AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

We turn now to Gaza, where Israel has killed at least 23 Palestinians in predawn attacks just today, including seven children. Israel has now killed more than 700 Palestinians, including more than 270 children, over the past week since Israel broke a ceasefire agreement with Hamas. There are reports Israel is considering a major ground invasion of Gaza to reoccupy the entire territory. The death toll in Gaza has now surpassed 50,000, and it’s actually expected to be much higher.

On Monday, Israeli strikes killed two Palestinian journalists: Mohammed Mansour and Hossam Shabat. According to the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate, Israel has killed 206 journalists in Gaza since October 2023.

Mohammed Mansour worked for the Beirut-based Palestine Today TV. He was killed in an Israeli airstrike on his home in Khan Younis.

Soon after, Hossam Shabat was killed in an Israeli airstrike on his car in Beit Lahia. Shabat worked for Al Jazeera and also wrote for the online news site Drop Site. In October, the Israeli military placed him and five other Palestinian journalists on a “hit list.” Hours before his death, he filed his last article for Drop Site. In the piece, he describes the resumption of Israel’s scorched-earth campaign on his hometown of Beit Hanoun.

In a moment, we’ll be joined by Hossam Shabat’s editor at Drop Site, Sharif Abdel Kouddous. But first let’s hear Hossam in his own words.

REPORTER: [translated] Are you not afraid for your life?

HOSSAM SHABAT: [translated] As long as there are massacres and bombings, should we stop? What do you think?

REPORTER: [translated] So, despite the massacres, you keep going?

HOSSAM SHABAT: [translated] There are massacres and bombings, so we must continue covering and spreading the truth. The Israeli occupation is determined to chase down journalists to prevent the exposure of their crimes. Yesterday, the horrors of the massacre hurt everyone and also disturbed the Israeli occupying forces. That’s why they issued threats against Anas Al-Sharif and several other journalists. But the coverage will continue, God willing.

AMY GOODMAN: Those were the words of 23-year-old Palestinian journalist Hossam Shabat, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Monday.

After his death, Shabat’s friends posted a message he had written. It began, quote, “If you’re reading this, it means I have been killed — most likely targeted — by the Israeli occupation forces. … For [the] past 18 months, I have dedicated every moment of my life to my people. I documented the horrors in northern Gaza minute by minute, determined to show the world the truth they tried to bury. I slept on pavements, in schools, in tents — anywhere I could. Each day was a battle for survival. I endured hunger for months, yet I never left my people’s side.” The words of Palestinian journalist Hossam Shabat.

We’re joined right now by Sharif Abdel Kouddous, the award-winning journalist and editor at Drop Site News, who worked closely with Hossam Shabat, editing and translating his articles into English. Sharif just won an RTS Television Journalism Award and an Overseas Press Club Award for his Al Jazeera Fault Lines documentary The Night Won’t End. And we’re going to talk about that in a moment. But first to your colleague Hossam. Tell us about him, Sharif.

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: A tremendous loss. Hossam was an incredible journalist, 23 years old, from Beit Hanoun, who was one of the very few journalists who remained in the north throughout Israel’s 17-month genocidal assault. And his ability to cover one of the most brutal military campaigns in recent history was almost beyond comprehension. He was witness to untold suffering and death almost every single day. He was often hungry, didn’t have enough food. He told me he was displaced 20 times. He didn’t have anywhere to sleep. He was exhausted. And he buried many friends and many of his journalist colleagues over this time. He himself was wounded in an Israeli airstrike. Despite all of this, he somehow managed to continue reporting relentlessly every single day.

And as you mentioned, he was one of two journalists that was killed yesterday. Mohammed Mansour of Palestine Today was killed. Hossam’s last social media post on his Instagram feed was a photo of the dead body of Mohammed, saying that another journalist has been martyred. Barely an hour later, Hossam is driving in his car in Beit Lahia, and the Israeli military bombed his car. There’s footage of his body lying prone on the ground, bloodied. And he was killed.

And I think we have to be very clear: Hossam was deliberately killed. He was assassinated by the Israeli military. The Israeli military has openly admitted to this. They called him a terrorist, and they said, quote, “Don’t let the press vest fool you.” OK? This is what it’s come to.

And Israel has a long history of killing journalists, especially Palestinian journalists, with impunity. But often what we’ve seen in the past is either they deny that they’re responsible for killing them, or they’ll say they were some sort of collateral damage, they didn’t mean it, or they’ll claim that the journalist — what we started to see was the journalist was a terrorist and a militant after the fact. But what was different this time is that Hossam and five other journalists in October were placed on, essentially, a hit list by the Israeli military, calling them militants, calling them terrorists, and saying they were going to kill them, basically. Hossam at the time said that he felt like he was being hunted. And this is, you know, part of a broader —

AMY GOODMAN: He was getting calls.

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: He was getting calls. And the spokesperson in Arabic for the Israeli military is calling him out by name, calling out Anas Al-Sharif and other journalists, saying that “we are going to get you.” And so, this is kind of new, like preemptively and openly targeting them.

And I think it’s shameful, shameful that this is being met with something akin to silence by Western media institutions. These are our colleagues that are being killed. They’re being targeted and openly hunted by the Israeli military. You know, and this silence was something Hossam was angry about, as well. When five journalists were killed in an Israeli airstrike in December, I messaged Hossam, just to check in on him, and he responded, “Our job is only to die. I hate this world. No one is doing anything. I swear I’ve come to hate this job.” And he knew, himself, that he was most likely going to be killed, because he was being hunted in this way. He continued, nevertheless, to cover the genocide of his people.

And as you mentioned, you know, this is a 23-year-old who wrote a letter knowing that it would be published after his death, that opened with “If you’re reading this, it means I have been killed — most likely [deliberately] targeted — by the Israeli occupation forces.” And it ends with these words, and I think they’re important: “I ask you now: do not stop speaking about Gaza. Do not let the world look away. Keep fighting, keep telling our stories — until Palestine is free.” And it’s left to all of us to do just that. We will not forget Hossam. We will not let the world look away.

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, Sharif, you did the award-winning Al Jazeera documentary The Killing of Shireen Abu Akleh. I mean, she was Palestinian American. What kind of response — and, of course, the U.S. is funding and arming the Israeli military — came out of the very direct — we saw her killed. You analyzed, with Forensic Architecture, exactly what happened to her, with an Israeli sniper killing her, the well-known face of Al Jazeera Arabic, May 11, 2022. You even have the senator, Van Hollen, demanding the investigation be public. But?

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Well, I mean, the U.S. essentially adopted the Israeli narrative of what happened, which only came after a lot of pressure. They initially denied that they killed Shireen Abu Akleh, blaming it on a Palestinian militant, which was an easily debunked claim. And then they finally admitted, under a lot of pressure, that they did probably kill her, but that she was caught in crossfire, although that claim directly contradicted video footage and eyewitness testimony. But the U.S. essentially adopted that narrative. I mean, it shouldn’t matter that she had American citizenship, but that makes the U.S. responsible for her. And even then, for example, President Biden refused to meet with the family of Shireen Abu Akleh. I mean, he met with the family of Austin Tice, he met with the family of Evan Gershkovich, other, you know, U.S. journalists who either had been disappeared or were in prison. But he refused to meet with the family of an American journalist who was killed.

But, you know, to go back to Hossam, I don’t know. I think that — he was messaging me literally hours before this happened. He was always eager to kind of get the story out. We had agreed that he would write this story about witnessing the resumption of Israel’s scorched-earth campaign in Beit Hanoun, where he’s from. He returned there, like so many people, after the so-called ceasefire, where upwards of half a million people returned to the north where Hossam was. But he was able to go to Beit Hanoun, and he was there when, exactly a week ago, Israel conducted one of the most brutal and vicious aerial bombardments of the 17-month genocidal assault, killing, I think, over 200 children in a matter of hours. Two hundred children in a matter of hours. And Hossam’s article was about what he witnessed that day. And I’ll read you what I translated yesterday, that I translated through tears because he had just been killed. He said — he ends it with saying, “There is no justification for this. Everything is being crushed: the lives of innocent people, their dignity, and their hopes for a better future.”

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to cite what our colleague Jeremy Scahill of Drop Site News posted, this video on social media with the words “This is who Israel murdered today. Our colleague Hossam Shabat.” In the video, a child greets Hossam in his car and tells him she was scared he had been killed and that he is her inspiration to become a journalist in the future.

PALESTINIAN GIRL: [translated] I swear I missed you. They said you were martyred.

HOSSAM SHABAT: [translated] Why?

PALESTINIAN GIRL: [translated] What do you mean “why”? When the occupation entered the north!

HOSSAM SHABAT: [translated] Yeah?

PALESTINIAN GIRL: [translated] We were about to mourn you, man. I swear.

HOSSAM SHABAT: [translated] Was it that bad?

PALESTINIAN GIRL: [translated] We missed you. What do you believe in? That there is no god but Allah? I swear to God that I came down to see you.

HOSSAM SHABAT: [translated] So you missed us?

PALESTINIAN GIRL: [translated] I swear by Almighty God that I came down to see you.

HOSSAM SHABAT: [translated] You’re a real champ! What do you want to be when you grow up?

PALESTINIAN GIRL: [translated] I swear, I missed you all.

HOSSAM SHABAT: [translated] Why martyred then?

PALESTINIAN GIRL: [translated] A journalist! And I was thinking, “How am I supposed to become a journalist if Hossam Shabat were martyred?”

HOSSAM SHABAT: [translated] We’ll make you a journalist, God willing.

PALESTINIAN GIRL: [translated] How am I supposed to become a journalist then?

HOSSAM SHABAT: [translated] You want to become a journalist? God willing, you’ll become one.

AMY GOODMAN: “I want to become journalist. How can I become a journalist?”

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: I mean, he was such a warm and funny person also. In our frequent messages and voice notes with each other, despite all the death and violence around him, he somehow still managed to be warm. And I think it was this kind of rebellion against everything that was happening around him to maintain this attitude.

And like I said, you know, he’s one of over 200 journalists that have been killed. This is an unprecedented rate of killing of journalists. And the journalists that are alive, I mean — so, another Drop Site contributor, Abubaker Abed, who’s been on Democracy Now! many times — let’s remember, Israel has imposed a complete siege on Gaza since March 2nd. So this is over three weeks, not a single truck of food, medicine, fuel —

AMY GOODMAN: Even before the bombing, they imposed this siege.

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Yes. This is reimposed forced starvation that is happening. Abubaker is 22 years old. He’s suffering from malnutrition. He just messaged me the other day. He said he’s completely worn out. He can’t get out of bed. He’s in pain. His body aches. He needs galvanized multivitamins and other medicines. We’re trying to get it to him. I’m speaking to doctors that we know in Gaza. They said there’s no supplies, and they can’t get anything to him.

Another journalist who also writes for Drop Site, Rasha Abou Jalal, she almost died last week when the Israeli military bombed. She’s in Gaza City, one of the many people who returned to the north. They bombed the house right next to her. The wall collapsed on the room where she usually sleeps with her husband and five children. They just happened to be sleeping in the room next door because it was warmer. And, you know, they managed to survive, miraculously, although 11 people were killed, their neighbors, including an 8-year-old girl.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to go to Abubaker Abed speaking on Democracy Now! just in the last few weeks.

ABUBAKER ABED: People have not yet recovered from the endless trauma they have been through during the past 15 months. We haven’t taken a breath from what we have been enduring. And it’s just happened all out of a sudden. We were harshly awakened. We couldn’t really understand what was happening. I’m talking to you, and I’m literally shaking.

People have to understand that the people of Gaza cannot really go into any more seconds of this war. This is just indiscriminate, unbearable, insurmountable, inconceivable. I don’t know what else, what more ways I can tell you to describe the scenes at the moment.

People don’t know we have right now overpricing and a scarcity of food items. People don’t know people have spent their days, the past 24 hours, without a single meal at all. I know families in pain, [inaudible] family. And for me personally, I just had some bread along with some cheese. The prices are insane.

Everything is going right now is absolutely insane. It’s just about, like, you are hearing your neighbors screaming in pain. That kind of screams and that kind of several bombings that has happened over time has just reawoke a lot of painful memories that I’ve been through and that I’ve had during the past 15 months.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Abubaker Abed speaking on Democracy Now!, 22 years old. And when we show him on video — we’re showing him on video now — he’s getting skinnier and skinnier. I was with you Sunday, Sharif, when you were getting those texts where he said his whole body is aching.

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Yeah, I mean, he’s suffering the way millions of Palestinians in Gaza are suffering because of the siege. And, you know, the Ministry of Health just put out, by the way, a report that’s over a thousand pages with the names and ages and ID numbers of over 50,000 Palestinians that have been confirmed dead. These are just the ones that have passed through public hospitals, 50,000 Palestinians. There’s 400 pages that are just the names of children. The first 27 pages, the age is listed as zero, because those are people, children, babies, under the age of 1 who were killed.

AMY GOODMAN: Sharif, you and your Al Jazeera team just won two major documentary awards — RTS, that’s Royal Television Society — you picked up this award in London — and then the Overseas Press Club Award, much coveted award — for your documentary on Gaza, The Night Won’t End. And if you can tell us where your title came from, and also the fact, and what you talked about when you came on Democracy Now!, of the level which you depended on Palestinian journalists in Gaza to bring us the images of what is happening there? Let’s remember, Israel forbid Western journalists from entering Gaza.

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Yeah, these awards are testaments to the journalists in Gaza who really made this documentary. They’re the ones who filmed everything in Gaza. They did the interviews. The Overseas Press Club Award actually cites the cinematic shots of the documentary. So, this is an award that’s testament to them.

I need to say something about the Royal Television Society Awards, though. At the award ceremony in London earlier this month, they were supposed to present a special award honoring Palestinian journalists in Gaza. That was rescinded at the last minute — I didn’t know this at the time — because it said they didn’t want to add fuel to the fire surrounding a BBC documentary, that was titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone, because the child narrator’s father was once a Hamas minister. So, instead of calling out the BBC —

AMY GOODMAN: And BBC revoked that —

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Yeah, pulled the documentary. And instead of calling out the BBC for doing this under pressure, a documentary about children surviving a genocide and narrating it, the RTS pulled the award honoring Palestinian journalists because it was, quote, “a political football.” But this caused outrage, and over 400 journalists and media workers signed a letter opposing this. And actually, they will be reinstating that award today in London for Palestinian journalists, who deserve, you know, all of our support. And we have to fight for justice for them, because they’re being killed at an unprecedented rate.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you so much, Sharif, for all of your work in bringing out the voices and reports of people in Gaza. Sharif Abdel Kouddous, award-winning journalist, editor at Drop Site News, correspondent on the Fault Lines documentary The Night Won’t End on Al Jazeera English.