On Sunday, the Israeli army murdered the Al Jazeera team in Gaza City in a targeted strike on a tent sheltering journalists. Correspondent Anas al-Sharif, reporter Mohammed Qreiqeh, cameramen Ibrahim Zaher and Mohammed Noufal, and assistant Moamen Aliwa were all killed instantly. Al-Shifa Hospital confirmed the attack.
Moments before his death, Anas al-Sharif posted a video of relentless Israeli airstrikes pounding Gaza City — the same genocide he had been documenting since the first days of the war. This is not an accident or “collateral damage.” It is the deliberate execution of the press, part of a systematic campaign to assassinate journalists, photographers, and media workers in Gaza in order to silence the truth.
Since October 7, Israel has killed at least 186 journalists according to the Committee to Protect Journalists — Gaza’s own media office reports more than 230. Ninety journalists are imprisoned by Israel. Meanwhile, international reporters are banned from entering Gaza, leaving Palestinian journalists as the only ones able to document the occupation’s crimes.
Even major outlets like AFP, BBC, Reuters, and the Associated Press — institutions that rarely break with imperialist consensus — have publicly expressed alarm at the targeting of reporters and the mass starvation now being used as a weapon of war.
Indeed, Israel’s attacks against the press are not just more cruelty; the work of journalists in Palestine has been indispensable in exposing the genocide to people across the world as Israel and its allies deny its war crimes. The harrowing images of everyday life in Gaza, of the starvation and bombs, has shown to the world — including the people of Israel — the horrors of this occupation. And they have galvanized a new generation of people to reject the so-called Zionist consensus, to denounce the genocide and demand the liberation of Palestine.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump is openly signaling support for further escalation. According to Axios, while he has not explicitly endorsed Netanyahu’s plan to seize Gaza City, he agrees that “more military pressure is required on Hamas.” His assertion that Hamas “can’t stay there” in Gaza echoes Netanyahu’s pledge to “take control of the remaining Hamas strongholds” and signals agreement on the attempt of eliminating Hamas’s presence by force through his plan to take over Gaza City.
This is the new phase of the genocide where military takeovers, a famine, and a war on the press are being carried out with the full complicity of the U.S. government. Despite the fact that Trump has recently attempted to distance himself — saying that Gaza policy is “Israel’s decision to make.” This posturing is aimed at managing growing political dissent where even within his own coalition, figures like Marjorie Taylor Greene have broken ranks, calling the assault in Gaza a “genocide.” More Democratic lawmakers are also speaking out, and international allies are facing pressure to the extent that German Chancellor Friedrich Merz announced an arms embargo on Israel, suspending all military exports that could be used in Gaza “until further notice” in response to the escalating offensive and deepening humanitarian catastrophe.
Therefore, by framing the war as Israel’s autonomous decision, Trump masks the fact that U.S. military aid, weapons, and diplomatic cover remain decisive. This underscores the bipartisan — and fundamentally Zionist — consensus in Washington: Israel’s military power is indispensable to U.S. imperial strategy in the Middle East.
Notably, this complicit framework extends beyond Washington. Egypt, despite expressions of concern over the crisis in Gaza, has just signed a record‑breaking $35 billion natural gas agreement with Israel — its largest ever — exponentially increasing its import dependency on Israel’s Leviathan field, even as its president labels the Gaza campaign a “genocide.” The deal reveals how regional regimes prioritize strategic and economic ties with colonial powers even amid mounting public outrage and humanitarian catastrophe, normalizing complicity in the face of escalating violence.
In the face of this humanitarian crisis and the complicity of governments and their institutions who continue to only pay lip service to the catastrophe and war — we must make our voices heard. From the streets of countries like Australia and Argentina, a new wave of massive mobilizations have been organized. Figures like Greta Thurberg are continuing their activism through a new flotilla and there have been recent actions by workers such as those in Italy who continue to block arms shipments to Israel.
It’s urgent for the generation that has been rising up since the genocide began — including Jewish anti-Zionists, students, workers, and activists around the world — to channel the deepening global condemnation into a unified international movement. From flotillas to mass protests, these actions must converge into a force capable of cutting off U.S. military aid to Israel, fighting against the repression targeting this movement, and winning a free Palestine from the river to the sea.
