What The Hell America!

Israel’s eighteen-month genocide in Gaza has plumbed the depths of unprecedented cruelties, but one of its worst atrocities has been the consistent targeting and killing of Palestinian journalists whose sin is bringing the truth out of Gaza. Such targeting continued on Monday, when Israeli forces killed Palestinian journalist and Al-Jazeera correspondent Hossam Shabat in an air strike that targeted his press car in Jabalia in northern Gaza. Shabat’s vest and helmet did not protect him. He was twenty-three.

Shabat was a brave young journalist who refused to be silent on Israel’s war crimes in Gaza. His commitment and persistence to carry on his mission was extraordinary. Among his last words, stated on Twitter last week: “I thought it was over and I’d finally get some rest, but the genocide is back in full force, and I’m back on the front lines.”

Israel also killed today Mohammed Mansour, a correspondent of Palestine Today, with a bomb that targeted his house in Khan Yunis. The two journalists were assassinated in the span of three hours. Footage shows Shabat’s mother and Mansour’s father collapsing from grief as they bid farewell to their slain sons.

Two colleagues killed in three hours. pic.twitter.com/hP0fwPIpzN

— Hind Khoudary (@Hind_Gaza) March 24, 2025

Anas al-Sharif, one of Shabat’s surviving colleagues in Gaza, wrote on social media: “Today, the Israeli occupation did not kill only Hossam, but it has sanctioned the killing of all of us. Will it be us who will be raised on shoulders tomorrow? The occupation has left us no choice but to convey the news and to become the news ourselves, and we are pleading with the world’s last shred of conscience with our own coffins!”

Israel is not only assassinating the few surviving journalists in Gaza but is now targeting every Palestinian who dares to speak up. On Monday, in the West Bank, a group of Israeli settlers beat Hamdan Ballal, codirector of the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land, before he was abducted and disappeared by Israeli soldiers. The violent assault and abduction of Ballal has proven the film’s point. To cite Jeremy Corbyn: “No Other Land depicts the horrifying violence Palestinians in the West Bank endure under apartheid.”

No Other Land depicts the horrifying violence Palestinians in the West Bank endure under apartheid.

Yesterday, its co-director Hamdan Ballal was beaten in his home by settlers before being detained by Israeli forces.

People applauded Hamdan. Now they are silent. Free Hamdan.

— Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) March 25, 2025

Israel has no scruples about slaughtering Palestinian journalists; it does not even offer the crime the dignity of denial. On Tuesday, the Israeli military openly admitted that it assassinated Shabat, having placed him on a hit list last December and murdered him on Monday. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) is now waging a propaganda campaign to justify Shabat’s killing and tarnish his name and memory.

Shabat had been in the IDF’s crosshairs for months. He previously received death threats from Israeli forces, demanding he cease documenting their atrocities in northern Gaza and remove his published material. Israel repeatedly and explicitly stated its intention to murder Shabat and his colleagues in Gaza. Journalists and activists had tirelessly warned against Israel’s intention to murder Gaza’s remaining journalists. They have been sounding the alarm with growing urgency since last July, when Israeli forces assassinated Ismail al-Ghoul, along with photographer Rami al-Rifi, whose bodies were found in pieces and decapitated at al-Shati refugee camp west of Gaza City. As I warned in August:

By targeting Palestinian journalists and their families, Israel is trying to cover up its genocide in Gaza and kill Palestinians in the dark. I’m also extremely worried about the safety of the remaining Palestinian journalists in Gaza, who have been in the crosshairs of the Israeli military for more than ten months. Unless we act now, Israel will continue to slaughter journalists in Gaza without consequences.

On Monday, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) issued a statement condemning Israel’s assassination of the two Gaza journalists. “CPJ is appalled that we are once again seeing Palestinians weeping over the bodies of dead journalists in Gaza,” said CPJ’s program director Carlos Martínez de la Serna in New York. “This nightmare in Gaza has to end. The international community must act fast to ensure that journalists are kept safe and hold Israel to account for the deaths of Hossam Shabat and Mohammed Mansour. Journalists are civilians and it is illegal to attack them in a war zone.”

CPJ has renewed its calls on Israel to stop feigning unsubstantiated allegations to justify its killing of members of the press, which include baseless accusations depicting Palestinian journalists in Gaza like Shabat and Mansour as members of the militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Shabat had consistently denied those accusations, telling CPJ in October: “We convey the truth on Al Jazeera Mubasher, and we move within the areas classified by Israel as safe. We are citizens, and we convey their voices. Our only crime is that we convey the image and the truth.”

Over the past eighteen months, Israel has murdered at least 207 journalists in Gaza, according to the Government Media Office in Gaza. This is the largest recorded number of journalists killed in any war. Armed with US weapons and funds, including a recent shipment of massive MK-84 unguided two-thousand-pound bombs, Israel continues to kill Palestinian journalists with impunity, to cover up its war crimes, and impose a total blackout on coverage of its atrocities in Gaza.

As a solidarity letter, signed by over one hundred journalists and press freedom organizations, warned in August: “Israel’s military actions are not possible without U.S. weapons, U.S. military aid, and U.S. diplomatic support. By providing the weapons being used to deliberately kill journalists, you are complicit in one of the gravest affronts to press freedom today.”

Under international law, the intentional targeting of journalists is a war crime. Israel has a well-documented pattern of extrajudicial executions of journalists and their families. These atrocities almost have no precedent in recent memory, and the world’s inability and unwillingness to stop them is a tragedy for humankind and disgrace for civilization. For the truth is that Shabat and Mansour were murdered not only by Israel, but the silence and complicity of Western journalists and the mainstream media outlets, who have denied their fellow journalists in Gaza even the dignity of solidarity. Hardly a major Western news organization has covered Israel’s killing of Shabat and Mansour.

These slain journalists were very young, and they took it upon themselves to fill a void left by Western media. (Hassan Hamad was nineteen years old; Shabat, twenty-three; al-Ghoul, twenty-seven). The journalists were our only source on the genocide in Gaza, where Israel has banned all foreign journalists and organizations. They furnished us with endless footage and firsthand reporting and paid with their lives to get the truth out of Gaza. It’s tragic to watch them bury one another in horrifying succession.

This young man had more dignity and integrity in his short career than the thousands of comfortable Western journalists who have remained silent as their governments have armed and funded a genocide. https://t.co/LHGDAr8Jgg

— Jason Hickel (@jasonhickel) March 24, 2025

As Jason Hickel said of Shabat: “This young man had more dignity and integrity in his short career than the thousands of comfortable Western journalists who have remained silent as their governments have armed and funded a genocide.” (The remaining journalists include mainly young girls who are daring death to report on the genocide, notably Bisan Owda, Hind Khudary, and Doaa Abaz.)

Shabat foresaw his own death. In his final message, shared by his team on social media, Shabat wrote:

If you’re reading this, it means I have been killed — most likely targeted — by the Israeli occupation forces. When this all began, I was only 21 years old — a college student with dreams like anyone else. For the past 18 months, I have dedicated every moment of my life to my people. I documented the horrors in northern Gaza minute by minute, determined to show the world the truth they tried to bury. I slept on pavements, in schools, in tents — anywhere I could. Each day was a battle for survival. I endured hunger for months, yet I never left my people’s side. By God, I fulfilled my duty as a journalist. I risked everything to report the truth, and now, I am finally at rest — something I haven’t known in the past 18 months. I did all this because I believe in the Palestinian cause. I believe this land is ours, and it has been the highest honor of my life to die defending it and serving its people. I ask you now: do not stop speaking about Gaza. Do not let the world look away. Keep fighting, keep telling our stories — until Palestine is free.” — For the last time, Hossam Shabat, from northern Gaza.