What is happening in Gaza is among the great crimes of this and of any other century. It is unrivaled because, unlike any other time in history, we have, for almost two agonizing years, been observers of Israel's genocidal campaign to decimate the people and land of Palestine.
Our collective humanity demands that the genociders in Israel and their American and Western enablers be prosecuted before the world; failing this, lawlessness, immorality and inhumanity will become the standard. Absent consequences for the perpetrators and justice for the Palestinians, the stain of genocide will inevitably further erode the body politic of the societies that have participated in or have stayed silent amid the evil.
At this moment in time, the final message of Al-Jazeera journalist, Anas al-Sharif
calls out to us. Al-Sharif was among the five Palestinian journalists who were the latest victims of Israel's mission to silence the messenger, to ensure its genocidal crimes go unreported.
Al-Sharif, Mohammed Qreiqeh, Ibrahim Zaher, Moamen Aliwa, Mohammed Noufal, and Mohammed al-Khaledi, have joined Palestinian-American, Shireen Abu Akleh (1971-2022), and the other 270 journalists and media personnel assassinated by the Israeli occupation forces since 7 October 2023.
Threatened by Zionists for months to cease reporting, al-Sharif had prepared his last will; words he hoped would reach the consciousness of the world. Following is a moving excerpt:
"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."
Barely an hour before he was killed, al-Sharif warned of the impending Israeli invasion of Gaza City (in the north), one of the few remaining areas not fully occupied by Israeli troops (reports indicate that Israel currently controls more than 75 percent of Gaza).
Manipulation of words by the Western media on behalf of Israel, did not begin in October 2023, but it has been particularly apparent since then. It took the Israeli massacre, maiming, starvation and water deprivation of hundreds of thousands of Gazans before they finally gave testimony and voice to the Palestinian narrative.
The October uprising forced a confrontation with the brutal truth about the Zionist colony, a reality successfully hidden from the world for over seven decades.
All those years the American polity has been fed a simplistic version of history as a way to justify the forcible theft, occupation and colonization by European Zionists of Palestinian land; an injustice aided and abetted by every American president since Harry S. Truman recognized the Jewish state in May 1948.
Aggression, destruction and genocide against the indigenous Palestinian inhabitants were never included in Israel's "make the desert bloom" fable or in the Western media's Israel-centered account of the October uprising. That absence cleared the way for Tel Aviv's organized killing and normalization of genocide in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
Although cracks have begun to form, the legacy media continues to embed the Gaza storyline with the perspective of the genociders.
The coverage of Israel's targeted assassination of al-Sharif and his colleagues is yet one more example of its disposition to distort. To smear his reputation, sow doubt and cover up its war crime, Israel did what it always does, it claimed al-Sharif was a Hamas operative. The unsubstantiated unchallenged claim, however, was integrated into the legacy media's rendering of the event.
Almost every news report filed from Tel Aviv contains the obligatory, "Israel says." We are to believe that all of Gaza's hospitals, homes, mosques, churches, schools, parks and cemeteries turned to rubble were Hamas command and control centers, simply because the chief genocider, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said so.
Notably, most people would have been shocked if, during World War II, journalists had relied on the Nazi perspective for their coverage of the war. It is difficult to conceive that they would have included or depended upon what "Hitler says" (the architect of the genocide) in their coverage.
October 2025 marks two years since the uprising: the day Gaza resistance movements attempted to do what any population would do if they, like the Palestinians, had been penned in a ghetto, surveilled and held captive by a hostile force for over a half century, with no hope for the future.
Arab populations across the Middle East, along with their Palestinian brethren, have also suffered since the implantation of the Zionist colony in their midst. Arab despots, groomed by Western powers, continue to be obedient and useful to them and to Tel Aviv, while denying freedom to their own populations.
What Arab dictators fear most is the power of Muslim solidarity and what it portends for their futures. For many, especially in the Arab world, Palestine is the
"heartbeat of every free person in the world." It stands as a symbol of steadfast resistance to domination and the enduring struggle for self-determination.
In recent days and months, for example, police have brutally attacked pro-Palestinian demonstrators on the streets of Cairo, Oman and other Arab cities.
Support for Palestinians has been criminalized in Saudi Arabia (ironically, in "democratic" Britain as well). Saudi authorities have gone after citizens who criticize Israel or voice solidarity with Gaza online. Human Rights Watch stated that the regime, with a history of using the death penalty to silence critics, is increasingly using capital punishment to quell dissent.
Worshippers at Islam's holy sites have been arrested for displaying symbols of solidarity for Gaza. The profound grief of the Arab people was poignantly embodied in the words of an Egyptian pilgrim who was recently arrested after he raised the Palestinian flag in front of the Holy Kaaba in Mecca; he mournfully proclaimed, "Wa Islamah!" -- an Arabic phrase that translates to "Oh Islam" or "Where is Islam?" It has been used historically to express anguish and as a call for help when Islam or Muslims are under threat.
Israel has always posed a threat to the region, to global peace and security. Until now, it has known no limits or boundaries to its horrific and dangerous excesses. Unrestrained, its arrogance, hubris, virulence and criminality have increased. It has grown brazenly confident of its genocide because of the unwavering uniform support from the political classes in Washington, London, Berlin, Paris and Brussels.
The United States and its allies may be awakening to the reality that an unchecked and unsanctioned Israel could cause the collapse of the modern political, legal and economic system they created after the Second World War; systems that have privileged them for over seven decades. Ironically, that same system has benefited Israel as well.
The fear of losing their economic privileges may spur them to finally act beyond the empty rhetoric they have spewed for 680+ days.
Israel's collaborators -- the "rules-based international order" clique -- are facing a dilemma: continue to support the thuggish state that is recklessly weakening international institutions or attempt to dismantle the monstrous regime they helped create and sustain. The problem lies with how to go about prosecuting an American proxy turned rogue without implicating your own officials that have made the choice to be knee-deep in genocide.