Protesters Honor Martyred Palestinian Journalists Outside New York Times Headquarters
The demonstration also marked the first anniversary of Israel’s assassinaiton of Al Jazeera correspondent Anas Al-Sharif.
On Monday, more than 50 New Yorkers gathered outside The New York Times headquarters in mid-Manhattan adorned with signs and cardboard press vests bearing the names of the more than 300 Palestinian journalists killed by Israel since October 7. Among the throng of people, two demonstrators held a hand-painted banner that read “the voice of gaza, Anas Al-Sharif.”
The demonstration, organized by the Palestinian Youth Movement, Writers Against the War on Gaza, and the Palestine Feminist Collective, is part of an international week of action in honor of Palestinian journalist Al-Sharif, who was murdered with four other journalists, when an Israeli airstrike struck a press tent outside Gaza City’s Al-Shifa Hospital on August 10, 2025. Days before his death, Israel offered Al-Sharif safe passage out of Gaza along with his wife and children, according to his brother Mohamed Al-Sharif, but he chose to stay and continue covering the genocide.
Taher Dahleh, an organizer with the Palestinian Youth Movement, led the rally in chants outside the New York Times headquarters. He told The Indypendent “we’re here today, in honor of all of these brave journalists and in honor of the many thousands of people who have fallen throughout this war.” The rally condemned both the continued targeting and killing of journalists by Israel and the media outlet’s coverage of the genocide in Gaza.
After more than two years of reporting on the atrocities inflicted on the Palestinian people in Gaza, Al-Sharif became one of the most prominent voices in Gaza as an Al Jazeera correspondent. With Israel barring international journalists from entering Gaza, Al-Sharif’s reporting provided one of the last views into the Israeli onslaught in Northern Gaza where he was based.
Matthew Belen of BreakThrough News, spoke to the crowd after they marched through a downpour to march to Times Square. He asserted that the killing of Al-Sharif and his four colleagues represents a larger pattern of Israel targeting journalists for assassination. “We are animated by our solidarity with the journalists of Gaza, who are brave enough to tell the story of the people and expose the nonstop Israeli war crimes,” he said. “More Palestinian journalists have been killed in this war than in any conflict in modern records.”
In 2025, The Committee to Protect Journalists reported that Israel was responsible for two-thirds of 129 press killings throughout the world, and that “the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has committed more targeted killings of journalists than any other government’s military since CPJ began documentation in 1992.”
Rabbi Dovid Feldman of Neturei Karta International demanded accountability for the unprecedented murder of journalists by Israel. He told The Indypendent, “this killing of journalists is something that should move right-minded people to realize that this is an additional, ridiculous crime, that needs to be acknowledged as a crime.” He continued that “people need to be more educated, and to wake up, and to do everything we can to stop it.”
The New York Times is the largest and most influential news organization in the world. The demonstrators criticized the Times for justifying the genocide and refusing to acknowledge Israel’s systematic annihilation of on-the-ground journalists in Gaza and Lebanon. Writers Against the War on Gaza continues to urge Times readers to stop giving the Times their money as a part of their “Boycott, Divest, Unsubscribe” campaign against the self-styled “paper of record.”
“The New York Times is one of the mainstream media [sources] that has covered the genocide and basically justified the genocide in the last few years. They were treating our people as numbers, they were destining our people to massacres, they were trying to basically dehumanize through their language,” said Ribhi, a WAWOG member. “As a media they should stand up for journalists being killed.”
When the rain began to clear over the rally and demonstrators began to disperse, Dahleh underscored that “without journalists like Anas, without the other 300 Palestinian journalists that have been slaughterred and assassinated throughout this terrific genocide on the Gaza Strip, [and] without people to testify to what they’re seeing, atrocities continue.”