17 hours ago
Why Israel believes Al Jazeera reporter killed in Gaza was a terrorist
When Anas al-Sharif broke down in tears last month while reporting on the Gaza hunger crisis, he was widely praised for giving a voice to ordinary Palestinians.
On Monday, television screens across the Arab world were again focused on the 28-year-old. This time, he was wrapped in a white funeral shroud, alongside four of his Al Jazeera colleagues.
They had been deliberately assassinated by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) the night before in an air strike on a tent near the Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City
The TV network and critics across the world alleged a direct link between Sharif's reporting and his death.
They claimed that Sharif, who had a wife and two young children, so enraged the Israelis by exposing the humanitarian consequences of their aid policy that he paid with his life, as scores of journalists have before him during this war.
Describing Sharif as 'one of Gaza's bravest journalists', Al Jazeera said the attack was a 'desperate attempt to silence voices in anticipation of the occupation of Gaza '.
Israel, however, said Sharif was a Hamas terrorist, the head of a cell responsible for 'advancing rocket attacks', and that it had the documents to prove it.
In an official statement late on Sunday night, the IDF described Sharif as someone who merely 'posed as a journalist for the Al Jazeera network'.
The IDF first made this claim last October. Israel said then that its ground operations in the Strip had unearthed evidence that Sharif and five Al Jazeera colleagues were operatives for either Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad, an allied terror group.
The IDF claimed it had seized a list of Hamas operatives in the northern Gaza Strip brigade, as well as a form that listed the injuries sustained by some Hamas members, plus a phone directory of the east Jabaliya battalion, each bearing Sharif's name.
These, said Israel, 'unequivocally' proved Sharif's involvement as an active Hamas militant since 2013.
However, the documents presented by the IDF appeared to be selected screen grabs of electronic spreadsheets and it was impossible to verify them independently.
The Telegraph asked the IDF to provide the originals, or at least more information about where and how the purported evidence was discovered.
The Telegraph also asked why the IDF chose to strike this month, having identified Sharif as an alleged terrorist last year.
The Israeli military has sometimes been wrong in the past when giving out evidence to justify a controversial strike.
However, there are other ways a person could be linked to Hamas, which ran the entire civil administration of the Gaza Strip before Oct 7 2023, than active terrorism.
On Monday, the BBC reported that Sharif had previously been part of a Hamas media team. The broadcaster did not give a source for this and the Telegraph has not seen evidence for or against it.
But, just as some journalists in the West flit between working as active reporters and communications roles, it is plausible that the same happens in Gaza.
Such involvement could mark a person as a legitimate target in Israel's eyes, particularly since March, when it has focused on assassinating members of the Hamas government, not just fighters.
Even if neither claim is true and Sharif has never had any formal links with Hamas, it is possible that the Israelis believed him to be – at least morally – complicit, given the nature of his work as an Al Jazeera reporter in Gaza.
Telegenic, energetic and, as July's starvation report showed, with ready access to his own emotions, Sharif has been one of the most prominent journalists reporting from the ground since Oct 7 2023.
In a broadcast last January, he brought the news to the Arab world of the newly agreed Israel-Hamas ceasefire by dramatically divesting himself of his protective equipment live on air, surrounded by ecstatic Gazans.
He was a natural. And his reports had caught the attention of Israel.
As a general principle of journalism, consistently delivering arresting television can be a sign that a reporter enjoys good behind-the-scenes relations with the local authorities.
As one veteran Palestinian journalist told The Telegraph: 'Most of the journalists operating in Gaza are affiliated with one group or another, otherwise they cannot operate. It doesn't necessarily mean that he is a terrorist.'
As an Al Jazeera reporter, Sharif did not bring viewers the counter-arguments to the charge that Israel is deliberately starving Gazans – reports of Hamas looting aid, or of alleged UN incompetence, for example.
Then there is the issue of Al Jazeera itself.
Viewers of the network's English news channel or website might detect a general Western-critical perspective, but rarely anything improper.
The Arabic channel, however, is very different.
Run from Qatar, whose rulers are often criticised for showing sympathy to the Muslim Brotherhood, on whose principles Hamas is based, the channel has become an unofficial mouthpiece for the terror group since Oct 7 2023.
Criticism of Hamas or Qatar is almost entirely absent – indeed, live broadcasts have been cut off when interviewees strayed into dangerous territory.
Meanwhile, formal announcements from the Hamas politburo often air on Al Jazeera first.
None of this is new: the channel strongly supported Hamas as far back as the 2006 elections, after which its offices in Ramallah were vandalised by infuriated supporters of Fatah, the dominant Palestinian movement in the West Bank.
During the 2011 Arab Spring, Al Jazeera infuriated Arab governments with its apparent support for Islamist challengers.
The network is detested in many capitals of the Middle East, and there were even reports of critical slogans voiced against it during recent protests in Gaza.
However, nowhere is Al Jazeera reviled more than in Israel, which banned it last year.
In the past month, the Jewish state has reacted furiously to international condemnation of alleged starvation in Gaza, branding this a 'Hamas narrative' and Western critics 'useful idiots' of the terror group.
Israel will inevitably hold Al Jazeera at least partly responsible for the starvation narrative taking hold.
This is evident from the bitter reaction to Sharif's tearful July report. Col Avichay Adraee, the IDF's Arabic language spokesman, accused Sharif of 'crocodile tears' and branded him a terrorist once again.
That prompted the US-based Committee for the Protection of Journalists to say it was 'deeply alarmed' about Sharif's safety.
Sunday's air strike essentially wiped out Al Jazeera as a functioning reporting team in Gaza City, the target of Israel's next military assault.
Some suggested on Monday that the IDF struck the tent when it did because it was one of the rare occasions when all the journalists were together at the same time.
The other reporters for the network who were killed were Mohammed Qreiqeh, Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal and Moamen Aliwa.
A sixth journalist, Mohammed al-Khaldi who worked as a freelance reporter, was also killed in the strike, according to Dr Mohammed Abu Salmiya, director of Al-Shifa Hospital.
The Committee to Protect Journalists said at least 186 had been killed in the Gaza conflict.
With the war set to ramp up towards full occupation within weeks, the bitter debate over the truth of information coming out of Gaza, and the allegiances of those who deliver it, will only get worse.
A message was posthumously published on Sharif's X account. 'If these words reach you, know that Israel has succeeded in killing me and silencing my voice,' he wrote.
The IDF, steadfast in its position posted: 'A press badge isn't a shield for terrorism.'
