mount while change remains elusive. But Bellanger cautions that silence would hand victory to the perpetrators, allowing them to claim nothing happened.

On the eve of its centenary in 2026, the IFJ faces its gravest challenge: Gaza has become the ultimate test of whether the world will defend its truth-tellers. Accepting the killing of Palestinian journalists with indifference, Bellanger warns, opens the door for authoritarian entities everywhere to treat the killing of journalists as a standard tool of war.

Anas al-Sharif did not wish to die; he wished to inform, in safety. His death, and that of more than 222 colleagues, demands action. “Israel kills journalists,” Bellanger concludes. “Killing journalists is killing the truth. And a world without truth is a world where executioners reign supreme.”