Since October 2023, the Israeli military has murdered at least 260 journalists in Gaza—a toll the Committee to Protect Journalists has described as unprecedented in the history of modern warfare. These are not collateral casualties in a conflict zone. Israel has pursued a deliberate, systematic policy of assassinating Palestinian journalists and their families, targeting them in their homes, often in clearly marked press vehicles and media tents.
The aim of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) is to eliminate witnesses and erase the documentation of its war crimes, as well as to demoralize and terrify the Palestinian population with this message: “We will kill anyone who defends you.”
By murdering those who record, analyze and bring to a world audience its bombing of hospitals, schools and refugee camps, its starvation sieges, its mass displacement of civilians, its open and shameless genocide, the Israeli regime, armed and bankrolled by the United States, seeks to carry out its monstrous crimes in the dark.
Writers against the War in Gaza (WAWOG) and its publication the New York War Crimes (a parody of the New York Times) have published an online exhibition dedicated to the murdered Palestinian journalists, The Living Record: Gaza’s journalists remember their martyred colleagues, with photographs and memorials, many recorded and others written, by their colleagues.
WAWOG notes in its introduction that “We gathered spoken testimonies from fellow journalists, photographers, cameramen, journalism professors, students, and workers across the media sector in Gaza. Each contributor was asked to record a personal remembrance of one or more martyrs, to tell a small part of the history.”
This archive is for life; it will evolve. Between now and October 7, 2026, we will publish the rest of the 50 testimonies collected so far. We plan to collect and publish eulogies for more of the many journalists who have been martyred in Israel’s wars of aggression throughout the region, and we will continue, through the larger New York War Crimes project, to amplify the voices of Gaza. Israel kills the messengers, but they cannot kill the story.
What do the memorials reveal? Not simply that these journalists lived and died but that they fought against tremendous odds to bear witness to the killings that went on night and day (and continue) and the destruction of houses, universities, libraries; that they were hungry because of the Israeli blockade; that they, along with the rest of the people of Gaza, have endured suffering that will take many years to fully register.
Some samples from the archive are worth reproducing.
For example, there is the case of Anas al‑Sharif, who—the exhibition notes—“shortly after the genocide began” was “recruited as a correspondent for Al Jazeera. His ceaseless coverage quickly made him famous at home and around the world. He was among the few journalists who remained in the northern part of Gaza despite repeated orders to move south by the Israeli occupation forces. For their photo coverage of the early Israeli bombing campaigns, he and his team at Reuters won a Pulitzer Prize in 2024.
Undeterred by Israel’s ongoing genocide, campaign of forced starvation, and direct targeting of himself and his family, al-Sharif reported every single day. On August 10, 2025, he was martyred in a targeted attack of a press tent by the Occupation alongside his colleagues Mohammed Qraiqea, Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammad Noufal, Moamen Aliwa, and Mohammad al-Khaldi. He leaves behind his wife, Bayan Khalid, their two children, Sham and Salah, and a message: “Do not forget Gaza.”
A fellow Gazan journalist, Yafa Abu Akar, tells the exhibition about al-Sharif’s death:
It was a big shock when I went the morning after their tent was targeted … The sight of blood on the tent was extremely shocking. These are only journalists carrying their cameras and their voices. They are Gaza’s real voice. It was traumatizing to see the blood, to see the scene. I saw silence from Arabs and silence from journalists. In that moment, I almost lost my mind, to be honest. I tried to hold myself together and control my nerves while I walked through the place for the report, but I could not contain myself.
Doaa Shaheen, another journalist in Gaza, explains that al-Sharif
always had a camera, a press vest, and a microphone as he moved through the camp, from one street to the next, from one place to the next. I remember colleagues who were outside Gaza calling us because their families were in Jabalia Camp. They would say, ‘Doaa, since you are from the camp, we want you to check on our families. There was bombing in this area, a strike in that neighborhood. How are we going to check on them?’ I couldn’t, especially during the period of internet blackouts, so I’d send Anas al-Sharif a message. I would ask him, ‘What happened in this neighborhood?’ Since I am a daughter of the camp, I know all its neighborhoods and streets. He would immediately reply: ‘That family got out. No, so-and-so’s family is still trapped. No, reassure that colleague that his family is still safe.’ He also helped colleagues’ family members who remained trapped in Jabalia Camp, separated from their children. … And every image of Anas al-Sharif bears witness to his courage. He never wavered, not even for a day.
Another journalist, Heba al‑Abadla, as the exhibition notes, “was born in Khan Younis in 1993. She received her bachelor’s degree in Arabic Language and Media Studies from Al-Azhar University in Gaza and was completing a master’s program at the time of her death … She was martyred on January 9, 2024, alongside her mother, her daughter Judy, and several other members of her family in an Israeli airstrike on a home. She was 30 years old.”
Journalist Mona Khader speaks of her:
I don’t know what to say. Heba was just very, very ambitious. She had incredibly high aspirations. She went on to join a number of journalists’ groups and collectives. She always loved reporting. She really, really enjoyed broadcast journalism. She put a huge amount of work into developing herself as a journalist. Heba was a victim of the Israeli occupation. The last thing I remember from Heba was her pleading on Facebook to be rescued. The occupation forces had besieged her neighborhood, as happened to so many colleagues who were martyred in their homes. Whose homes were destroyed.
Journalist Ismail al‑Ghoul “was born in 1997 and was raised and martyred in the al-Shati refugee camp in northern Gaza. After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the Islamic University of Gaza, he became a reporter for Palestinian newspapers like al-Risala and Falasteen.”
When the genocide began, al-Ghoul signed a contract with Al Jazeera. Like Anas al-Sharif, he was one of the few correspondents to reach international audiences from northern Gaza, continuing to broadcast amid daily bombardment while his wife and baby daughter were displaced to the center of the Strip …
On July 31, 2024, moments after finishing a report on the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, al-Ghoul was targeted by an Israeli drone strike and martyred alongside his cameraman, Rami Al-Rifi. He was 27 years old. He is survived by his wife, Malak, and their daughter, Zina.
Samah Shaheen, a colleague, adds that
our colleague Ismail al-Ghoul … was deprived of holding his little daughter because she was displaced to the south of Gaza while he stayed in the North until his martyrdom. He left his mark in reporting the truth under the most difficult circumstances: displacement, constant moving, and being targeted …
Everyone, of course, works under pressure. We in Gaza work under pressure, under fear. We go out not expecting to survive. We expect that we might die wherever we go, whether from the far north of Gaza to the far south, and within Gaza City.
The Living Record is without question a profound and moving memorial, and one whose significance goes beyond the killing fields of Gaza. It speaks to the descent of world imperialism and its agents into open barbarism. The ruling elite in Israel as everywhere else understands that if it cannot suppress the truth, it must murder its messengers. But even then the truth towers above. That is what this exhibition expresses.