Israel Murders Anas Al-Sharif to Create a Media Blackout For Its Imminent Annihilation of Gaza City
11.8.25
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UPDATE: Please free free to check out my one-hour interview with Chris Cook of Gorilla Radio, recorded on August 13, in which we discussed the targeted murder of Anas Al-Sharif and his colleagues, Israel’s war on journalists and its persistent lies, as well as the self-inflicted problems created by the British government following its proscription of Palestine Action, a direct action group, as a terrorist organization.
Yesterday, at around 11.35pm, in a deliberate targeted attack on the press tent outside Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, Israel murdered the whole of the remaining crew of Al Jazeera Arabic in northern Gaza — the journalists Anas Al-Sharif and Mohammed Qreiqeh, the cameramen Ibrahim Zaher and Mohammed Noufal, and an assistant, Moamen Aliwa. Also killed was a freelance journalist, Mohammed al-Khaldi, and Al-Sharif’s teenage nephew Musab, who had hoped to follow in his uncle’s footsteps.
My heart sank when I read the news last night. Al-Sharif, 28, was probably the most hard-working journalist in history, relentlessly chronicling the genocide for 22 months with barely a break. It’s unimaginable how, hurrying from one atrocity to another, repeatedly reporting on shattered bodies and erased families, and always enveloped by the smell of blood, he carried on working.
Well known in the Arabic-speaking world, and with millions of followers on social media, where he posted in both Arabic and English, Al-Sharif, who leaves a wife and two young children he adored, kept going even though he must have known that his days were numbered. He was the last of the tireless and ever-visible Al Jazeera journalists, surviving as his closest friends and colleagues were picked off one by one — journalist Ismail Al-Ghoul and cameraman Rami Al-Rifi, who were killed on July 31, 2024, cameraman Fadi Al-Wahidi, who was paralyzed after an attack on October 9, 2024, and Hossam Shabat, who was targeted and murdered on March 24 this year.
In total, to date, 269 Palestinian journalists have been killed by Israel in Gaza over the last 22 months, more than the total number of journalists killed in the First and Second World Wars, the Vietnam War and the US-led occupation of Afghanistan combined.
This is no accident, of course, but a deliberate and sustained effort by Israel to silence any and all voices capable of reporting its atrocities to the outside world.
The failures of the western media
What makes this realization even more potent is that, since Israel began its genocidal assault on Gaza in response to the October 7 attacks, it has refused to allow western journalists into Gaza.
This, in itself, was, reading between the lines, a tacit admission from the very beginning of Israel’s intent to undertake its sustained genocidal actions away from prying eyes, and just as devastating, in its own way, as its concomitant refusal to allow representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross to visit any of the thousands of prisoners in its network of vile prisons for Palestinians, allowing torture, rapes and murder to take place without any outside scrutiny whatsoever.
For the international media, this has meant that, to report on what is happening in Gaza, senior editors should have reached out to Palestinian journalists on the ground. However, while this was what Al Jazeera and Arabic news stations did, many western media outlets failed to do so, and those that did have typically curated the footage with their own commentary.
Whilst it makes sense to keep anonymous those who have taken the footage used, for their own safety, the failure of the whole of the western media to hire a single Palestinian journalist to report for them on the ground in Gaza has — perhaps inadvertently in some cases, although not in others — created an impression that Palestinians themselves are untrustworthy to report on their own people’s suffering — or sometimes, even, their own deaths — whilst also reinforcing a colonial sense of superiority, suggesting that only visiting “white saviours” can report accurately on what happens in other countries.
In addition, the absence of Palestinian voices in accurately reporting the last 22 months of Israeli-inflicted horrors is further horribly and unforgivably skewed by the relentless insistence of western media in reporting, as fact, whatever claims Israel itself makes about its actions, even when those claims are transparently risible, as well as the regular platforming of completely unacceptable Israeli government spokespeople.
In the UK, the most noticeable example is the Israeli Ambassador, Tzipi Hotovely, who, in January 2024, claimed, to Iain Dale of LBC, that “every school, every mosque, every second house [in Gaza] has access to a tunnel” used by Hamas militants, and, when Dale asked if she was suggesting destroying every building in Gaza, replied, “Do you have another solution for how to destroy the underground tunnel city? This is the place where the terrorists hide.”
Israel’s incessant lies
Not content with targeting and murdering journalists with impunity in numbers that almost defy belief, Israel has spent much of the last year seeking to defend the transparent war crimes of killing journalists by indulging in one of its favourite pastimes — pumping out black propaganda about their alleged involvement with Hamas, just as it has done with so many of the doctors it has killed or “disappeared”, and with numerous other individuals from all walks of life.
I’ve written before about the west’s abject failure to hold Israel to account for deliberately failing to distinguish between Hamas as the administrative government in Gaza, and its military wing — a distinction deliberately glossed over or ignored — but when the reckoning comes, as it will one day, everyone responsible will be held to account for failing to make the distinction, and pretending that those working for a civilian infrastructure — doctors, nurses, university professors, judges, schoolteachers, water engineers, sewage engineers, the list goes on — can somehow be killed with impunity because of their supposed connection to Hamas.
Regarding its targeting of journalists, the path to Anas Al-Sharif’s murder began last August, when Israel came up with risible lies about Hamas membership to defend its killing of Ismail Al-Ghoul. These were debunked by Reporters Without Borders and the Committee to Protect Journalists, which noted the absurdity of Israel claiming that he received a Hamas military ranking in 2007, when he was just 10 years old. Nevertheless, Israel followed up in October with unsubstantiated claims about Hamas membership relating to six other journalists, including Hossam Shabat and Anas Al-Sharif.
As the CPJ reported today, in a video posted on July 24, just two weeks ago, IDF spokesman Avichay Adraee “accused Al-Sharif of having been a member of Hamas’s military wing, Al-Qassam, since 2013 and working during the war ‘for the most criminal and offensive channel.’” The CPJ then issued a call “for Anas al-Sharif’s protection in [the] face of Israeli smears”, with Al-Sharif telling them, “I live with the feeling that I could be bombed and martyred at any moment. My family is also in danger, and I have already paid the price before.”
He explained that, in December 2023, his 90-year-old father was killed by an Israeli airstrike on their family home, weeks after Al-Sharif himself “received multiple telephone threats from Israeli army officers instructing him to cease coverage and leave northern Gaza.” He pledged to continue his work, however, stating that, although the threats were “difficult and painful”, it “motivates me to continue fulfilling my duty and conveying the suffering of our people, even if it costs me my life.”
In a statement today, CPJ Regional Director Sara Qudah said, “Israel is murdering the messengers. Israel wiped out an entire news crew. That’s murder. Plain and simple.”
She added, “It is no coincidence that the smears against Al-Sharif — who has reported night and day for Al Jazeera since the start of the war — surfaced every time he reported on a major development in the war, most recently the starvation brought about by Israel’s refusal to allow sufficient aid into the territory.”
Silencing the witnesses to the coming annihilation
As those of us who haven’t lost our humanity to the complete inversion of the world’s moral compass over the last 22 months mourn Anas Al-Sharif and his murdered colleagues, it is crucial to recognize that Israel’s lies about his membership of Hamas are meant to distract us from a gruesome truth — that, with Al Jazeera Arabic’s entire news team in northern Gaza eliminated, Israel has removed the most prominent individuals capable of recording the horror of its imminent assault on Gaza City, agreed to by the Israeli security cabinet just three days ago.
Under the plans, Gaza City, home to around a million surviving Palestinians, will be militarily occupied, with proposals that the entire population be forcibly displaced into the few ever-shrinking and overcrowded parts of Gaza that are not already under full Israeli control. Those who remain — either because they are unwilling to leave, or because they are unable to do so through illness or infirmity — will, presumably, be regarded as “enemy combatants” who can be shot on sight.
The plan seems largely to replicate the horrific “Generals’ Plan” that was implemented in northern Gaza from October last year until the start of the ceasefire in January, “a genocide within a genocide” that was marked by some of the most gruesome violence on Israel’s part throughout its 22 months of sustained depravity.
Both Hossam Shabat and Anas Al-Sharif relentlessly chronicled the horror of the “Generals’ Plan”, which I covered assiduously at the time, but now they are gone, and, with their loss and that of their colleagues, an alarming darkness engulfs Gaza City, as the first salvoes in its elimination have already begun.
In his last messages last night, before his death, Anas Al-Sharif was writing about the coming horrors. Just before 9pm, he wrote, “The occupation is now openly threatening a full-scale invasion of Gaza. For 22 months, the city has been bleeding under relentless bombardment from land, sea, and air. Tens of thousands have been killed, and hundreds of thousands wounded. If this madness does not end, Gaza will be reduced to ruins, its people’s voices silenced, their faces erased — and history will remember you as silent witnesses to a genocide you chose not to stop. Please share this message and tag everyone who has the power to help end this massacre. Silence is complicity.”
Shortly after, he wrote, “Breaking: Intense and focused Israeli bombardment with fiery belts targets the eastern and southern areas of Gaza City”, and then “Relentless bombardment. For two hours, the Israeli aggression has intensified on Gaza City.”
Those were his last words, followed, after his death, by a moving will and final message, which he had prepared months before. “I have lived through pain in all its details, tasted suffering and loss many times” he wrote, “yet I never once hesitated to convey the truth as it is, without distortion or falsification — so that Allah may bear witness against those who stayed silent, those who accepted our killing, those who choked our breath, and whose hearts were unmoved by the scattered remains of our children and women, doing nothing to stop the massacre that our people have faced for more than a year and a half.”
Will Netanyahu’s plan succeed?
It remains to be seen if Netanyahu’s plans will somehow be derailed. As Peter Beaumont noted in a hard-hitting article for the Guardian on Friday:
In practical terms, Israel’s decision to seize full control of Gaza appears as reckless as it is delusional and inhuman, not least the notion that Israel will maintain control until the “establishment of an alternative civil administration that is neither Hamas nor the Palestinian Authority.” As it currently stands, that alternative remains a fiction of Netanyahu’s imagination.
What will seem more plausible for many will be the far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich’s unpalatable parsing of the decision on Friday. “We are erasing the Palestinian state”, he declared, “first in action and then officially.”
Netanyahu, desperate to preserve his coalition government to save him from corruption charges that he seems able to endlessly defer while Israel is at war, has been deferring more and more in recent months to the demands of the two far-right ministers in his coalition, Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, messianic monsters who dream only of the conquest of the whole of historic Palestine, and the erasure, one way or another, of the entire Palestinian people. Their preferred route for this, as always, is extermination, but in public they suggest that “voluntary migration” is a “humanitarian” way to achieve their dark desires, even though no one has ever adequately managed to suggest that a single country anywhere in the world is prepared to take in any of the Palestinians and be complicit in another staggering war crime — the forced displacement, or ethnic cleansing of an entire population.
Netanyahu has Trump on his side — through indifference if nothing else, but probably because he has been paid lavishly to turn a blind eye — but elsewhere, both internally and externally, increasingly vocal criticism is increasing.
Protests within Israel are on the rise, both from the remaining hostages’ families, who rightly believe that they have been abandoned, and from a growing anti-war movement, some of whom have even managed to break through the general nationwide prohibition on regarding the Palestinians as human.
In addition, the IDF’s chief of staff, Eyal Zamir, initially opposed the plan, “suggesting”, as Peter Beaumont described it, that “it would lead to the death of the remaining Israeli hostages and greater risk to soldiers in an already exhausted Israeli military from improvised explosive devices.”
Opposition leader Yair Lapid has been more open in his criticism, calling the plan a “disaster that will lead to many more disasters”, and describing it as “a move that will kill the hostages and many soldiers, will cost Israeli taxpayers tens of billions and will destroy Israel’s diplomatic relations.” He added, “This is exactly what Hamas wanted: for Israel to end up stuck in Gaza without a goal, in a useless occupation, the point of which no one understands.”
There are also doubts about whether an overstretched and exhausted IDF is capable of undertaking an intensive military campaign that is envisaged to last for up to six months, and further doubts about the economic costs, expressed by Ram Aminach, an expert in Israel’s military economics, who told an Israeli newspaper that “the cost of taking Gaza under full control could run to almost $6bn in the coming months, with ‘incomprehensible costs’ associated with sustaining a Palestinian population of 2 million people in a shattered territory.”
He added, “Look at the international pressure Israel faces today and multiply that by five, at the least. To ease that pressure, we’ll need to take care of the population in Gaza. No international player is going to help pay for that, not while Israel is seen the way it is right now.”
While the Palestinians in Gaza continue to starve, and Netanyahu’s latest plan appears to have no clear exit strategy — a recipe, it could be said, for perpetual war — Israel’s allies also seem to be distancing themselves somewhat, with Germany, to date Israel’s most resolute supporter after the US, claiming that it will finally cut off arms sales of weapons to be used in Gaza, and with dissatisfaction being voiced by other allies, even if, as usual, they are not accompanied by any actions that will actually hurt Israel.
Is there any hope left, or will Israel’s darkness engulf us all?
* * * * *
Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer (of an ongoing photo-journalism project, ‘The State of London’), film-maker and singer-songwriter (the lead singer and main songwriter for the London-based band The Four Fathers, whose music is available via Bandcamp). He is the co-founder of the Close Guantánamo campaign (see the ongoing photo campaign here) and the successful We Stand With Shaker campaign of 2014-15, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo”, which you can watch on YouTube here.
In 2017, Andy became very involved in housing issues. He is the narrator of the documentary film, ‘Concrete Soldiers UK’, about the destruction of council estates, and the inspiring resistance of residents, he wrote a song ‘Grenfell’, in the aftermath of the entirely preventable fire in June 2017 that killed over 70 people, and, in 2018, he was part of the occupation of the Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden in Deptford, to try to prevent its destruction — and that of 16 structurally sound council flats next door — by Lewisham Council and Peabody.
Since 2019, Andy has become increasingly involved in environmental activism, recognizing that climate change poses an unprecedented threat to life on earth, and that the window for change — requiring a severe reduction in the emission of all greenhouse gases, and the dismantling of our suicidal global capitalist system — is rapidly shrinking, as tipping points are reached that are occurring much quicker than even pessimistic climate scientists expected. You can read his articles about the climate crisis here. He has also, since, October 2023, been sickened and appalled by Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and you can read his detailed coverage here.
To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to Andy’s new Substack account, set up in November 2024, where he’ll be sending out a weekly newsletter, or his RSS feed — and he can also be found on Facebook (and here), Twitter and YouTube. Also see the six-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, The Complete Guantánamo Files, the definitive Guantánamo habeas list, and the full military commissions list.
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37 Responses
Andy Worthington says...
When I posted this on Facebook, I wrote:
My report about Israel’s monstrous targeted murder last night of the extraordinarily hard-working Palestinian journalist Anas Al-Sharif and four of his colleagues from Al Jazeera Arabic, in which I mourn their loss, dissect Israel’s lies about their involvement with Hamas, and criticize the western media for never having platformed Palestinian journalists in their reporting.
I also express my fears that the murders were deliberately intended to create a media blackout for the imminent planned invasion and occupation of Gaza City, home to a million surviving Palestinians, where, it seems horribly probable, Israel is planning to replicate the “genocide within a genocide” that took place in northern Gaza from October last year until the ceasefire in January this year, which both Anas Al-Sharif and another murdered colleague, Hossam Shabat, covered assiduously.
As I ask, “Is there any hope left, or will Israel’s darkness engulf us all?”
...on August 11th, 2025 at 9:30 pm
Andy Worthington says...
When I got the news last night, I posted the following on Facebook, which is one of my most shared posts:
https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=10163984692303804&set=a.10150687732288804
...on August 12th, 2025 at 12:07 am
Andy Worthington says...
Mara Ahmed wrote:
monstrous, demonic, evil. there are not enough words in the english language.
...on August 12th, 2025 at 12:24 am
Andy Worthington says...
I agree, Mara. It’s as though the words we need haven’t yet been invented. Most dystopian storytelling, however, now seems to have been overshadowed by reality. On the one hand, Israel has bombed and starved the Palestinians into some kind of medieval state of bare, subsistence-level existence, but it also continues to maintain Gaza as a techno-concentration camp, where it used AI to target tens of thousands of homes on the flimsiest of bases, and where it now targets whoever it wants to kill through their mobile phone signals. It’s multi-leveled malevolence and cruelty on a previously undreamt-of scale.
...on August 12th, 2025 at 12:24 am
Andy Worthington says...
Katrina Parsey wrote:
It’s no coincidence that this came after the heinous speech by the US Ambassador at the UN. Blaming even the UK for supporting Hamas; giving the green light for the assassination the Israelis have wanted to carry out for months. So yes this was the time for the blackout before atrocities in Gaza City.
...on August 12th, 2025 at 12:25 am
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks, Katrina. I found a video here. Dorothy Shea’s shameful presentation, which you describe, starts about 2 minutes in: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfASk_uqcOo
The US under Trump is now clearly lost. Trump has no interest any more, and Mike Huckabee’s support for Israel is frankly unhinged.
...on August 12th, 2025 at 12:26 am
Andy Worthington says...
Lizzy Arizona wrote:
War crimes, the world is disgusted 🤮 when will this violence just for sake of killing everyone stop end cease?
...on August 12th, 2025 at 12:30 am
Andy Worthington says...
That’s what I wonder everyday, Lizzy. Israel rarely even pretends anymore that its everyday bombing is aimed at military targets. Having got away with so much over the last 22 months, it now appears to be pretty openly just murdering babies, children, mother and fathers and grandparents without even pretending that it needs to find even the flimsiest of excuses. And our leaders apparently still think so little of Palestinians’ lives that they don’t even care.
...on August 12th, 2025 at 12:30 am
Andy Worthington says...
Jan Millington-Artist wrote:
It’s a very dark day today, amongst many other dark times. It’s felt very heavy on social media today………so many people felt this.
...on August 12th, 2025 at 12:41 am
Andy Worthington says...
Yes, I agree, Jan. The outpourings of grief were immense – and justifiably so. Shamefully, because of the indifference of our media, we hardly ever get to hear anything about the tens of thousands of civilians murdered by Israel – in marked contrast to the lavish attention afforded to the released hostages earlier this year – but certain individuals manage to break through: some journalists, some doctors, some writers and artists, and others like Hind Rajab and Khaled ‘Soul of My Soul’ Nabhan.
I felt the wave of grief when Hossam Shabat was killed, and it’s even more pronounced with Anas, who was loved by millions. I can’t imagine the sorrow in Gaza, but I don’t think Israel has fully reckoned with how beloved Anas was around the world, to his millions of followers, his indefatigability like a one-man relentless rebuke to the genocidal entity whose crimes he witnessed and chronicled so assiduously.
...on August 12th, 2025 at 12:41 am
Andy Worthington says...
Aishah Schwartz wrote:
This crossed my mind, too…
“I also express my fears that the murders were deliberately intended to create a media blackout for the imminent planned invasion and occupation of Gaza City.”
...on August 12th, 2025 at 12:58 am
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks, Aishah. Yes, it’s deeply troubling. Anas and Hossam Shabat played such a huge part in chronicling what took place during the implementation of the grotesque “Generals Plan” from October to January. To imagine an operation on an even larger scale taking place, essentially in media darkness, is truly chilling. I hope something can stop it, but I’m clutching at straws trying to imagine what.
...on August 12th, 2025 at 12:59 am
Andy Worthington says...
Natalia Rivera Scott wrote:
Andy, this time I have no words left. I usually disconnect on weekends and I read the news yesterday and just started crying. I have been sharing in my Mexico4Julian page and on the Assange groups I manage and I can tell you I’m angry and disappointed to have read comments of “supporters” calling Anas a terrorist. I’m f*cking angry and I’m so sorry that he died. Like with Hossam, and of course all the other 200+ journalists that have been butchered by the terrorist state of Israel, I feel we woke up in a sadder and more horrible world today.
When I read “goodbye, voice of Gaza” I couldn’t stop the tears.
...on August 12th, 2025 at 1:00 am
Andy Worthington says...
We must carry on for the sake of Anas and Hossam and all the others killed, Natalia, but it’s hard. There’s a hole in the world that shouldn’t be there today.
Sorry to hear about some of the Assange supporters, but I always feared, through the indifference of many to Guantanamo, that some of them were only interested in “white saviour” fantasies. Your experience would seem to show that I wasn’t wrong.
...on August 12th, 2025 at 1:03 am
Andy Worthington says...
Jan Millington-Artist wrote, in response to 10, above:
Andy, I realise that UK journalists are under a lot of pressure about what they say, or what they don’t say, but Anas was one of their own. The lack of reporting of the deliberate targeting by Israel, of journalists in Gaza is genuinely shocking. Compared with the outcry of the Charlie Hebdo murders ……
...on August 12th, 2025 at 8:36 am
Andy Worthington says...
I honestly don’t think that anyone who calls themselves a journalist, but bows to inappropriate editorial interference, deserves to actually be called a journalist, Jan; I call them stenographers. On Gaza, in particular, even the media’s supposedly objective standards have been largely erased – their supposed requirement to give equal weight to both sides of an argument (which is problematical anyway, as it’s only recently that they largely stopped giving airtime to climate change deniers, for example).
The bias in favour of Israel has been horrendous and unforgivable – to cite just two examples, the use of “Hamas-run” to imply doubts about whatever follows, and the persistent refusal to describe Netanyahu as a wanted war criminal – and to see journalists yesterday repeating Israel’s desperate and despicable lies about Anas without forcefully stating that Israel has failed to provide anything resembling viable evidence regarding his alleged involvement in Hamas is truly shameful.
Real journalists would point out that Israel lies regularly and repeatedly, and has persistently sought to describe not only journalists, but also internationallly respected doctors and surgeons as Hamas operatives, without ever providing evidence, just as it bombed, attacked and/or invaded all of Gaza’s hospitals, often summarily executing staff and patients, without ever establishing that they were used as “Hamas control centres”, as alleged.
I could go on and on …
...on August 12th, 2025 at 8:37 am
Andy Worthington says...
Lorraine Barlett wrote:
Excellent article!! Thanks Andy, God bless you!
...on August 12th, 2025 at 9:02 am
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks so much for appreciating my efforts, Lorraine. It’s a constant struggle to find an audience, but I’m morally compelled to bear witness to these unforgivable atrocities, and grateful to be able to play a part, however small, in challenging the horribly distorted narratives of Israel and its supporters. I will confess, however, that it’s depressing to realize how much, despite the promise of the internet, the media’s gatekeepers, both old and new, control so much of the narrative.
...on August 12th, 2025 at 9:03 am
Andy Worthington says...
Damien Morrison wrote:
What’s it gonna take for this to stop … people attacking isrealis in other countries because that’s were this is going and some will say rightly so an eye for an eye
...on August 12th, 2025 at 9:08 am
Andy Worthington says...
Whatever comes, they have brought it on themselves, Damien. Israelis abroad are going to be regarded with suspicion, or even hostility, because so many of them will have served in the IDF. And while there’ll be widespread cries of “antisemitism” from defenders of the genocide, all it will establish is the insulting absurdity of pretending that antisemitism means criticism of the actions of the State of Israel.
...on August 12th, 2025 at 9:08 am
Andy Worthington says...
Aishah Schwartz wrote:
Exactly, Andy – depravity. I despise feeling like I’m always thinking worse case scenario – but I’ve followed this genocide every day (and many nights) since October 2023, and every time I’ve thought that I couldn’t see anything worse, I’ve been proven wrong.
...on August 12th, 2025 at 9:41 am
Andy Worthington says...
Me too, Aishah, and I also recall the moments of hope that have been subsequently dashed. It’s been particularly horrific since Israel broke the ceasefire in March, however. They clearly couldn’t bear having had to agree to pause their relentless slaughter for six weeks, and have been making up for lost time ever since, with Smotrich in particular becoming more and more obsessed with extermination.
They don’t seem to realize that they have genuinely become a society that lives only to kill. Everything else is a distraction. 77 years of feeling threatened 24/7, without ever realizing that the threat is because of their own actions. They really do need collective therapy.
...on August 12th, 2025 at 9:42 am
Andy Worthington says...
Aishah Schwartz wrote:
Andy, collective residency in hell would be more satisfying. 😔
...on August 12th, 2025 at 1:11 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Yes, my collective therapy comment was too mild, Aishah. “Enforced collective therapy behind bars” is what I should have written. 😉
...on August 12th, 2025 at 1:12 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Aishah Schwartz wrote:
My friends in Gaza, that I’ve kept track of day and night for 22 months via my 18-year home in Egypt, are from when I was there in 2009 and again in 2012.
...on August 12th, 2025 at 1:12 pm
Andy Worthington says...
My thoughts are with your friends, Aishah. I know it makes no material difference to the unimaginable circumstances they’re living in, but I hope they know how many people around the world are heartbroken about their predicament every single day.
...on August 12th, 2025 at 1:12 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Aishah Schwartz wrote:
Thank you, Andy. It’s hard watching all of it … the only thing carrying me through is, by the Grace of God and like-minded friends, having the ability to reach them with donations (from 11/23 up to now). Every shekel helps … the only problem with each transaction is feeling like I wish there was more … And the impending Rafah-style demolition of Gaza City has exacerbated their financial needs. It’s insane. I am constantly battling with the anger and depression of it all, pausing from time to time to watch anything that makes me laugh, or making myself go outside to maintain a semblance of sanity…
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10162164025082284&set=p.10162164025082284&type=3
...on August 12th, 2025 at 1:14 pm
Andy Worthington says...
I hear you, Aishah. My only joy, for the last 22 months, has been in the moments when I’ve somehow managed to be distracted from the grinding reality of it all. It’s taken a huge mental toll on so many people, and it remains fundamentally unimaginable for most of us how the people in Gaza can possibly cope with it all. However, we need to keep our outrage like a flame and never let it be extinguished, because everyone responsible for this needs to be held accountable, and never to have any kind of peaceful ever-after unless they recognize the enormity of what they have done and fully atone for it.
...on August 12th, 2025 at 1:15 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Deborah Emin wrote:
If you call a person a member of Hamas, does that make that person automatically an enemy, someone you can assassinate at will and with just cause? Then let us all become Hamas. Let us all become the most reviled of the Israeli force and brutal regime. Because the kind of label that is chosen to label you as a target for assassination has also been assigned to the unborn in Gaza. And if that is the case, if the possibility of becoming, once born, a Hamas member, and thus an enemy of Israel, then why are we all opposed to this genocide not also labeled Hamas? Why aren’t the 98% of the planet’s nations who oppose this genocide not also labeled Hamas? And what is the difference between what Israel has done to Hamas and what the US has done to countless regimes and groups it has labeled as “terrorist” while those assigning the label have done far worse things to kill off what they hate.
...on August 13th, 2025 at 9:40 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks for your considered thoughts, Deborah, about why we are all Hamas. For most of those undertaking and approving the mass slaughter, I suspect they insist that it is only Palestinians who can be Hamas, as the most lost amongst them discuss whether everyone is a terrorist from birth, or whether, as one pundit said a while back, it’s only those over four years of age (imagine defining four years of age as the end of innocence).
For the truly lost, however, I’m pretty certain that, if they could, they’d start exterminating everyone everywhere who they can label as Hamas because they’ve advocated for the rights of the Palestinians, or, even more dangerously, have dared to insist that there is a fundamental difference between Hamas’ administrative government and its military wing, and that Israel is guilty of copious war crimes in relation to every single non-combatant that they have murdered as a result of their insatiable bloodthirsty appetites.
...on August 13th, 2025 at 9:41 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Check this out if you have an hour to spare: https://gradio.substack.com/p/gorilla-radio-with-chris-cook-andy-b87
I discuss Gaza with Chris Cook; the targeted killing of Anas Al-Sharif and his colleagues, Israel’s persistent lies, and the UK government’s entirely self-inflicted problems after wrongly banning a direct action group, Palestine Action, as a terrorist organization, which, as I point out, I regard as an act of treason.
This is because the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, and most of the Labour Cabinet, including the Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, have received significant donations from pro-Israeli individuals and organizations, and are working on Israel’s behalf, and not in the interests of the UK.
...on August 13th, 2025 at 9:45 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Deborah Emin wrote, in response to 30, above:
Andy, it is their “insatiable bloodthirsty appetites” that are the most disturbing. Because of that I fear they are capable of starting a nuclear war. There are no guardrails at all, no moral compass, no reason not to do the most unthinkable as every action thus far has been unthinkable until they did it.
...on August 14th, 2025 at 12:44 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Yes, very well said, Deborah. I recall, in the early days after Oct. 7, a number of pundits calling for Gaza to be “nuked”, only presumably for others to tell them quietly that that was impossible, but only because it would engulf Israel in deadly toxic fallout. They have, as you say, no moral compass whatsoever, and the world should shudder in the realization of what it means when a people with delusions of superiority (however much they may have suffered historically) are given a “chosen land”, coddled over generations with no punishment for their repeated contempt for international law, and promptly abandon every aspect of assimilation, of living with others, to which Jews elsewhere in the international diaspora have not been exposed – although some of them, of course, have become at least as virulently genocidal as those in Israel itself.
The fact that so many leaders in the west still refuse to accept that their mindset and their behavior is analagous to the Nazis, or to the most fanatical Takfiri Muslims who are reviled as terrorists is a blind spot that will, I hope, come to haunt them. Like the Nazis and the Takfiris, they really have contempt for anyone who isn’t Jewish, and, of course, as they drive ever further into far-right hysteria, they will also, if not stopped, begin increasingly to turn on the “wrong” kind of Jews, as we’ve been seeing with the propaganda of some of the most disturbing Kahanist groups with an international presence.
...on August 14th, 2025 at 12:45 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Deborah Emin wrote:
Andy, within the entire Jewish community, there is such racism, not ever acknowledged, that they share with many Europeans which is why they are never called out and are defended. Though, I believe soon that European racism will bite them hard and all the old antisemitic tropes will come rolling out.
The colonizers like it when the colonized do their dirty work. Soon, they may no longer be needed. Or they will become a liability no longer worth the risk. None of this ends well.
What we, who are not currently caught in the crosshairs, will have learned is how deeply evil racism is and how it creates brutal monsters. We’ve learned that in every war but never take it to heart.
Thank you for standing firm in the face of these horrible times. We, so many, depend on you.
...on August 15th, 2025 at 4:26 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks for the supportive words, Deborah. As for racism, where do we begin? Sustained, covertly well-funded anti-immigrant narratives have been promoted so relentlessly for the last decade, through the right-wing media and increasingly through social media, that they have led to a resurgence of open racism in European countries, and the rise of dangerous far-right parties.
That said, my impression in the UK is that, overall, the white supremacist position isn’t dominant, because so much of the country has spent several generations moving beyond the racism that was so prevalent in my youth to actively embrace multi-culturalism.
Compared to this, the racism you identify in the Jewish community appears to be much more prevalent, and within Israel itself, of course, generations of unchallenged hatred directed towards the Palestinians has led to the truly vile situation we’re in now, where popular news channels regularly feature pundits calling for the complete extermination of the entire population of Gaza.
These opinions are echoed to varying degrees in the west, throughout the Jewish diaspora, and via sympathetic gentiles with power and influence (particularly, of course, in the US Congress), but I think you’re right to note that there may well be a backlash – of antisemitism of the real kind, not the fake antisemitism peddled so furiously by Israel, which insists that criticism of the actions of the State of Israel are equivalent to the Nazis’ genocidal hatred of all Jewish people.
As so many countries, including the US, the UK and Germany, have been subverting their own laws to provide unparalleled support to Israel, so that, for example, the First Amendment has been so contaminated that Americans can criticize their own government, but mustn’t dare to criticize the actions of the Israeli government, I’d say a backlash at some point is only to be expected, especially if Netanyahu, Smotrich and Ben-Gvir continue to show such open contempt for the west by failing, as they so often do, to disguise the superiority they feel towards everyone who isn’t Jewish – or, as will become increasingly apparent, anyone who isn’t the right kind of Jew.
...on August 15th, 2025 at 4:28 pm
Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, Andy Worthington Stand-Alone August 13th, 2025 – Gorilla Radio is dedicated to social justice, the environment, community, and providing a forum for people and issues not covered in the corporate media. says...
[…] Israel murdered an entire Palestinian crew of reporters Sunday past. The Al Jazeera team had been reporting from Gaza throughout the horrors visited there by the rogue state, abetted by we in the West; and though the murders are part of a pattern of targeted killings – the five being among 269 journalists killed, as of writing, since October, 2023, (in many cases along with family members) – the murders of Anas al-Sharif and his four colleagues looms more ominous both because of al-Sharif’s prominence and the commencing military assault against the civilian survivors in Gaza City and the northern Strip. […]
...on August 23rd, 2025 at 7:06 pm
Andy Worthington says...
How is anyone meant to cope with the previously undreamt of depths of depravity plumbed by Israel in its ongoing genocide in Gaza?
Today, multiple grotesque war crimes overlapped, as Israel yet again targeted a hospital — Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis — killing five journalists, as well as medical staff and patients, and then conducted a second “double tap” attack soon after, killing civil defense workers as they tried to rescue those wounded in the first attack.
The five journalists were Hussam al-Masri, a photo-journalist for Reuters, Mariam Abu Daqqa, a journalist for the Associated Press, Al Jazeera photographer Mohammad Salama, and two others, Moaz Abu Taha and Ahmed Abu Aziz.
WHO chief Tedros Ghebreyesus said that the Israeli strikes hit the hospital’s main building where the emergency department, inpatient ward and surgical unit are located. On top of killing at least 20 people, the attacks wounded more than 50, including “critically ill patients who were already receiving care”, he wrote on X.
The deaths bring to 274 the total number of Palestinian journalists killed since Israel began its genocidal assault on Gaza 22 months ago, and follow on closely from the deliberate targeting and murder of Anas Al-Sharif and four of his Al Jazeera Arabic colleagues just two weeks ago
...on August 25th, 2025 at 6:30 pm