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Assassinated Gaza journalist’s final message: ‘I fulfilled my duty as a journalist. I risked everything to report the truth, and now, I am finally at rest.’
By SHARON ZHANG
Israeli occupation forces killed two Palestinian journalists in Gaza on Monday in separate strikes, bringing the total number of Palestinian journalists killed to at least 208 since October 7, 2023, according to a count by Gaza officials.
Mohammad Mansour, a correspondent for Palestine Today, was killed along with his wife and child when Israel struck his home in Khan Yunis in southern Gaza. Al Jazeera reported that Israel deliberately targeted Mansour in the attack.
Shortly after, Israeli occupation forces killed Hossam Shabat with a targeted airstrike while he was driving his car in Beit Lahiya, local sources reported. Shabat, who was 23 years old, had become well-known for his reports from northern Gaza amid Israel’s total siege on the region. He was a contributor to U.S. outlet Drop Site News and a reporter for Al Jazeera Mubasher.
Shabat’s friends posted a message written by the young journalist that he requested to be published on social media in the event of his death.
‘If you’re reading this, it means I have been killed — most likely targeted — by the Israeli occupation forces,’ he said. ‘When this all began, I was only 21 years old — a college student with dreams like anyone else. 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.’
‘By God, I fulfilled my duty as a journalist. I risked everything to report the truth, and now, I am finally at rest — something I haven’t known in the past 18 months,’ he wrote. ‘I did all this because I believe in the Palestinian cause. I believe this land is ours, and it has been the highest honour of my life to die defending it and serving its people.’
Drop Site condemned the attack in a statement. ‘Drop Site News holds Israel and the U.S. responsible for killing Hossam,’ the outlet said. ‘More than 200 of our Palestinian media colleagues have been killed by Israel — supplied with weapons and given blanket impunity by most Western governments — over the past seventeen months.’
Fellow journalists in Gaza mourned Shabat’s death. ‘I no longer have words,’ said Gaza journalist Abubaker Abed, who was a colleague of Shabat at Drop Site. ‘This is just an incalculable loss. This is unbearable.’
Shabat, like Abed and many other young people in Gaza, became a war journalist when the genocide began despite having other aspirations. Last year, he thanked university students across the world for protesting for Gaza, noting that he was in his third year in college when the genocide began on October 7, 2023.
‘I’ll never be able to finish my studies because Israeli occupation forces bombed my university and every other university in Gaza,’ he wrote.
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His life was upended as he went out to report on Israel’s genocide, separating from his family in order to show the world the barbarity of the killings.
In October 2024, Israeli authorities issued a list of journalists it was seemingly targeting for assassination, accusing them, without evidence, as being affiliated with ‘Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorist’ groups. Shabat, who was one of the only journalists left in north Gaza at the time, was on that list. He had already survived another targeted attack in November, when Israeli occupation forces injured him in an apparent ‘double tap’ strike on a house in northern Gaza.
Despite the November attack and concerns he was being hunted by Israeli occupation forces for his work, Shabat pledged to continue reporting.
Just a month ago, amid the ceasefire, Shabat posted a video of him and his mother being reunited after 492 days, having been separated due to Israel’s evacuation orders.
Last week, shortly after Israeli authorities resumed their heavy bombing of Gaza despite the ceasefire agreement, Shabat posted a video of him once again putting on his flak jacket and helmet marked ‘press.’
‘I thought it was over and I’d finally get some rest, but the genocide is back in full force, and I’m back on the front lines,’ he said.
Shabat had continually pleaded for the world to intervene and end the genocide.
‘On October 17th, 2023, Israel bombed Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza,’ Shabat wrote in his final Instagram reel. ‘Israel denied it. Western media believed it. And the bombing continued as ‘Israel investigated itself.’ UN and NGO investigations proved that Israel indeed did it. No government acted. No condemnations.’
‘So Israel continued bombing, besieging and targeting EVERY SINGLE HOSPITAL in Gaza,’ he continued. ‘Eighteen months of genocide and impunity meant that they didn’t have to deny bombing hospitals anymore. No one cares… They say the magic H word and war crimes are justified.’
Even posthumously, Shabat pled for Palestinian rights.
‘I ask you now: do not stop speaking about Gaza,’ the journalist wrote in his final message. ‘Do not let the world look away. Keep fighting, keep telling our stories — until Palestine is free.’
- This article was first published by truthout.org
