Dispatch from Gaza: after Anas al-Sharif’s assassination, am I next?
A Palestinian journalist weighs up her two duties – a mother striving to keep her children alive, and a journalist determined to tell the truth

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GAZA STRIP, OCCUPIED PALESTINE – When news broke that Al Jazeera journalist, Anas al-Sharif, had been assassinated, I was preparing to be displaced once again from my friend’s house. I had been living there with my family for many months after my home in Gaza City was destroyed at the beginning of this bloody war.
I was busy packing my children’s clothes into the same bags that have accompanied me throughout 22 months of war, during which I have been displaced 13 times.
My husband, who was reading the breaking news on his phone, told me: “They assassinated Anas Al-Sharif.” I was stunned, froze in my place, and broke into tears.
It was a cry mixed with despair — the despair of seeing no horizon to an end to this war, as though we are trapped with no control over our fates — and with the pain and humiliation of realising the world’s failure to protect Palestinian journalists, who are constantly targeted without any deterrent to Israel.
This attack also killed Al Jazeera correspondent Mohammed Qreiqa, cameramen Ibrahim Zahir and Mohammed Noufal, as well as freelance cameraman Moamen Alaiwa and freelance journalist Mohammed Al-Khaldi.
Until the very last breath
“Relentless bombing … for two hours now the Israeli aggression has been intensifying on Gaza City.” This was Anas’s last post less than an hour before his assassination. He attached a video showing the severity of the bombardment and the sound of explosions in the background.
I first met Anas during an interview I conducted with him at the end of March, after the Israeli army had placed him on its assassination list. At the time, Anas told me that he did not fear these threats and would continue his journalistic mission until the very last breath.
Just two days before his assassination, I met Anas by coincidence as I was passing by the gate of Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza. I was returning home after a reporting assignment.
He greeted me with his warm smile. “Hello Anas, what a nice coincidence,” I said. We spoke briefly, and he told me that he expected to be killed because of his journalism. He was receiving constant threats from Israelis over the phone; they mocked him and told him his death was very near.
Anas joked with me, smiling as he said: “You’d better stay away from me now for your own safety, the strike could happen at any moment.”
His way of joking shocked me. I left him but kept thinking about him all the way back home.
I asked myself: Why did he tell me this? Had he already accepted his death? Or was he overwhelmed with despair and the bitter realisation that no one could protect him from these threats? Isn’t there international law to protect journalists? Don’t international institutions exist to defend journalists? Where are they? Or is the Palestinian journalist not like other journalists around the world?”
Anas offered his life as a sacrifice for truth, to expose Israeli crimes against Palestinians.
Between motherhood and journalism
Before October 7, 2023, and despite the hardships of life under the Israeli blockade imposed since 2007, I still had a sense of stability. Our neighbourhood, Al-Nasr, was full of life: the voices of neighbours, the smell of fresh bread, the laughter of children in the narrow alleys.
Every morning, I woke up to my children’s laughter as they prepared for school. I made them breakfast, kissed their foreheads before they left, and then began my day as a journalist. I moved between people’s stories: sometimes covering a community event, other times writing about a widow struggling to raise her children, or reporting on the electricity crisis that plagued our lives. In the evening, I would return home, prepare dinner, help my children with their homework, and feel that I was living my motherhood fully, without it conflicting with my passion for journalism.
But today, everything has changed. My neighbourhood has turned into rubble, and my neighbours have vanished. Life has become a daily battle for survival.
I used to complain of exhaustion from balancing motherhood and journalism, but I never knew what real division meant until now. Today, my motherhood is trapped by fear and hunger, as I struggle to provide my children with the bare minimum of safety. And my journalism has become a heavier burden than ever, yet also a greater duty: to write about grieving mothers, about children deprived of school who now sell sweets in the streets, about displacement and hunger that strip people of their dignity. And when I write about them, I am writing about myself as well. I write as if I am breathing.
Every night I sleep wondering: Will I wake up tomorrow? And every morning I wake myself up with one sentence: I must document. Because my story, my children’s story, and the story of every mother here deserves to be told.
Motherhood in wartime is no longer only about feeding children, sheltering them, and protecting them from the bombs. It has become a lesson in resilience. I must plant strength in my children’s hearts, teach them to face fear with courage and hunger with hope. They ask me every day: “Mama, when will the war end?” I invent answers that keep the spark of hope alive in their hearts, even if inside I am shattered.
As for journalism, it is my humanitarian duty that I cannot abandon. I owe it to my people and to the truth to write, to convey our suffering to the world, even if the price is my life. I walk a thin line between my desire to protect my children and my desire to speak the truth. I know that my pen is the only weapon I have, and that my silence would mean another kind of death, harsher than the airstrikes.
I have found myself caught in a cruel equation: a mother trying to keep her children alive, and a journalist trying to keep the truth alive. Both roles weigh heavily on me, but they also give me the deepest reason to continue.
A persisting nausea has crept into my stomach since the assassination of Anas. I have lost my appetite for everything. I feel that I may be next — or that any journalist who writes without fear may be next.
Will you believe me if I tell you that I am ready to face the same fate if the choice is between stopping writing, or being killed?
This is the most authentic and real piece of journalism I have ever read.
I wish reads like this were published widely. Thank you to this journalist and mother.