No matter what excuse you come up with, or evidence you fake, killing journalists is never okay

Since the murder of Anas Al Sharif and his Al Jazeera crew two days ago, Israel and its apologists have come up with the most despicable excuses. Even worse, the BBC has given weight to these excuses as though they would count as justifications to kill journalists if the claims were true.

While western media organisations have pointed out there is no clear evidence to show Al Sharif was a Hamas member, many have spoken like this might have been the case, like we should take a country that has killed 230-plus journalists seriously. Such a position is missing the point.

As Foreign Press Association President Ian Williams pointed out, nothing excuses killing journalists. Nothing.

“Frankly, I don’t care if Al-Sharif was in Hamas or not. We don’t kill journalists for being Republicans or Democrats. Al-Sharif worked 24 hours and couldn’t possibly have time to work in a cell on the side."

Images and screenshots are floating around social media to justify the killing of Al Sharif and his crew. Some of them were almost certainly faked.

This screenshot of a Telegram post was shared by mainstream outlets such as Washington Post and Times of Israel. It has an apparently fake time stamp. No such post exists on Al Sharif's Telegram page and the content does not match his posting style which consisted solely of journalistic updates. Also, Al Sharif posted in Arabic on his channel, not English, and I understand there is no translate option.

Many other alleged social media posts were not showing on Al Sharif's accounts so unless he deleted them after his death, it would appear they are fake, but this does not matter. It does not matter if they were all real, they still would not justify killing a journalist.

Let's break this down:

The main claim is that Al Sharif was a member of Hamas and leader of a cell that directed rocket attacks. Clearly, Al Sharif has been working around the clock as a journalist since 7 October 2023 and probably for many years before. Even if he were previously a member of Hamas, this would not justify killing him because journalists are not legitimate military targets.

Almost all Israeli journalists have served in the IDF, an army that is committing genocide. Are we to argue that makes them legitimate military targets? If Hamas killed an Israeli journalist tomorrow, would Zionists really say, "Well, he served in the IDF so I guess that's fair enough?" Of course they wouldn't! They would call the killings terrorism.

Another argument is that Al Sharif supported the actions of Hamas as evidenced by screenshots of social media posts. Let's suppose all of those screenshots were real. Are you arguing that would justify murdering a journalist? Because if you apply that standard, not only would virtually every Israeli journalist be a legitimate military target, but virtually every western journalist too.

I've seen pictures of Al Sharif with Hamas leaders and at least one of those appears to have been photoshopped. It's entirely possible the others were real, but this is irrelevant.

Here is Donald Trump with a former Al Qaida and ISIS leader:

The BBC's online editor Raffi Berg has a letter on his wall from Netanyahu and a picture of himself with Mark Regev. Does that mean we should drone strike BBC HQ?

Israel has killed more journalists since 7 October 2023 than were killed in World War I and II combined. Both sides in those wars recognised you don't target journalists, even if those journalists support your enemy. This is because only combatants are legitimate military targets.

For the past two days, my social media has been spammed by deranged Zionists justifying the killing of Al Sharif and his crew. These people have no idea how insanely evil they sound. They really think that posting a doctored screenshot will make a normal person say "Well, if he said that on social media, it must be fine to kill him".

I saw one picture of Al Sharif posing with a rifle and I have no idea if it was real, but so what? I see pictures of Zionists posing with rifles all the time. Americans carry AR-15s around Walmart!

It is not okay to kill a journalist, even if you don't like their politics. That's still a war crime! When you defend it, you are defending a war crime. When Israel admitted to the killing, it was admitting to a war crime.

Israel thinks it can act with impunity because western governments and media will accept its excuses. On that score, we have seen a mixed bag. Some have clearly sided with Israel. Others have expressed outrage. Organisations like the BBC have been something in the middle.

The BBC's position appears to be there is no compelling evidence that Al Sharif was once in Hamas, but if he was, killing him might have been okay. The ambiguity is deliberate. If you don't take a clear position, if you act like it's unclear whether the killing was legal, you are letting Israel off the hook. At best this is cowardice and at worst it is support for murder.

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