The Al Jazeera dead did their job. It’s time the rest of us did too.

The NB Media Co-op joins the international community in expressing our outrage and condemnation of Israel for assassinating Al Jazeera journalists in Gaza City on August 10.

We remain horrified by the ongoing genocide, mass starvation and tremendous loss of life in Gaza.

We salute Anas al-Sharif, 28, Mohammed Qreiqeh, 33, Ibrahim Zaher, 25, Moamen Aliwa, 23, and Mohammed Noufal, 29, for doing the job of journalists in a time of genocide: to bear witness and tell the truth.

The Al Jazeera journalists as well as Mohammed Al-Khaldi, a journalist with Sahat Media Platform, and Saad Jundiya, a Palestinian civilian, were killed when Israel targeted al-Sharif and blew a missile through his media tent in Gaza City on Sunday. Israel has admitted that the attack was deliberate.

Anticipating his death, the 28-year-old journalist and father of two young children shared his final message on X on the day of his death: “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.”

Let the murder of these Al Jazeera journalists be the reminder that moves all governments to respect the fact that international law requires all journalists and media workers to be protected as civilians during armed conflict.

Responding to the assassinations, the Hind Rajab Foundation and Palestinian Center for Human Rights has filed a precedent-setting complaint at the International Criminal Court. The complaint identifies top commanders and demands their immediate arrest. It also calls for expanding Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s arrest warrant to include crimes against journalists as part of a systematic effort to wipe out witnesses of the genocide in Gaza.

“Do not forget Gaza”: Anas al-Sharif

In February 2024, the NB Media Co-op’s editorial board published a statement, “Who is holding the line for Palestine? The media certainly is not.” A year later, in February 2025, the Committee to Protect Journalists reported that 2024 was the deadliest year on record for journalists to be working since CPJ began collecting data in 1992. Israel killed 70 per cent of those journalists.

Yet, we note that Canadian corporate media have significantly abdicated their responsibility to their colleagues in Gaza. In the aftermath of this atrocity, The National Post repeated Israel’s claim that the Al Jazeera journalists were ‘terrorists.’ Such an accusation can properly be construed as a form of genocide denialism. It is also notable that days earlier, the country’s public media network CBC agreed to an Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) dictate that they not share any aerial images when they participated in a Jordanian aid flight. British broadcaster ITV apparently made no such agreement, as they did indeed broadcast the harrowing images.

The NB Media Co-op plans to keep publishing stories about genocide in Gaza, working towards that day when “everyone will have always been against this,” in the words of Omar Al Akkad.

The NB Media Co-op’s annual keynote speaker this year is the courageous Samira Mohyeddin, a queer journalist from Iran who abandoned work at CBC to work on her own project, On the Line Media.

Like the Canadian Journalists for Justice in Palestine, Mohyeddin is a trusted source of information on Israel’s war crimes in Gaza and is engaging in solidarity with Palestinian journalists and media workers who continue to be targeted and killed in Gaza.

The NB Media Co-op has also invited our colleagues at The Breach to launch their book, When Genocide Wasn’t the News, to New Brunswick audiences in the fall. Subscribe here to receive our news, commentary and event notices.

The killing of journalists in Palestine must stop.

Read all of NB Media Co-op’s stories about Palestine and Gaza here.