"Do not stop speaking about Gaza”, journalist Hussam Shabat implored before being targeted by an Israeli missile. His death, alongside that of Muhammad Mansour, is part of a deliberate and systematic operation to silence the truth in Palestine.

Their murders are not isolated incidents — they represent the physical elimination of bodies and the coinciding erasure of narratives, aimed at confiscating memory itself.

As Gaza's fragile ceasefire crumbled, the region was once again plunged into horror—homes, schools, and hospitals reduced to rubble. Amid the carnage, the assassination of journalists opened yet another front in this war — against truth itself. Shabat and Mansour were not collateral damage. They were deliberately targeted using sophisticated “smart” missiles that made no distinction between journalists, non-combatants, or combatants.

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Shabat was killed in his car, and Mansour, who worked for Palestine Today, was murdered in his own home—alongside his wife and son. Their deaths brought the number of journalists killed by Israeli forces in Gaza since October 2023 to 208, according to the Government Media Office (GMO). This staggering number has been  verified by multiple watchdog groups, including Reporters Without Borders and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

208 voices silenced. 208 stories untold.

As Gaza’s buildings crumble, so does the truth—buried under obfuscation, scapegoating, and the outright murder of journalists. The physical destruction of Palestinian lives is mirrored by the systematic attempt to obliterate their story. To kill a journalist is not just the murder of a person—it is the assassination of memory itself. To burn libraries, to silence voices, is to erase a people’s very existence.

This assault on journalists is part of a broader effort to erase Palestinian identity—not only through the silencing of voices but also by dismantling cultural institutions. A month ago, Israeli forces stormed the renowned Educational Bookshop in Jerusalem. The soldiers fell upon the shelves like a frenzied pack of hyenas savaging their prey. Dozens of manuscripts were damaged, and books were confiscated under the absurd accusation of "incitement to violence”.

The paranoia of despots is exposed in their dread of facts: books bearing the Palestinian flag were seized. Even an edition of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz was confiscated— a surreal testament to the absurdity of censorship under occupation.

This assault on knowledge and truth is not new—it is part of a historical pattern of erasure by settler-colonial states. From the 1948 Nakba to now, the goal has remained the same: to erase Palestinian identity and memory. It was Golda Meir herself who seized a well-known Palestinian home and had every tile, image, and representation of Palestinian identity removed in order to claim in her delusion: "There is no such thing as a Palestinian."

Yet, despite decades of violence, the Palestinian story endures—blasted into the rubble, the poetry, and the defiant voices of its people.

In the same vein, Palestinian journalists are systematically targeted not for wielding weapons, but for documenting truth. The CPJ has recognized multiple cases in which Israel appears to have deliberately targeted media workers, knowing they were journalists. CPJ’s chief executive, Jodie Ginsberg, stated unequivocally, "The deliberate and targeted killing of a journalist, of a civilian, is a war crime."

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These assassinations are not isolated incidents. Al Jazeera’s correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh, who was deliberately shot and killed by Israeli forces in 2022, is a chilling reminder that Palestinian journalists are not safe even when wearing press vests.

According to Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, Israel's repeated targeting of media personnel fits the legal definition of a war crime. Yet, the world watches in silence.

While Israel pulls the trigger, Western powers provide the ammunition—both literally and figuratively. The GMO in Gaza holds Israel and its main ally, the United States, along with the United Kingdom, Germany, and France, fully responsible for these crimes. Their complicity extends beyond supplying weapons—it lies in both their silence and their silencing of dissenting voices.

Western complicity is evident in the systematic suppression of pro-Palestinian voices on social media platforms, where posts are censored, accounts suspended, and content removed under the guise of "violating community standards”. According to 7amleh, the Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media, Palestinian content faces disproportionate censorship, with Instagram and Facebook routinely restricting visibility of posts highlighting Israeli war crimes.

Meanwhile, mainstream media outlets sanitize their language, reducing mass killings to mere "clashes" and depicting the deliberate targeting of journalists as "accidental strikes”. This linguistic erasure reinforces the violence it reports.

Where are the vigorous denunciations from world leaders who claim to advocate for press freedom? Where are the international investigations into the methodical assassinations of media personnel? Their silence speaks volumes—it overlooks the slaughter and grants a licence to kill.

The murders of Hussam Shabat and Muhammad Mansour are not mere tragedies—they are acts of war against truth itself, against the very right to remember. Yet history reveals an enduring defiance: thoughts cannot be jailed, and truth cannot be buried. From the poetry of Mahmoud Darwish to the defiant reporting of Shireen Abu Akleh, the Palestinian narrative persists.

Journalists are not mere witnesses to violence; they are chroniclers of memory. Each report, each photograph, and each broadcast becomes an act of resistance—defying the attempt to reduce Gaza to statistics. The images they capture, the stories they tell, become indelible records of both suffering and survival.

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In the face of this brutality, the responsibility of journalists, writers, and human rights defenders has never been greater. The silence of major Western news networks, the downplaying of atrocities, and the sanitized language used to describe war crimes perpetuate the very violence they claim to report.

We cannot afford to be neutral in the face of genocide.

Shabat’s final plea must be our rallying cry: "Do not stop speaking about Gaza."

We, as journalists, writers, and advocates, must carry forward their voices. Speak their names, louder than ever. Share their stories, more incessantly than ever. Let the truth be their enduring legacy.

The author is Sessional Instructor at Department of Political Science, University of Alberta in Canada. The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.