Yesterday, Netanyahu's regime assassinated an entire Al Jazeera crew that was staying in a press tent at the entrance to Al-Shifa Hospital: two correspondents, two cameramen, and a driver. The main target was Anas al-Sharif, the last remaining Al Jazeera correspondent in Gaza who had survived until now. He gained great popularity outside and inside Gaza, despite the growing reservations among Gaza residents regarding Al Jazeera's bias, which was expressed in the silencing of criticism against Hamas.

Al-Sharif continuously covered the ongoing erasure of Gaza from the northern Strip area. From time to time, he dared to speak out against Hamas, asking the organization to show responsibility for the fate of Gaza's residents and demanding maximum flexibility from them in negotiations to end the war. Rumors say he was silenced with threats. Since then, he has been careful with his language, but those who scrutinized his reports and posts could find hints of his despair not only with the larger world and the Arabs, but also with Hamas.

In the announcement about the assassination, the IDF spokesperson claimed that al-Sharif operated under the guise of a journalist, but in fact "served as a cell leader in Hamas and promoted rocket firing schemes against Israeli civilians and IDF forces."

The IDF relied on captured documents that were revealed to the public last October, under the headline "Six active journalists at Al Jazeera who are all terrorists in Hamas and PIJ." Among these journalists appeared Anas al-Sharif. According to the documents, which appear authentic, in December 2013, Anas al-Sharif enlisted in the East Jabalia Battalion in Hamas. In April 2017, while he was 17 years old, he was injured in his eye and ear during training. After that, he was no longer in active military service and was defined as "a clerk in the movement."

Amit Segal shared a post that celebrates the assassination of the Al Jazeera journalist: "The world is a better place without him. I waited a long time for this report. Too long."

The last documentation of al-Sharif in a military context, according to these documents, is from January 2019. He was still a simple soldier, the lowest rank possible, but was defined as a group commander in a rocket firing unit in what appears to be an inactive reserve rank (he was not entitled to financial benefits).

Amit Segal shared a post today that claimed al-Sharif was arrested by the IDF during the raid on Al-Shifa Hospital, but was later released. "I waited a long time for this report. Too long," concluded the post he shared about the assassination.

So, according to the documents that the army itself released for publication, Anas al-Sharif was active in Hamas until 2017. He then integrated into media and finally into Al Jazeera. He was arrested by the army during the war and released, apparently because he was such a dangerous terrorist. Since 2024, not once or twice has he publicly criticized Hamas. This is the person that the State of Israel chose to assassinate in August 2025, twenty-two months into the destruction of Gaza.

While the totally mobilized media in Israel raves about the "journalist-terrorist," and doesn't do the minimum journalistic work expected of it, outside Israel, in the international media, you will encounter the bitter reality. I ask myself whether every Israeli journalist who was a fighter in the army in the past or in reserves understands that hereby the State of Israel has made his blood permissible even if he opposes Netanyahu's regime. The way Israel operates in Gaza proves again and again that we have never been in such a Hamas-like state.

Not long ago, a person I generally respect wrote that after October 7th "every Hamas man wherever he is, even a head of a driving license distribution department, is condemned to death." I replied that the thought that even a head of a driving license distribution department in Gaza is condemned to death brought us to this point.

Our correspondence exhausted itself before we reached an agreement on how we would know whether the condemned person had meanwhile disavowed Hamas (and then he would be entitled to live); what is the meaning of "Hamas man" in the most junior civilian position when the movement, and certainly its military frameworks, are already dismantled; and whether even last March, a year and a half into the revenge campaign in Gaza, collateral damage of 400 civilian deaths as a result of aerial bombing, aimed at "senior officials" in Hamas's political wing that no one had heard of, was legitimate.

When will the moment come when the media in Israel will wake up, stop parroting Netanyahu's regime, its collaborators and all the mechanisms that serve it, and start working?

Dr. Assaf David is the director of the Israel in the Middle East cluster at the Van Leer Institute and academic director of the Forum for Regional Thinking

The article was first published in Hebrew on August 11.