Journalist Saleh Aljafarawi Shot in Gaza Where ‘PRESS’ Offers No Protection
(Photo via Facebook / @SaLeh Aljafarawi)
Journalist Saleh Aljafarawi Shot in Gaza Where ‘PRESS’ Offers No Protection
When Palestinian journalist Saleh Aljafarawi was killed on October 12, 2025 in Gaza City, the biggest media outlets in Europe barely noticed. His death, like those of hundreds of other journalists in Gaza, exposes a devastating truth about which lives, and whose journalism, are deemed newsworthy. In this article, Stefanie Gordin examines the silence that follows the killing of Palestinian journalists, and how digital erasure and Western indifference turn press freedom into a privilege, not a right.
There comes a moment when news stops being information and hits you like a punch to the gut. I felt that moment when I learned that Saleh Aljafarawi, a Palestinian journalist and activist, had been shot dead in Gaza City, allegedly by an Israel-backed militia group. Just days earlier, U.S. President Donald Trump had announced that Israel and Hamas had reached a ‘first phase’ of a ceasefire. Saleh, 28, known for his livestreams (now deleted from Instagram) capturing the raw, unfiltered life in Gaza, was struck while reporting on unrest in the Sabra neighborhood. A young man with a camera, standing amid the rubble, trying to show the world what was really happening. And now he is gone.
My social media feeds are filled with his photos and videos; from his last report on the ceasefire and how he was hoping to see his brother, who had been imprisoned and got released on October 13, a day after his death. People around the world are mourning, sharing memories, honoring his work. Yet in the Western media, there is silence. No breaking news, no analysis, no opinion pieces. As if his death doesn’t belong on our news agenda. As if a Palestinian journalist is not a colleague, but a footnote. This silence hurts precisely because it is no accident. How is it possible that the death of a journalist – a colleague, a witness, someone who gave his life to show what we would rather not see – receives so little attention? Search his name on the world’s largest news outlets, and you’ll find almost nothing. Maybe one brief mention, buried beneath stories deemed more ‘relevant.’
Saleh’s death is not an accident. It is part of a brutal, systematic pattern: journalists in Gaza are being killed, one by one, often while clearly identified as press. On August 11, Al Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif, 28, was killed along with three of his colleagues in a deliberate Israeli attack on a media tent outside Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital: a tent clearly marked as sheltering reporters. Cameras around their necks. ‘PRESS’ written across their chests. And still, they were targeted.
In the past two years, Israel has killed more than 278 media workers in Gaza. And each time, the world looks away faster. We tell ourselves we care about truth, about democracy, about the safety of reporters in conflict zones. But apparently, not all journalists are equal. When one of ‘ours’ is harmed – in Europe, in the U.S., in Israel – newsrooms mobilize, governments issue statements, and the world collectively grieves. When it’s a Palestinian, the story dies in the caption of an Instagram post.
When I searched for Saleh’s Instagram account, I couldn’t find it. Only later did I come across a post from another account (@europe.palestine.network) mentioning that his profile had been deleted – almost immediately after the announcement of his death. According to multiple reports, such as Human Rights Watch, 7Amleh, and Amnesty International, Meta has been cooperating with Israeli authorities to remove the accounts of Palestinian journalists – digital archives filled with documentation and evidence – from social media within minutes after they are killed.
This isn’t an isolated incident. A 2023 investigation by Human Rights Watch found that Meta systematically suppresses pro-Palestinian content across Instagram and Facebook, as part of a growing wave of censorship on social media. This censorship takes many forms: the removal of posts, stories, and comments; the suspension or permanent disabling of accounts; and the quiet throttling of users’ reach – restricting likes, shares, and follows. Together, these tactics form an invisible wall between Palestinians and the rest of the world, limiting how their stories, images, and truths can be seen or shared.
These disappearances receive little to no attention in the West. The result is not just digital censorship, but the systematic erasure of testimony of a genocide – an algorithmic silencing that shields those responsible from scrutiny.
Press freedom cannot be selective. It cannot depend on nationality, religion, or geography. Because if the right to document injustice and a genocide only applies to certain people, it isn’t a right at all; it’s a privilege dressed up as principle. What’s happening in Gaza should shake every newsroom, every reader, every citizen who believes in the role of the press as the last line of accountability. The death of Saleh Aljafarawi isn’t only a human tragedy, it’s an assault on truth itself.
And the silence of Western media – deliberate, habitual, comfortable – makes them complicit. Because ignoring a journalist’s death is another way of erasing their work, their witness, their world. A ‘PRESS’ vest should mean safety. It should mean legitimacy, respect, neutrality. In Gaza, it means none of those things. It means you are seen – and therefore, you are at risk.
Saleh’s camera is now silent. But the question it leaves behind is not: why did he die? The question is: why didn’t we care?
In his last will and testament, Saleh wrote:
“I am Saleh.
I leave this will, not as a farewell, but as a continuation of a path I have chosen with certainty.
Allah knows that I have exerted every effort and strength I possess to be a support and a voice for my people. I have lived through pain and oppression in all its details, tasted the agony and the loss of loved ones time and again, and yet I never hesitated for a single day to convey the truth as it is – the truth that will remain a testament against all who faltered and remained silent, and also an honor for all who supported, stood by, and championed the most noble, honorable, and dignified people: the people of Gaza.”
Saleh’s testament leaves no room for neutrality. To stay silent is to choose the side of power. The question now is not whether we will speak, but whether we will finally listen.
Rephrase Magazine urges all media outlets to give visibility to the stories of Palestinian journalists, to report their deaths with the attention and seriousness they deserve, and to hold power to account rather than turn a blind eye.
Stefanie (she/her) is a writer, philosopher, and human rights activist.
