LYNA AL-TABALAnas Al-Sharif: media coverage goes on

Lyna Al-Tabal, Rai Al Youm, Aug. 12, 2025

Translated by Tlaxcala

Dear readers, aren't you tired of these old lies about the sea protecting the city? Let's not be naive. The sea protects no one, the sea knows nothing of politics, the sea is just water, destined to evaporate, and the waves are nothing but meaningless physical movements. Gaza, drenched in salt and blood, is not a myth... Gaza is a painful reality.

Mourners march with the bodies of journalists who were killed in an overnight Israeli strike on their tent outside a hospital in Gaza City. Photograph: Omar Al-Qattaa/AFP/Getty Images

From there emerged Anas al-Sharif. Who said he was a hero in an old story? He was a young man from the Jabaliya camp who photographed the truth. This is the only story. Anas is not a legendary hero, but he is the creator of a new legend: the legend of truth.

Here comes Anas, wearing a vest with “PRESS” written on it, a heavy cloth vest that hides compressed panels, a modern talisman made of Kevlar and ceramic, trying to protect his body from bullets... But like all talismans of this gloomy era, it is useless when Israel is the one firing the shots. Anas, like Ismail, Shireen, Hamza, Abdulhadi, Salam, Hani, Muhammad, Ahmed, Majid, Shimaa, Ola, Duaa, Hanan, Samer... like hundreds of other journalists targeted by Israel, they witnessed its crimes and the crimes of its army, which defeats itself every day by killing witnesses.

Israel, the state that sells itself to the world as an oasis of democracy, is setting a new Guinness World Record for death...

Can you imagine that in less than two years, Israel has killed more journalists in Gaza than were killed in all the wars between 1861 and 2025? Can you comprehend that number? This period includes the USAmerican Civil War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, Cambodia, and Laos... Add to that the wars in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Ukraine...

Yesterday, it was Anas's turn... Anas al-Sharif was martyred... martyred... martyred on the road to Jerusalem. It is the usual phrase, the slogan we repeat to endure. Because death here, in Gaza, is a daily routine like bread, or rather, like the absence of bread. It is like hunger, like fear, like the dark color of blood when mixed with ash. Everything bad here repeats itself... Everything bad repeats itself without stopping, except for Abu Mazen's smile, which widens as the siege on Gaza tightens.

From a distance, Gaza looks like a painting in shades of gray, its streets black holes with no beginning and no end, and the wind carries the smell of gunpowder mixed with a little sea salt... a mixture familiar to Gazans, and familiar to Israeli pilots... who return to bomb again.

Here in Gaza, words are forbidden, and food is also forbidden... Freedom of expression for Israelis means the freedom to kill anyone who speaks out. Israel does not talk about professional ethics, because it knows only one profession: occupation... and killing. Israel kills journalists because it fears what the camera reflects: the bodies of children, the faces of mothers, and eyes that say to the world, “Look, this is genocide.” Israel kills journalists because it knows that history will be written through their lenses and that trials will document their images.

In the end, Anas al-Sharif was martyred and buried. It is now a scene etched in Gaza's memory: a body covered with a white shroud, hands quickly lifting it before the next raid begins, a silent camera accompanying the body, its lens still open, witnessing the death of its owner as it witnessed his life... but now it is not filming anything. No sound, no image, but #coverage_continues, as you instructed, Anas... The truth does not die, it moves from one lens to another, from one colleague to another, from one martyr to another still alive... And we are all martyrs waiting for our turn on the road to Jerusalem.

At this very moment, UN officials are arguing over the wording of a statement of deep concern. Some will cry, others will pretend to be moved, and then they will go back to drinking bitter coffee in their air-conditioned offices.

Netanyahu, mired in corruption and dreams of grandeur, knows that the image Anas conveyed is more dangerous than any missile, more dangerous than a thousand UN statements. The camera was the last thing Anas had against the world, something the iron dome could not stop.

He fired his camera like a fighter fires a Yassin missile, a camera and broadcasts and images that neither David's slingshot nor Patriot missiles could intercept. Netanyahu stood with a half-crooked smile to declare that Israel was fighting terrorism.

The world listened in silence, as it always does. But Anas knew that the end would come, and perhaps he also knew that the world would smile at Israel hours after his martyrdom. He knew that after his death, nothing would change. The siege would remain a siege, and the Palestinians would remain alive enough to die tomorrow.

Anas with Sham and Salah

Did you know that Anas named his daughter “Sham”* to say that Palestine knows no borders? He did so to tell the world: Palestine cannot be reduced to a ceasefire line, a separation wall, or a map tampered with by obsessed politicians. Palestine is against all occupation and against all violations of the human right to be free. The homeland is bigger than Gaza, and the Arab wound is one, in besieged Khartoum, in destroyed Beirut, in devastated Baghdad, in Damascus, over which enemy planes fly, bomb and return... Everywhere there was pain, there was Palestine.

No, my friend, we do not need a miracle. Miracles no longer exist, and if they do, they are boring. We need something else, something much less romantic and much more brutal: extra time, for example... or perhaps the complete collapse of the world order. The truth is that the heroes of Gaza are a miracle that surprises no one, because the world is used to seeing them die.

We need international law to prosecute Israel and impose sanctions on it, and we need a world that stops playing the role of sympathizer. What we want is for the world to stop lying to itself... even if it is only a short respite before the next lie. Is there a truce for lying?

In the end, the sea will remain, and the city will remain, but the faces will disappear. That's how things always go. The sea bears witness to the death of those who cannot be saved, and the city will collapse again, and again, and again. Everything will return to the way it was, because time in Gaza revolves and does not move forward... Time here repeats itself mercilessly.

But it's not that mythical. Gaza's survival is not a miracle, it's simply an uncomfortable truth. And the truth is that Gaza's survival is a victory in itself. Gaza will prevail because there are things that cannot be killed.

Did you hear that?

Things that cannot be killed...

There are simpler and more frustrating things: like the truth, and like the sea, which, unlike most of the region's politicians, understands that the next wave will inevitably be bigger than the last.

Yes, the sea of Gaza, which, despite your silence and complicity, continues to send waves bigger than the last, as a clear sign that this end is the beginning of Gaza and the end of you.

 

Translator's note
Sham: Bilad al-Sham, the “left-hand” country (seen from the Hijaz) as opposed to Yemen, the “right-hand” country, traditionally referred to“Greater Syria,” encompassing today’s Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, and Jordan.