CNN’s Clarissa Ward Condemns ‘Horrific’ Killing of Al Jazeera Reporters in Gaza: ‘War Crime’
CNN chief international correspondent Clarissa Ward condemned the “horrific” killing of five Al Jazeera journalists in Gaza by Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and shared how many Western journalists felt “powerless and ashamed” before adding that the targeting of journalists was a “war crime.”
The video was published on Monday, one day after Al Jazeera’s well-known Gaza reporter Anas al-Sharif was killed alongside colleagues Mohammed Qreiqeh, Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal, and Moamen Aliwa when their tent near al Shifa Hospital was hit in what the broadcaster denounced as a “targeted assassination.”
Israeli officials said al Sharif only “posed” as a journalist and “served as the head of a terrorist cell in the Hamas terrorist organization,” which was “responsible for advancing rocket attacks against Israeli civilians and IDF troops.”
But that claim was roundly condemned by Ward, who took to social media to share some personal thoughts on the killings, warning that “the targeting of journalists is a war crime”:
I woke up this morning to the horrific news that Anas al-Sharif, the Al Jazeera journalist, and three of his colleagues were killed in a targeted Israeli strike inside Gaza. This brings the total number of journalists killed in Gaza since October 7th to 176, which is frankly a mind-boggling statistic.
Defending the work of Western journalists, she continued to describe how reporters were faced with a “stream of accusations from the IDF” designed to “dehumanize” Palestinian colleagues and “justify” their deaths:
And I just wanted to say, and I realize that it helps nobody, but I speak for a lot of Western journalists when I say that so many of us feel angry and outraged and powerless and ashamed. We are confronted with a stream of accusations from the IDF that seek to dehumanize our Palestinian colleagues, that seek to justify their killings and the nature of the carefully calibrated language that we are using in our stories, I understand to many just feels so detached and so not proportional to the agony and outrage of the moment.
And behind the scenes, many of us continue to push and press and sign letters and write petitions and do meetings and none of it seems to make a damn bit of difference. So just a reminder. That journalism is not a crime and that the targeting of journalists is a war crime.
Watch above via X.
