The Price of Bearing Witness and Beyond
Honoring Anas Al-Sharif and every Palestinian parent fighting for their children's future.

In just a few weeks, my younger daughter, Cyra, will turn two. Since both my children were born, I have been keeping journals for them—writing about their little lives, about the world they're growing up in. When Cyra was less than two months old, I started journaling about Palestine and the babies in Gaza, her global peers, who never got to hit the same milestones she has.
I write to her how as I breastfed her in the middle of the night, babies and children were dug out of rubble, their limbs torn apart, the light in their little eyes dimmed.
When Cyra learned to sit up for the first time, the assault on children in Gaza continued. When she started running freely through our living room, I thought of the children in Gaza whose days are marked not by play but by sirens and destruction. When she squeals with joy at tasting something new, I think of the children whose bodies have been so starved that their bones stretch painfully beneath their skin.
And as she begins to string words together—the first sentences of a life brimming with promise—I remember the press conference organized by the children of Gaza themselves, brave voices rising amid devastation, demanding to be heard.
Two days ago, news came that Anas Al-Sharif, the Palestinian journalist and father of two working tirelessly to tell these stories, was murdered. Anas could have left, could have sought safety elsewhere, but he didn't. He stayed because the fight for truth is also the fight for the children, for their right to live in a homeland where they can grow, run, play, and speak freely. As a mother, I cannot fathom the weight of choosing to stay, to bear witness, when danger surrounds you on all sides.
To be a parent in this reality means carrying hope so fierce it outweighs fear. It means laying down your life, your safety, for the chance that the next generation will survive. That is a courage few of us can truly understand.
At only 28 years old, Anas had become perhaps the most recognizable voice from Gaza, with a near-constant on-air presence that brought the reality of war into our living rooms. He was killed late Sunday when the Israeli military targeted a tent housing journalists outside al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. The strike also killed reporter Mohammed Qureiqa, and cameramen Ibrahim Thaher, Mohammed Noufal and Moamen Aliwa—all working for Al Jazeera Arabic. The network called it "a blatant and premeditated attack on press freedom."
Anas was not just a reporter; he was a witness and a voice for his people. He risked everything to illuminate stories often ignored or erased—stories of families torn apart, of homes reduced to rubble, of children trying to hold onto childhood amid war. His murder is not only a loss of life but an assault on truth itself.
He had risen to prominence as the face of Gaza's story for millions, precisely because Israel has blocked international media outlets from accessing the territory. Little known before the war, he quickly became a household name in the Arab world through his daily coverage of the conflict and its devastating humanitarian toll.
"I had never even appeared on a local channel let alone an international one," he told the Sotour media outlet in February. "The person who was happiest was my late father." His father had been killed in an Israeli airstrike on Jabalya shortly after Anas began appearing on Al Jazeera—a loss that must have made his commitment to bearing witness even more profound.
Anas appeared on the channel nearly every day since starting his job. "We journalists slept in hospitals, in streets, in vehicles, in ambulances, in displacement shelters, in warehouses, with displaced people," he told the outlet. "I slept in 30 to 40 different places." This was the reality of telling Gaza's story—constant movement, constant danger, constant proximity to suffering.
Journalists like Anas, especially those from the communities they report on, become targets precisely because they speak truth to power. Their work exposes injustice and gives humanity to those who are often reduced to statistics. When such journalists are silenced, the world loses not only a life but the chance to hear stories that could spark change.
Anticipating his own death, Anas had written a will that was released by his colleagues after he was killed. "I have lived through pain in all its details, tasted suffering and loss many times, yet I never once hesitated to convey the truth as it is, without distortion or falsification," he wrote. "If I die, I die steadfast upon my principles. Do not forget Gaza... and do not forget me in your sincere prayers for forgiveness and acceptance."
These words haunt me as a mother and as a journalist. This killing is part of a wider pattern of violence against Palestinian journalists and civilians—a pattern rooted in decades of conflict and systemic oppression. For parents living in this context, the stakes are unbearable. Every day becomes a choice between staying to fight for home and leaving to protect their children.
But leaving is not always an option. It means abandoning the land that holds their history, their memories, their identity. It means accepting a world where their children's future remains uncertain at best.
As both a mother and journalist, I am reminded that storytelling is both a powerful act and a heavy burden. It carries the power to give voice to the silenced, to illuminate injustice—but it also comes with the risk of becoming a target. Anas's death reminds us of the human cost behind every headline, every breaking news alert.
It calls on us to listen deeply—not only to the stories but to the people who live them, to the parents who make unimaginable sacrifices for their children's survival and dignity.
In mourning Anas, I also honor the countless parents who stay, who fight, who bear witness—not because they want to, but because they must. They carry hope for a future where children can run and play without fear, where their stories are told with truth and respect, where life is valued above all else.
This is the price of bearing witness. And it is a price we must all acknowledge, and never forget.
Thank you for honoring Anas with this reflection. I was reading through his will and was struck by this:
"Allah knows I gave every effort and all my strength to be a support and a voice for my people"
Yes you did, Anas. Yes you did.
Heart wrenching