[News] “We Call Them Martyrs Because That’s What They Are” • The Living Record of Gaza’s Journalists

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Dear all:  Most of us like to try to keep up with the news, especially 
as it concerns Palestine. And most of this news has come to us from 
Palestinian reporters in Gaza, at least 260 of whom have been targeted 
and killed in Israeli attacks. So here's some news that it'll be crucial 
to keep up with in the coming months and years. This interview with the 
/New York War Crimes/ first appeared in CP+ 
<https://www.counterpunch.org/2026/09/06/the-living-record-of-gazas-journalists/> — 
it's also on my not-quite-open-to-the public website, snidelines. 
<http://snidelines.>

Be well; do not behave—sd


*“We Call Them Martyrs Because That’s What They Are” • The Living Record 
of Gaza’s Journalists*

Thanks to books deconstructing Western mass media, from /Manufacturing 
Consent/ to /How to Sell a Genocide/, we on the US left are getting 
pretty good at spotting the journalistic techniques that legacy news 
uses to normalize the geopolitical gutting of Palestine. But, although 
we may despise genocide-rationalizing outlets like the /New York Times/, 
lots of us stay grudgingly attached to them. Western media may scarcely 
mention Gazan journalists like Anas Al-Sharif; they may gloss over 
events like Israel’s August 2025 bombing of the media tent outside 
Al-Shifa Hospital that killed Al-Sharif and five of his crew. But 
outlets like the /New York Times /roll on. They remain the /power/, the 
/establishment/—the only game in town.

But what if we’re in the wrong town?

The Palestinian press, far less powerful and established, is barely in 
the game. Yet, journalistically, it is the moral and political opposite 
of outlets like the /Times/. For decades, Israel has targeted and killed 
Palestinian journalists. But, because of their coverage of what Israel 
has recently done to Gaza, Israel has murdered at least 260 Gazan 
journalists since October 2023. So, forget the /New York Times/. We need 
to pay attention to this.

The Living Record will help. The Record is a recently launched 
interactive website, an online memorial to Anas Al-Sharif and the 
growing number of his slain colleagues. A project of Writers Against the 
War on Gaza (WAWOG), along with the Palestinian Youth Movement and the 
Palestinian Feminist Collective, The Living Record 
<https://newyorkwarcrimes.com/livingrecord/> is the largest oral archive 
created since Israel’s October 7th onslaught began.

The Record is ordered into two groups: “martyrs,” the slain media 
workers, and “contributors,” the survivors who remember them. Scroll 
over the name of any journalist; you’ll see their press photo. Now, 
click to see more photos, the journalist’s biography; hear friends, 
family, coworkers, talk about them in Arabic, as you read their words in 
English. At this point, only about 50 of the assassinated journalists 
appear online, but more will be added. This is a project that will go on.

The Record is produced largely by the /New York War Crimes/ 
<https://newyorkwarcrimes.com/>, a newspaper started by WAWOG in 
November 2023, which displays an anti-legacy masthead promising “All the 
Consent That’s Fit to Manufacture.” The /NYWC/ focuses mainly on stories 
about Gaza, as written by Palestinians. It’s run by a collective whose 
members remain in touch with writers in Gaza and the West Bank, and 
commission their work. In fact, one of those writers, with whom the 
collective had developed a close relationship, was Anas Al-Sharif.

The /NYWC /collective, weary of the Western cult of prestige 
<https://lithub.com/a-protest-newspaper-is-gaining-traction-but-whats-next-for-the-new-york-war-crimes/>, 
is also committed to remaining anonymous. So, when I interviewed a 
collective member about The Living Record, they asked not to be 
identified. I began by asking “NYWC” how The Record got started, and why 
it’s centered around Anas Al-Sharif.


*Born and remained in Gaza*

*NYWC: *We never imagined that Anas al-Sharif would be martyred. Not 
because the Zionist genocide would spare him, but because he existed as 
an enduring symbol in our minds, as the man who once stood in front of 
the camera and announced the first ceasefire, and therefore, as the man 
who would do so again.

After he was assassinated on August 10th, 2025, we asked ourselves: How 
do we commemorate him? What is our responsibility to Anas and to 
journalists like him? How should he be remembered by those of us who 
failed to protect him? Collectively, on a call, we reached out to his 
colleagues, and from that initial call, we received responses that were 
inspiring and instructive.

Everyone who knew Anas said that he would not want to be 
exceptionalized. He was someone who put the cause before his career, 
before his life. And, you know, when he wrote for the /New York War 
Crimes/, reporting about his colleague Fadi al-Wahidi 
<https://newyorkwarcrimes.com/stand-with-fadi>, who was rendered 
paraplegic after being shot in the neck by an Israeli sniper, he refused 
our offer of payment. “My job is to tell the story,” he said.

We realized one job we could do was to compile an oral and textual 
history, heeding the words of, for example, Samira Nassar 
<https://newyorkwarcrimes.com/livingrecord/anas-al-sharif/#samira-nassar>, 
who says that the names of not only Anas, whom she loved, but of all the 
martyred journalists should be written in gold—actually, she says, 
/liquid/ gold, /living/ gold. We hear versions of this sentiment over 
and over again, the call to keep their names alive, keep the record alive.

Israel has killed more than 260 journalists since October 7th. By the 
time you publish this, it may be more than 270. This project is our 
attempt to remember 50 of them—to honor not just the martyrs, but the 
family, friends, and colleagues they left behind, who must continue to 
live without them. We needed to immortalize the record as an attempt to 
never forget their sacrifice.

*sd: */Can you give me a profile of a typical Gazan journalist? /

*NYWC: *Bisan Owda said it best in her testimony 
<https://newyorkwarcrimes.com/livingrecord/journalists-as-a-collective/#bisan-owda>: 
“I am incapable of seeing Palestinian journalists as ordinary humans who 
do their jobs, then leave…. We sleep on the street. We sleep in tents. 
We die, and so do our families, who are also targeted. We live in 
schools. We live without water. We search for food and after that, water 
and shelter. We provide for the hungry children waiting for us at home.”

Almost every single journalist in this project was born in Gaza and 
remained in Gaza. They reported on their own streets, their own camps, 
their own families. For example, Anas al-Sharif was from Jabalia refugee 
camp, and he began reporting there. Imagine, you’re telling a story 
about the block where you were born. Of course, you’re going to do 
everything you can to tell it truthfully, because it’s your duty and 
because, if you fail, you’re letting down people you’ve known your whole 
life. That’s different from taking an assignment and going out into the 
field.

*Reporting that needs to happen*

*sd: */Have most of these journalists had formal training?/

*NYWC: *Many have, yes. Some are professors of journalism or media, and 
others are students. Some are practicing a family trade. Wissam Shabat 
<https://newyorkwarcrimes.com/livingrecord/hossam-shabat/#wissam-shabat> 
talks about learning photojournalism from his brother Hossam 
<https://newyorkwarcrimes.com/livingrecord/hossam-shabat/>. Hamza 
al-Dahdouh 
<https://newyorkwarcrimes.com/livingrecord/hamza-al-dahdouh/> followed 
in the footsteps of his father, Wael Dahdouh, who was Al Jazeera’s 
bureau chief in Gaza. Israel killed Hamza in January 2024. Adam Abu 
Harbid’s father, Zakaria, took the famous footage of the girl on the 
beach in Gaza <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSI--W9UTY4>, screaming 
after her family was martyred, in 2006. And Israel killed Adam 
<https://www.aljazeera.com/video/newsfeed/2025/7/25/palestinian-journalist-adam-abu-harbid-killed-in-israeli-strike> 
twenty years later, in a strike on his family’s tent. This is one of the 
contradictions of Israel’s attempt at silencing Gaza—the more 
journalists they kill, the clearer it becomes that reporting is a thing 
that needs to happen.

Of course, there are many journalists who’ve learned organically, 
nontraditionally. Some of the contributors of the testimonies in the 
Living Record, and the martyrs also, were pushed into journalism by the 
genocide, or forced into a different kind of journalism, into war 
reporting. Abubaker Abed 
<https://newyorkwarcrimes.com/livingrecord/alhassan-matar/#abubaker-abed>, 
for instance, wanted to be a sports commentator before the genocide. At 
twenty years old, he became a war correspondent instead.

*sd: */Are journalists in Gaza sometimes resented because of having a 
certain status/?

*NYWC: *In the West–and rightly so, after decades of mainstream media 
carrying water for hundreds of war crimes–there’s a cynicism one feels 
about media and capital-J Journalism. But Gazan journalists don’t have 
that. What we know and see and hear is that they’re admired. Hassan 
Eslayeh <https://newyorkwarcrimes.com/livingrecord/hassan-eslayeh/> was 
one of the best-known journalists in the strip, someone who worked for 
CNN and Associated Press and foreign press consistently. When Israel 
killed him, he was mourned everywhere in Palestine, particularly in Gaza.

*sd: */What //about the major media outlets? If these journalists are 
doing good work, can we trust Al Jazeera, Reuters, AP, etc. to get it 
out there? Also, why did //Al Jazeera recently fire 24/ 
<https://ifex.org/al-jazeera-terminates-employment-of-palestinian-journalists-and-media-workers-amid-ongoing-war/>/Palestinian 
journalists?/

*NYWC: *Al Jazeera hasn’t explained itself. What we know is that 24 
Palestinian journalists and media workers lost their contracts last 
month. They were offered freelance work instead: no benefits, no 
insurance, no security. One of them was Mahmoud Shalha 
<https://www.instagram.com/mahmoud.b.shalha/>, who was fired in a 
15-second phone call after three years on staff. This happens as the 
world is looking away from Gaza, paying much less attention, now that, 
on paper, there’s a ceasefire.

All these major international outlets rely on Gaza’s journalists to send 
footage and information, because Israel refuses to let foreign 
journalists into the strip. The freelance model in Gaza is exploitative. 
The safety of a staff writer or photographer is rarely, if ever, 
considered. Journalists work short contracts for very little money, 
without any control over their work, and these institutions take no 
responsibility for the journalists or for what they publish.

American legacy outlets, especially, have committed malfeasance on every 
level when it comes to how they cover the war on Gaza, how they frame 
the footage they get from Gaza’s journalists. These are images of the 
most horrifying devastation, starvation, starving children. And they 
appear next to headlines that diminish or justify what we can all see 
with our own eyes. Look at what happened when the /New York Times/ 
finally–after months of pressure–put the famine on the front page 
<https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/24/world/middleeast/gaza-starvation.html>. 
The Israeli government and the American Zionist watchdogs went after 
them. By the way, the father of the /Times /executive editor Joe Kahn 
was a board member for one of these media watchdog 
<https://theintercept.com/2024/01/28/new-york-times-daily-podcast-camera/> 
groups, CAMERA <https://www.camera.org/>—so the /Times/ immediately 
caved. After two years of lies and obfuscations, they issued a 
correction. They all but apologized 
<https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/30/pageoneplus/editors-note-july-30-2025.html> 
for telling the truth.**

Obviously, the/New York Times/ has been an asset to the Israeli 
occupation. The day after al-Sharif was killed, for example, they 
parroted claims that he was a Hamas operative and that Al Jazeera backs 
“terrorist” organizations. This readiness to peddle hasbara 
<https://www.newarab.com/news/understanding-hasbara-israels-propaganda-machine> 
is one of the many reasons why we urge readers and writers to boycott, 
divest, and unsubscribe <https://www.boycottdivestunsubscribe.com/> from 
the /Times/.

Hossam Shabat said it clearly 
<https://newyorkwarcrimes.com/the-martyr-hossam-shabat>: "Language makes 
genocide justifiable. A reason why we are still being bombed … is 
because of /The New York Times/ and most Western media. They continue to 
spread misinformation, and are willing to jump many hoops instead of 
stating that Israel is committing genocide or that Israel is killing 
Palestinians daily."

*sd: */What are the conditions under which reporters work now, during 
the so-called ceasefire? And what’s going on in terms of covering the 
West Bank?/

*NYWC: *Certainly, what’s happening in the West Bank goes hand-in-hand 
with the situation in Gaza. Perhaps the attacks in Gaza now are less 
than they were than at the peak of the genocide—but in July alone, there 
were more martyrs than at any time since the beginning of the 
“ceasefire.” Military raids are surging in Jenin Camp in the West Bank, 
where occupation forces just killed three Palestinians in a bombing. 
Last week, there was a mass funeral held in Gaza for over 100 martyrs. 
The aggression continues, as does the famine and starvation. The 
conditions of the blockade, the bottlenecked aid—which is one of the 
Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s tactics of murder—continue. Their 
extremity may have lessened, but what’s important is that all this 
bombardment and starvation continue, with less attention being paid to them.

Meanwhile, Israel is dismembering Gaza. Piece by piece, Gaza is being 
taken apart and reoccupied. If we don’t do something, Gaza will be lost.

*sd: */After so many reporters have been killed, w//hat’s the quality of 
journalism coming out of Gaza now?/

*NYWC: *It’s important to understand how journalism in Gaza works, in 
practice. Most of the internet—like most of the electricity—is actually 
in very particular places, usually hospitals. Actually, the first 
anniversary of the death of Mariam Abu Dagga 
<https://newyorkwarcrimes.com/livingrecord/mariam-abu-dagga/> was on 
August 25. She was killed in an attack [at Nasser Hospital in Khan 
Younis 
<https://www.npr.org/2025/08/25/nx-s1-5515630/israel-gaza-journalists-killed-hospital>]. 
When deaths like these happen, the Zionist accusations come out: /What 
were they doing at the hospital? How could they all have been there?/

They’re there because that’s where the electricity and internet are. 
That’s why many of the journalists tend to be around these hospitals. 
For example, when the /New York War Crimes/ commissions a journalist to 
write something, typically, the journalist has dedicated hours. To work 
outside their home, they often have to walk many, many miles, charge 
their laptop for an extended period of time, and then, within those 
constrained hours, come back home.

It’s miraculous that journalists in Gaza continue to break news and 
report with such accuracy and depth and relentlessness, despite the 
threat of detainment, imprisonment, or death. As Sami Abu Salem 
<https://newyorkwarcrimes.com/livingrecord/journalists-as-a-collective/#sami-abu-salem> 
points out in his testimony, the Second World War lasted six years and 
69 journalists were killed. Israel killed more than 200 media workers in 
the first twenty months of this genocide. Yet for every martyr, a new 
voice is born. So these stories will not only be told, but will be told 
with the utmost devotion.

*Hire these people, publish their work! *

*sd: */H//ow is that quality getting out there? Where can we find their 
work?/

*NYWC: *Most journalists run their own Instagram pages, so you can reach 
out there. A place to start would be the contributors 
<https://newyorkwarcrimes.com/livingrecord/#contributors> on The Living 
Records website or the /New York War Crimes/. Unfortunately, outside of 
social media, many of them get ignored.

So it’s incumbent upon left-aligned publications, especially those with 
writers and editors who support Palestine, to hire these people, to 
publish their work. They don’t want special treatment. They go through 
the standard protocols: pitching, receiving edits, that’s how they want 
it. It baffles us when these outlets bring in a foreign correspondent, 
or God forbid, an Israeli, to talk about the situation in Gaza.

*sd: */Could you comment on the fact—taken for granted by Western 
media—that Israeli journalists are basically embedded in the IDF? Yet 
Palestinian journalists are often accused of being agents for Hamas./

*NYWC: *Actually, there’s a testimony by Ahmed Bassam al-Najjar 
<https://www.aljazeera.com/author/ahmed-al-najjar> [coming out this 
fall]. He tells the story about an Israeli journalist named Yinon Magal 
who goes into southern Lebanon with the army, blows up a building 
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/live-blog/live-blog-update/israelis-blow-house-southern-lebanon-memory-slain-soldier>, 
even brags about it, and nothing happens to him. Meanwhile, if you read 
Western media, you get the impression that Israeli journalists need to 
embed with the military because it’s so dangerous in Gaza—without a word 
about who’s making it so.

And it isn’t only Israeli journalists who embed with the occupation 
army. American journalists embed with the Israeli military too, which 
their editors argue, is the only way to get into Gaza. These are the 
same editors who will immediately fire a stringer whose second cousin is 
a member of Hamas. The stated intent is to preserve so-called 
/objectivity/, a concept understood to be the special dominion of those 
who can afford to keep their distance from death—which, by the same 
logic, is out of reach for those dying and mourning. The effect is to 
delegitimize the Palestinian claim to the Palestinian narrative.

So it’s an overtly racist, colonial double standard at work. There is no 
form of Palestinian resistance that will ever be granted legitimacy by 
the world’s most immoral army, the Israeli occupation forces. If 
resistance were legitimate from the point of view of empire, it would 
not be resistance.

*Martyrs incompatible with the Knight Foundation*

*sd: */T//he concept of martyrdom permeates The Living Record. Why?/

*NYWC: *It’s important to understand that “martyr” within Gaza is 
principally an Islamic conception. To be a martyr is to be someone who 
was killed, fighting for the cause of God. Those martyrs are taken to 
the highest levels of heaven, of Jannah. /Shahid/, the Arabic word for 
martyr, has the same root as the word for witness.

Sometimes people wonder, “How do we make this foreign ‘martyr’ concept 
more compatible to organizations like the Knight Foundation or the 
Committee to Protect Journalists?” But the inherent point of The Living 
Record is that there /is/ no compatibility. What you’re hearing is 
voices, edited only to make them as clear and real as they were in the 
original. There’s no way to make it more compatible.

On the site is testimony from Shrouq al-Aila 
<https://newyorkwarcrimes.com/livingrecord/roshdi-sarraj/#shrouq-al-aila>, 
who talks about her husband [Roshdi al-Sarraj] 
<https://newyorkwarcrimes.com/livingrecord/roshdi-sarraj/> using his 
body to shield her and their daughter from an Israeli missile. Truly, 
the belief that her husband died protecting his family, in defense of 
Palestine, in defense of God’s will, and is now in a better place—it’s 
an immensely powerful thing. It would be impossible to keep going in 
Gaza without that intimate and inherent belief. So, we call them martyrs 
because that’s what they /are/.

*sd: */Where do you see The Living Record going over the months or years?/

*NYWC: *Unfortunately, the project will continue to expand because 
Israel continues to reach across the region and target journalists. 
Already, there are literally hundreds more journalists in Gaza, the West 
Bank, and in Southern Lebanon, whom we would be humbled and honored to 
help memorialize. We’ve had several contributors to the/New York War 
Crimes /from the West Bank, a few of whom have been imprisoned for 
journalism. And in South Lebanon, what we’re seeing is fundamentally the 
same thing we see in Gaza, an incremental occupation, a targeting of 
journalists, a restriction of movement that makes it harder to report on 
what’s happening.

We see this archive as a record of failure—massive institutional failure 
but also individual failure. None of us have done enough. We ask that, 
at the least, you follow and support Palestinian journalists. Cancel 
your subscription to the /New York Times/ and give the money you save to 
the Gaza Journalist Fund 
<https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/gaza-journalist-fund-support-evacuation>*—*that’s 
where any proceeds from The Living Record go.

Also, refuse the lie that the ceasefire agreement has stopped the 
killing, because July was the deadliest month this year in Gaza. Ahmed 
Abu Mutair <https://cpj.org/data/people/ahmed-abu-mutair/> was killed 
ten days into this so-called ceasefire, when Israel targeted the offices 
of Palestine Media Production in Deir al Balah. Mohammed Salah Qashta, 
Anas Ghneim, and Abdul Raouf Shaat 
<https://www.ifj.org/media-centre/news/detail/article/mohammed-salah-qashta-anas-ghneim-abdul-raouf-shaat> 
were killed together in one airstrike in al-Zahra in January. Mohammed 
Wishah 
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/4/8/israeli-attack-kills-al-jazeera-journalist-mohammed-wishah-in-gaza> 
was martyred in April in a targeted strike on his car, and two months 
later Israel killed his brother Ahmed 
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/6/20/al-jazeera-cameraman-ahmad-wishah-killed-in-israeli-attack-in-gaza>—they 
were both Al Jazeera cameramen—in a strike on his house.

We are still learning these names too late. If you work in media, 
pressure your newsrooms, pressure your institutions, not only to hire, 
but defend and protect the journalists of Gaza.




# # #

*—susie day, 2026*

*Photos:*

/*Top:* Anas Al-Sharif reporting Israeli attack on Gazac(Photo: New York 
War Crimes)/

/*Middle:* Hossam Shabbat and Anas Al-Sharif (Photo: New York War Crimes)/

/*Bottom:* Anas Al-Sharif with colleagues in Gaza (Photo: New York War 
Crimes)/


Susie Day <suzetsky at gmail.com>









-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20260909/f5c2cbcb/attachment-0001.htm>