Who gave the order to massacre Gaza journalists?
Posted: 14th August 2025
Israeli forces killed five Al Jazeera journalists in Gaza this week.
They included the correspondents Anas al-Sharif and Mohammed Qreiqeh, camera operators Ibrahim Zaher and Moamen Aliwa, and their assistant Mohammed Noufal.
The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) boasted about killing al-Sharif, declaring without evidence that he was “the head of a Hamas terrorist cell and advanced rocket attacks on Israeli civilians and IDF troops”.
The British media took its cue dutifully. BBC News opened its report by repeating Israel’s claim that al-Sharif “was a member of Hamas” with only the mildest scrutiny.
Another BBC reporter made the astonishing statement: “There’s the question of proportionality. Is it justified to kill five journalists when you were only targeting one?”
The framing of the question not only accepted Israel’s rationale, but glided over clear evidence that the IDF is deliberately killing journalists to prevent the world from seeing its genocide in Gaza.
Indeed, according to a recent study conducted at Brown University in the US, more journalists have been killed in Gaza than in the US Civil War, World Wars I and II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the wars in Yugoslavia in the 1990s and 2000s, and the post-9/11 war in Afghanistan, combined.
A vigil was held outside the BBC’s headquarters in London on Monday, with protesters holding placards of “You killed Anas” and chanting “We will see you in the Hague”.
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If the BBC has helped to sanitise Israel’s killing of journalists in Gaza, the UK government appears to have accommodated the killers.
On Tuesday, the Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF) announced that it had tracked the chain of command which ordered the strike on the Al Jazeera journalists. The Foundation’s investigators “followed the trail from the moment a drone camera locked onto al-Sharif’s position to the instant the missile hit”.
They identified nine Israeli officers involved in the killing, including IDF chief of the general staff Eyal Zamir, Israeli air force commander Tomer Bar, and Southern Command commander Yaniv Asor.
One name in particular stands out.
Major General Tomer Bar was allowed to visit Britain last month to attend the Royal International Air Tattoo event in Oxfordshire. Israeli public broadcaster said Bar was “the ‘star’ of the event” and would be meeting there with other “air force commanders”.
When asked why Bar had been permitted to visit Britain, the Ministry of Defence told Declassified: “Israel remains a key partner”. It refused to say whether Bar was granted “special mission” immunity for his visit, which would shield him from arrest for war crimes.
“The killing of 5 Al Jazeera reporters and staff and the repeated targeting of journalists in Gaza is gravely concerning”, declared Foreign Office minister Hamish Falconer.
The gulf between the UK government’s words and actions could not be greater. It welcomes Israeli war criminals while pretending to oppose their war crimes.