TEHRAN – The systematic targeting of Palestinian journalists in Gaza by Israeli forces represents a calculated assault not just on individuals, but on the very essence of truth-telling in conflict zones.

Despite international protections under the Geneva Conventions, which mandate the safety of media personnel, Israel’s military has killed over 200 journalists since October 2023, with dozens classified as deliberate murders, according to reports from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

This unprecedented lethality, coupled with impunity through sham investigations and false narratives labeling reporters as “terrorists,” underscores a policy of silencing witnesses to atrocities like starvation, civilian bombings, and collective punishment. The recent killing of Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif and his colleagues exemplifies this escalation, where even those with international affiliations face mortal peril for documenting Gaza’s humanitarian catastrophe.

Amid this grim reality, Sherif Mansour, an Egyptian-American human rights advocate with 20 years of experience, emerges as a pivotal voice. Having spent 11 years at CPJ as Middle East and North Africa Program Coordinator—where he documented Israel’s “deadly pattern” of journalist killings, including the 2022 murder of Shireen Abu Akleh—Mansour transitioned to independent advocacy post-2023.

Now distributing the documentary “Gaza: Journalists Under Fire” through Brave New Films, he humanizes three slain reporters: Bilal Jadallah, Heba al-Abadla, and Ismail al-Ghoul.

Drawing on personal interactions, such as threats faced by Anas al-Sharif, Mansour critiques Western double standards, where Palestinian journalists are dehumanized amid racism and indifference, contrasting sharply with responses to threats in Ukraine or elsewhere.

In this exclusive interview with the Tehran Times, Mansour reflects on his exile from Egypt, personal risks, and the Arab Spring’s lessons, arguing that Gaza’s threats—deadliest in history—redefine journalism’s sacrifices.

He advocates innovative strategies like rejecting censored military embeds and building global coalitions, from Gaza screenings to Hebrew translations in Israel. What unfolds is a profound call for solidarity, exposing how press freedom’s erosion fuels impunity and demanding action to protect guardians of democracy.

Below is the full text of our interview with Sherif Mansour:

Drawing from your extensive background in human rights and journalism advocacy, how has your transition from the CPJ to independent projects like distributing the documentary, “Gaza: Journalists Under Fire’’ reshaped your approach to amplifying the voices of threatened reporters in conflict zones?

I think in some ways my work with Brave New Film is a continuation for the mission that I have spent 11 years working at the Committee to Protect Journalists, but also more broadly for the mission to which I have devoted 20 years of my life which is the cause of freedom, human rights, and peace building.

When I had kind of started doing the journalist protection safety work, my focus was helping journalists not because journalists are some kind of special people, it's because journalists play an important function in promoting democracy and holding people in power accountable, including holding warring parties accountable.

So, the work that I have done at CPJ over the years, including before October 7th happened a couple of years ago, was in so many ways holding the Israeli government and all governments across the Middle East accountable for attacks on journalists because I believe in democracy and because journalists, if they do the work well, they can protect democracy.

The only way we can tackle any global issues, let alone any global threat, has to be with the protection of freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and people being able to pressure people in power in order to be responsive to the need.

This is the whole introduction to come to the point when I departed CPJ. At the time I had decided to leave before October 7th, that same year, 2023, I had visited Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and Ramallah to produce a report on the anniversary of the killing and the murder of Shireen Abu Akleh, a Palestinian-American journalist who worked with Al Jazeera, to show that she was not a one-off case, that she is one of at least 20 who were killed by the Israeli army over 20 years.

She was one of a dozen that I personally documented while being at CPJ since 2012. In my trip, we called the report Deadly Pattern, and in some ways we wanted to highlight all the measures that the Israeli government and the Israeli army used in order to evade responsibility for the killing of a journalist.

That includes spreading false narratives, propaganda, accusations of terrorism, and also conducting meaningless investigations only if they are pressured by an international news organization or an international government. We said that these investigations never led to anything, no indictment, no one was ever held accountable for the killing of any journalist, including Shireen Abu Akleh at the time. That was in May, less than six months before October 7th happened.

At the time when we were in Tel Aviv communicating directly and confronting the Israeli army and the Israeli government, I was happy to see for the first time that the Israeli army spokesperson went on CNN primetime live and for the first time apologized for the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh and he commended her work as a journalist, breaking from all the lies that they said about her and about Al Jazeera being a terrorism-supporting organization.

He even went farther to say that Israel is a democracy and that the role of journalists should be respected in a democracy, including, but even said specifically, during the time of war.

At the time it felt different than all the other responses that we've heard from the Israeli government over the years. But once October 7th happened, we've seen exactly the opposite of these promises, that the deadly pattern has grown, the impunity has increased.

While I went six months earlier with 20 cases of journalists killed by the Israeli army, including three that at the time we documented and classified as murder, direct attack, in the first six months of the war, where I spent at CPJ, I helped document at least a hundred cases of journalists being killed and at least a dozen or two that we classified as murder.

The number now, closer to two years, is close to 200, including a few dozens classified as murder. During that six months, I literally did thousands of interviews with media organizations all over the world, in all languages, and responded to the allegations of the Israeli army and their false narratives about journalists, civilians in Gaza. It became clear to me that everything that I could have done, or the journalists in Gaza could have done, to tell the story, to show people all over the world what's happening there, was done.

But nothing had changed. People around the world, including people in government and people in international-listed media, didn't care. That made me realize the shortcoming of this advocacy work, when we have a situation like this, where it's primarily racism that is the reason why people do not care about journalists in the situation, that Western government, Western media do not see Palestinian journalists in Gaza as civilians and as equal to them in their right to do journalism in their own society.

One of the criticisms that I took seriously was maybe we are not doing our advocacy work right, that we're not able to attract sympathy because we are not able to use tools that can reach and influence Western audience, reach public opinion in Western society in a way that allows them to associate with, sympathize with the suffering of people in Gaza, including journalists. That's why I went into the storytelling, narrative field, video film production field for Robert in Brave New Films.

The fact that he chose Bilal Jadallah, someone I used to know and I worked with in the past, as one of the examples of the journalists he wants to highlight, was important to me.

The fact that he also chose an Al Jazeera journalist in spite of all the sensitivities around Al Jazeera in the Western society and in spite of all the defamatory false narrative and propaganda that Israel is pushing against Al Jazeera.

Also the fact that he used a very impressive visual, but also the content of the journalists themselves, primarily in the film, in order to show that these people are journalists and that what they were doing is reporting the news and connecting their suffering directly to the suffering of all civilians, including showing and portraying them as family members, as parents, mothers, sons, in a way to make the viewer relate to them.

Then also tackling issues like wider issues, including starving the people of Gaza, targeting civilians in Gaza, other than even journalists, including medical staff and others.

These were all, in some ways, unique ways this film presented itself. It was, for me, a good opportunity to also build bridges, working with a Jewish filmmaker, in order to attract and build alliances with Jewish voices in the US, including Jewish Voices 14, who are against the Zionist and the fascist government of Netanyahu and who are publicly demanding to stop arming Israel and calling on the US and other Western societies to hold Israel accountable.

This was an important coalition and I wanted to push it even further and, in some way, act not just as a grass top advocacy approach, which I used at the Committee to Protect Journalists, trying to influence policymakers and media organisations directly, but build a strategy to start on the ground, first in Gaza, doing screenings with the surviving colleagues of those journalists, the three journalists we're highlighting, talking to their families and their media organisations to organise a screening in Gaza, in person and online, for the whole world to see, in spite of the internet problems, in spite of the violence and everything that's happening in Gaza.

Then going from Gaza to the West Bank and doing a screening with Palestinian women journalists in Ramallah, where they gather dozens of women journalists from across the occupied territories over military checkpoints in order to go and attend and watch the film and speak about it in Palestinian media.

So it was shown first in Arabic, in Palestine, in Gaza, in the West Bank, in Ramallah, in Nablus and on Palestinian TV stations, Nablus TV, discussed in Arabic, in Palestinian media, first, even though it was produced first in English and by an American organisation. We started the right way, I think, grassroots, talking to the people themselves first, who are impacted by it, and listening to them, including to their criticism about the film, how to make it better.

Then, taking it further, outside of Palestine, we went to Washington DC, to Cali. We wanted also to go to Israel and show it in Israel, which is something, another thing that I'm proud of, that we were able to show it in Jerusalem, in Tel Aviv, in collaboration with anti-war and anti-Netanyahu organisers, people, non-profit organisations, student groups and media groups who are critical of the war on Gaza and who were willing to show the film in Hebrew, in their own societies.

Other things we did, we showed the film in South Africa, for example, in collaboration with journalists against apartheid in three cities, in Johannesburg and other places. My hope, that's the plan that will continue, especially this month, to do more screenings in Israel, because more and more organisations in Israel are speaking out against the war, and more and more people are empowered to criticise the Israeli army there.

“More and more organisations in Israel are speaking out against the Gaza war”

So, we're planning this month and next month more screenings, not just in Tel Aviv, in Jaffa and in other places. That includes Solidarity Centre, House Radical, the Jaffa Youth Centre, the Ennis Theatre. There are other attempts right now, I'm not able to talk about it right now, but I'm trying to get Israeli journalist organisations and foreign press associations in Israel to also shoot at them.

You mentioned that you've personally known about the threats that faced Anas Al-Sharif. What specific conversations or insights from your interactions with him highlight the escalating dangers for journalists in Gaza, and how do they resonate with the recent tragic events involving him and his Al-Jazeera colleagues?

I've known Anas before Al-Jazeera, because he also used to work with Reuters as a photojournalist, and he was smeared by the Israeli army before he was working in Al-Jazeera, and I think one of the first times we've had some talks together, I called him a few times specifically to document first the killing of his father in an Israeli army strike on his family house, which he said was an attempt on his life, and it had happened after he received a phone call from an Israeli army official who threatened him to stop reporting from Gaza or otherwise face consequences.

“Anas received a phone call from an Israeli army official who threatened him to stop reporting from Gaza otherwise face consequences”

I've documented that for the Committee to Protect Journalists at the time.

I talked to him about the threats that he and others are facing, and I highlighted how those propaganda that the Israeli army put out were irresponsible to be repeated by other media outlets on order not to just defeat another journalist, one of their own, by taking for granted those false narratives that Israelis have been pushing over and over again, and that I think was important in the very beginning to keep him alive, because a lot of those organizations stopped quoting the Israeli army defamation against him and others in the beginning of the war.

At a later point, he himself started speaking up when journalists, his colleagues, are being killed, and I was invited several times to media interviews, live interviews, where he was present, and he was talking about what's happening to them on the same interview.

When I left CPJ, when we started working on the film, he was one of the people that was interviewed, because he was mourning another colleague that we highlighted in the documentary, Ismail al-Ghul, Al Jazeera correspondent before him, and in some ways, he sent him off after he was killed on the screen by making promises that he will carry on what Ismail had started, even though he knew that he would probably feel the same fate if he continues this kind of work.

I know that he and others who had access to international media, like he used to work with Reuters, and a lot of the journalists who used to work with international organizations, who were even Palestinians, not just foreigners, were able to leave Gaza at some point, and I think he had that opportunity, but he never took it, he never even tried, because he wanted to continue the mission, he wanted to continue the work that his colleagues have started, and that's why I think in some ways, when he himself was killed, I felt like it's incumbent upon us to continue doing this work and continue showing his work, and continue highlighting his case as an evidence that the Israeli army basically is deceiving so many, willingly being deceived in the West to try to undermine the narrative that they are, the false narrative that they are disseminating about Gaza.

During your time at Freedom House and CPJ, you faced personal risks, especially in Egypt. How do those experiences inform your empathy and advocacy for journalists enduring similar perils in Gaza today?

My connection started even before Freedom House. One of the earliest trips I took in my life, I was 24, right after a former Palestinian president, Yasser Arafat, was killed suddenly, died suddenly in 2004, early 2005.

I have been invited, I was working as an election observer in Egypt, headed by the Palestinian Authority at the time, to monitor the first ever contested Palestinian presidential election that brought Abu Mazen to power. It was the first and the last presidential election, actually, since then. And it was my first time to go and see for myself.

I arrived in Tel Aviv, I went to Jerusalem, I went through the whole West Bank, monitoring the election and seeing the birth of what could have been a democracy state, a Palestinian democratic state.

And I also saw for myself the occupation, how it dehumanizes and oppresses Palestinians inside Israel and also in occupied territories. It was an eye-opening experience because, for me, I believe in peace and I believe in working with Jewish people all over the world.

“I believe in peace and I believe in working with Jewish people all over the world”I have no problems with human beings, no matter who they are, as long as they are peaceful. That was different than a lot of the people I know in Egypt. No one I know at the time would dare take that step.

For me it was the beginning of a long kind of understanding of rights and democracy are essential for the cause of peace.

I knew that democracy is important because democracy is the guarantee for each other and because if you have a democratic society you are able to change course and not let just one person or one institution decide our country. But myself was important to realize that we need democracy to succeed; In Palestine, in Israel, and in Egypt, in order to have peace.

My trip to later being forced to exile a year or so later because of my work monitoring the election, but also because I was banned from going to Israel to monitor the legislative Palestinian election.

I was banned from travel just six months later, meant that I was also possibly a target by the Egyptian government at the time. Since 2006, I came to the US and I never came back after being banned in the airport going to Israel.

So it is very connected to my own personal journey and my own convictions. The fact that I eventually came here as an asylee, worked from exile from Egypt because I believed in democracy in the three countries, in Egypt, in Palestine, and in Israel. Later in my work at Freedom House, of course, my focus was on the Arab region and supporting civil society human rights activists in my home country, Egypt, and across the Arab and Middle East region.

It was not specific to journalists. It included religious freedom advocates, women rights advocates. It included people who even work on economic and other rights, social rights.

It wasn't until the Arab Spring where I personally helped support that the question of journalism and press freedom became even more central to me. The Arab Spring experience has shown me the power of truth, the power of speaking up, and breaking down the fear barrier. For me, that was the most important outcome of the Arab Spring.

Most other results have slowly evaded, vanished. In some ways, it's because the fear barrier was brought back. In my work, defending journalists and defending media, it was in some ways holding the promise of the Arab Spring alive.

In doing so, I have come through, you know, unimaginable atrocities, documenting hundreds of journalists being killed, more than 400, in Syria, across all the Arab uprisings and civil wars that happened between 2011 to 2015, Sudan, and in that course also defending hundreds of journalists who were falsely imprisoned across the region, and thousands more who were forced to exile.

In doing so, I think I became much more, kind of, focused on that question, how can democracy, how can peace survive using press freedom? With the end of this 20 years journey, from 2004 until the war had started in Gaza, it became clear to me that it doesn't matter the borders, the countries, the nations that we're calling for. What we all are struggling for is one vision of the world.

One world where we can have humans living with dignity and living free, regardless of their background, regardless of their city or their place. It is the same belief I had, being in Egypt, the same belief I had before being forced into exile, and the same work that I try to do right now with Brave New Films and with other work. After I left CPJ, I've done several things, including things that I used to do as an organiser, as an activist, but also research projects about peace and about democracy.

One of them, for example, entailed training Syrian civil society advocates who are advocating transitional justice and human rights under the current regime in Syria.

I've worked to hold the United Arab Emirates accountable because of devastating role that they play in Sudan's genocide and also in their support of Israel and in their attempts to go after human rights defenders in the region who criticise them publicly.

I did a research project earlier this year, looking at public policy, this building exercise between Egypt and Ethiopia around the renaissance that is new, and talking about also the essential point of ensuring democratic governance and having the chances of peace building, but also including what I now try to focus more on, global perspectives in public policy and international policy debates.

In my mind, all of these are connected and all of them, whether it's what I call the 3A “analysis, advocacy and action”, they all are needed and they all need to happen together in order to make an impact.

In your view, what distinguishes the threats faced by journalists in Gaza from those in other Middle East hotspots based on your CPJ experiences?

This is the deadliest place in history for journalists so far. The Israeli army has killed more journalists than any other army, any other entity in history.

“The Israeli army has killed more journalists than any other army, any other entity in history”

That is by far something that is going to last. It's going to redefine what it means to be a journalist today. Those sacrifices that the Gazan journalists have taken and continue to take, they are writing history, they are preserving media integrity in a time their own Western colleagues who for decades have preached about media independence and media professionalism.

It's also important to highlight it's not just killing of journalists, it's jailing of journalists, thousands of them in military trials, which is also not something unique to Israelis, but because of their administrative military corps.

The fact that no one almost on its side is Israeli makes it even more painful for journalists. The other important thing is a lot of people in the region kind of say they live in a democracy, but the Israelis always brag that they are the only democracy in the region, which now definitely not true.

But it could have been true if they have made an effort in this war or before this war, to respect the rights and dignity of Palestinians including Palestinian journalists. In some ways, what I would say is different about Gaza at this time is just how muted, timid the responses have been when journalists in Gaza are being killed in record number and imprisoned in record number.

The people in the West, in Western capitals, agree to be censored by the Israeli army, agree to be intimidated and to silence under accusation of anti-Semitism and fearing for their jobs and other harassments if possible, while they took a lot more public and tangible steps to support their colleagues in Ukraine, for example, when they are being killed by Russia and or being harassed by China or Iran from our region.

It's always this double standard that has existed, but it has become impossible to ignore during this time.

The film narrative centers on the human stories behind the headlines. Could you share a particularly moving anecdote from one of the featured journalists that underscores the personal toll of reporting from Gaza?

I think from our film, the one that I think impacted me the most was the story of Heba al-Abadla who lost more than 50 family members. They killed her family, all of them, surrounded them in a siege for a long time.

To this day, you cannot get many of their family members out from under the rubble. It's an indication of how massive the problem of suffering and how still it continues to this day. She was killed early on in the war.

I think the organization that was the social media Palestine, they continue to operate in spite of what happened, but another kind of ongoing tragedy is what's happening with Palestinian journalists who work with Al-Jazeera.

One by one, Al-Jazeera crew is being murdered and I think closer to dozens of them in Gaza so far have been killed.

The fact is many continue to volunteer to work with Al-Jazeera specifically knowing that they don't just hold a mark on their back by being journalists, but also by being with Al-Jazeera which was banned in Israel and became a target for years now.

I think that's the story of Anas represent them choosing to work with Al-Jazeera after working with Reuters. Them choosing to stay with Al-Jazeera even after having a chance to go out of Gaza. I think it's a most important one to highlight.

Given your expertise in press freedom, what innovation strategies do you recommend for international organizations to better protect journalists in real time during active conflicts?

In some ways the conflict in Gaza challenges all of the safety safeguards and guarantees and standards that we have worked and many people have worked to ensure continues to exist for journalists in conflict zones. I have been part of safety training.

I have been doing environmental training for journalists who have been into pretty bad situations in Syria, Yemen, Sudan and in some ways, for example, one of the advices that was always given and in some ways respected was wearing a press vest to distinguish themselves as journalists so that they don't become targets. What we saw is exactly the opposite in this war. Wearing a press vest makes you a target in the Israeli army mind.

Other kind of huge exceptions that was made was allowing the Israeli army to only correspondents, international correspondents into Gaza.

All the conflicts that I've covered for decades, the whole government or military have been given that privilege to give tours, guided tours, censored tours by the military, censored and those media organizations continue to use the materials, the statements that was given by this particular army and accept censorship by that particular army and continue to send their journalists on those propaganda trips.

This is something that must stop and it puts their Palestinian journalists in danger because they use it as a way to justify saying that they actually are transparent and nothing has happened.

Just look only where we want you to see and you'll see everything is fine. That's not journalism. These media organizations should be ashamed for agreeing to do so and to continue to do so knowing that's not what they're saying and abandoning all their independence in order to get this propaganda access.

Is there anything else you would like to add or emphasize that we haven't covered in these questions?

I would say that it is essential that all over the world, not just Arab or Muslim or other global South societies, to learn and express solidarity with Palestinians. I am looking for opportunities to translate the film and show it all over the world, including translating it to Farsi and showing it inside Iran, translating it to Turkish and showing it inside Turkey.

But we have made it available in English, Arabic and Hebrew for our region because these are the main areas immediately targeted and immediately neighboring Gaza.

But we are hoping that people will watch it worldwide and they can do so by just visiting our website and asking for a copy. So far, a thousand screenings have been done all over the world by people who work with journalism, media groups, human rights groups and even people who want to show them to their families or their friends.

All you need to do is just sign up, send an email, fill a form, you'll have access to the film in full.

I think that's the least anyone around the world can do, is to spread the word, watch it, have other people watch it. But there are other ways to help. This is a film that we are offering for free.

If you have other causes, including spreading it to Gaza, supporting Palestinian advocates, human rights groups, senior journalists locally or internationally, and also joining any of the boycott and embargo protests worldwide, showing the film to any other similar advocacy groups or issues.