In besieged Gaza, the Israeli occupation does not stop at killing children and women or starving them; it also wages an open war on journalism. Four journalists were killed in the bombing of Nasser Medical Complex. Yet the crime did not end with the missile—it continued in the framing of the story: killing the body, then erasing the professional identity.

Mohammed Salama was presented merely as an “Al Jazeera cameraman,” while the names of Hossam Al-Masri, Mariam Abu Daqqa, and Moaz Abu Taha passed without any mention of their media institutions. This is not a journalistic slip—it is a deliberate manipulation to spare Western outlets from facing the blood of their own employees, and to ease a hypocritical conscience that fears admitting its complicity with the criminal

The Facts They Want to Erase
1. Hossam Al-Masri: Photographer for Reuters. The agency, stained by its bias toward the Israeli narrative, now seeks to distance itself from the blood of one of its most prominent photographers in Gaza.
2. Mariam Abu Daqqa: Journalist working with The Independent and the U.S. agency Associated Press. She was not anonymous—she was an international voice reporting truth, yet her identity is being deliberately erased.
3. Moaz Abu Taha: Correspondent for NBC News. An American journalist killed by Israel, while his network buries its head in the sand and acts as if nothing happened.

A War Crime and a Death of Conscience

The killing of journalists in Gaza is not accidental—it is a systematic plan to silence witnesses to genocide and starvation warfare. Israel knows the camera exposes more than any report, which is why it tries to smash the lens before it can capture the truth. This is a war crime in full, and a permanent stain on the conscience of all who remain silent.

The West as an Accomplice

When the story is reduced to “an Al Jazeera cameraman,” the names of Reuters, AP, and NBC vanish from the record. This is not neutrality—it is betrayal of journalism itself. Western media is helping to bury the truth with its own hands, so it can continue peddling false rhetoric about freedom while actively participating in its assassination.

Israel kills journalists to kill the truth. And the Western media, through its silence and distortion, washes its hands of its colleagues’ blood. This is not only a war on Gaza—it is a war on truth itself. Unless this silence is shattered, the occupation will go on killing journalists twice: once with the missile, and once with complicity.

Palestinian Arab writer and activist, member of the General Secretariat of the Arab Network for Culture, Opinion and Media.