The martyrdom of Anas al-Sharif

"Be bridges toward the liberation of the land and its people, until the sun of dignity and freedom rises over our stolen homeland."

Anas al-Sharif had been an abiding constant during the nearly two years of the ongoing Gaza genocide. Documenting massacres, reporting on the Israeli-imposed famine, carrying the corpses of his martyred colleagues, caring for the wounded, consoling families, making appeals to the deaf and blind world, and often preparing for his own impending martyrdom, in many ways Anas came to embody the brutal extermination campaign against his people. The enduring image of him, talking to the camera with a vacant thousand-yard stare as a fire raged in the background in the aftermath of yet another Israeli bombing, is a neat encapsulation of his life over the past two years. Calm (even while reporting on the murder of his own family members), mild-mannered, gentle, and kind, Anas also encapsulated the people he loved so dearly and reported on the annihilation of.

Hours after his brutal murder last night at the hands of the Israeli barbarians, it still hasn’t sunk in that I am writing about Anas in the past tense. A visit to his Twitter timeline brought one up to date with the latest episode in Israeli savagery. Now that timeline will no longer be updated by the inimitable reporter, who achieved more in just 28 years of his life than the millionaire propagandists who pose as journalists, selling us the latest lies of their paymasters from swanky studios. Anas didn’t broadcast from a cushy chair in an air-conditioned office with the opening lines “Good evening, our top story tonight...” before moving on to jokes and banter with professional yappers. Anas was in the crucible. He reported from the latest tent massacre in the middle of the night and from the smouldering rubble that had crushed another dozen children earlier that morning. He was at the hospital when it was being besieged and bombarded, and at the annihilation of another abandoned school long since serving as a shelter for people rendered homeless. Anas was the voice of Gaza. He was its face: broken, but determined. And hopeful. The voice of a people the world has refused to hear. Still, he persisted — determined to tell the stories of his people in the hope of saving whatever and whoever remained, long after it became routine for Palestinians to bury more than a hundred of their own every single day for nearly 700 days.

And for all of this, he became a marked man — just like Refaat Alareer, Ismail al-Ghoul, Hassan Aslih, Hossam Shabat, and countless other chroniclers of the annihilation of their own people before him. One of a handful of journalists left covering the north of the Gaza Strip when the Israelis launched their ghastly General’s Plan late last year, the Zionists labelled all of them as members of the Palestinian resistance factions — and hence, legitimate targets. Shabat was ultimately killed by the Israelis a few months later. Anas would live to tell more stories, before the Israelis again labelled him a member of Hamas last month — without, as is their norm, providing even a shred of evidence.

A journalist with over 1.6 million Instagram followers, half a million Twitter followers, and more than 140,000 on Telegram, and the last prominent voice from Gaza — and, more importantly, a symbol of hope for his people — Anas was a prime target for the satanic Tel Aviv regime.

He did not cower. He kept working. Just minutes before his death, Anas filmed for posterity as the Israelis began their assault on Gaza City, which is now home to over a million Palestinians displaced from across the besieged enclave. He posted his final video to Twitter with the caption: “Relentless bombardment… For two hours, the Israeli aggression has intensified on Gaza City.”

Minutes earlier, he had posted another of his relentless appeals to the global audience, beseeching them to amplify the voices of his people in Gaza, warning those who remained silent of complicity, and of being bearers of an indelible mark on the remainder of their existence: “History will remember you as silent witnesses to a genocide you chose not to stop.”

If this madness does not end, Gaza will be reduced to ruins, its people’s voices silenced, their faces erased — and history will remember you as silent witnesses to a genocide you chose not to stop.

Please share this message and tag everyone who has the power to help end this massacre. Silence is complicity.

Apart from being a receptacle of Gaza’s unending sorrows, Anas’s Twitter timeline is also an introduction to a tragic personal loss: that of his father.

Anas’s pinned tweet is a picture of his father, dressed in pristine white with a neatly-trimmed beard to match it — the epitome of a pious, upright Palestinian man — and holding a staff in one hand. With that image, Anas announced the ascension of his father to the world: “The martyrdom of my beloved father, Hajj Jamal al-Sharif (Abu Shadi) in the bombing and destruction of our home today in Jabalia camp while he was performing the Asr prayer.” Pointedly, Anas ended the tweet with the hashtag “#Coverage_Continues.”

The tweet was posted on December 11, 2023, just over two months into the genocidal assault on Gaza that began on October 7. Always true to his word, Anas’s coverage never stopped. It continued for another 20 months and was brought to an end only with his brutal murder alongside five of his colleagues — reporter Mohamed Qreiqeh, photojournalists Ibrahim Zaher and Moamen Aliwa, assistant photojournalist Mohamed Noufal (all of Al Jazeera), and journalist Mohammad Al-Khalidi of Sahat — as well as a nephew (Musab al-Sharif), who had intended to emulate his uncle as a journalist, inside a journalists’ tent in a hospital. Even Anas’s death became a chilling encapsulation of the barbarism perpetrated by a Jewish supremacist regime that long abandoned any pretence of abiding by the rules of warfare or basic morality as it bombs journalists in their tents and hospitals with impunity and then boasts about it.

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Anas al-Sharif’s will and final message:

This is my will and my final message. If these words reach you, know that Israel has succeeded in killing me and silencing my voice. First, peace be upon you and Allah’s mercy and blessings.

Allah knows I gave every effort and all my strength to be a support and a voice for my people, ever since I opened my eyes to life in the alleys and streets of the Jabalia refugee camp. My hope was that Allah would extend my life so I could return with my family and loved ones to our original town of occupied Asqalan (Al-Majdal). But Allah’s will came first, and His decree is final. I have lived through pain in all its details, tasted suffering and loss many times, yet I never once hesitated to convey the truth as it is, without distortion or falsification—so that Allah may bear witness against those who stayed silent, those who accepted our killing, those who choked our breath, and whose hearts were unmoved by the scattered remains of our children and women, doing nothing to stop the massacre that our people have faced for more than a year and a half.

I entrust you with Palestine—the jewel in the crown of the Muslim world, the heartbeat of every free person in this world. I entrust you with its people, with its wronged and innocent children who never had the time to dream or live in safety and peace. Their pure bodies were crushed under thousands of tons of Israeli bombs and missiles, torn apart and scattered across the walls.

I urge you not to let chains silence you, nor borders restrain you. Be bridges toward the liberation of the land and its people, until the sun of dignity and freedom rises over our stolen homeland. I entrust you to take care of my family. I entrust you with my beloved daughter Sham, the light of my eyes, whom I never got the chance to watch grow up as I had dreamed.

I entrust you with my dear son Salah, whom I had wished to support and accompany through life until he grew strong enough to carry my burden and continue the mission.

I entrust you with my beloved mother, whose blessed prayers brought me to where I am, whose supplications were my fortress and whose light guided my path. I pray that Allah grants her strength and rewards her on my behalf with the best of rewards.

I also entrust you with my lifelong companion, my beloved wife, Umm Salah (Bayan), from whom the war separated me for many long days and months. Yet she remained faithful to our bond, steadfast as the trunk of an olive tree that does not bend—patient, trusting in Allah, and carrying the responsibility in my absence with all her strength and faith.

I urge you to stand by them, to be their support after Allah Almighty. If I die, I die steadfast upon my principles. I testify before Allah that I am content with His decree, certain of meeting Him, and assured that what is with Allah is better and everlasting.

O Allah, accept me among the martyrs, forgive my past and future sins, and make my blood a light that illuminates the path of freedom for my people and my family. Forgive me if I have fallen short, and pray for me with mercy, for I kept my promise and never changed or betrayed it.

Do not forget Gaza… And do not forget me in your sincere prayers for forgiveness and acceptance.

Anas Jamal Al-Sharif
06.04.2025

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