Journalists tweet anger, grief after Palestinian journo killed by Israel strike
Before his death, Hassan Hamad said he had received threats from an Israeli officer.
Multiple journalists posted tweets of anger and grief on X, formerly Twitter, after Israeli forces killed a Palestinian journalist on October 6.
Hassan Hamad was killed in an Israeli airstrike on his home in Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, according to Al Jazeera. Days before, Hamad had alleged he was “warned by an Israeli officer to stop filming in Gaza”.
The journalist was only 19 years old when he was killed.
In May, Hamad told colleagues he’d received a message saying this was his “last warning” on WhatsApp, as well as “several calls from an Israeli officer”.
Ashraf Mashharawi, the manager of the production company where Hamad worked, told Middle East Monitor that Hamad allegedly received the first message on May 13.
“After that, he received multiple threats over the phone and text messages asking him to stop working. He refused to comply, believing he had done nothing wrong and was simply performing the normal role any journalist would. We advised him to reduce his work, but he completely refused. He said: ‘I won’t be intimidated by the threats. We are in the right and they are in the wrong’,” Mashharawi said.
A colleague later tweeted from Hamad’s account that the journalist “resisted for a whole year in his own special way”.
“He resisted when he was away from his family so that they would not be targeted. He resisted when he was suffering to find an internet signal and would sit for an hour or two on the roof of the house to send videos that reach you in seconds,” the tweet said.
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, over 123 Palestinian journalists have been killed by Israeli forces in the past year. Gaza’s government media office places this number at at least 175. More than 41,000 people have been killed in total.
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