Gaza City, Gaza Strip – Just hours before his assassination, Mohammed Wishah, a correspondent for Al Jazeera Mubasher, was sitting with his fellow journalists in a tent near al-Shifa Hospital in central Gaza City. The gathering on Wednesday was typical, bringing together colleagues who had become friends after working closely together for more than two years covering Israel’s genocidal war that had destroyed so much around them. None of them knew it would be their last meeting.
As Wishah was driving his car south, heading back to his home in Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, and along the al-Rashid coastal road, an Israeli drone fired a missile that directly struck his car. Wishah was declared dead immediately; the vehicle had caught fire and turned into a mass of flames on the roadside. Wishah’s killing came as a major shock to his fellow journalists in Gaza, who rushed to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah to bid him farewell and take part in his funeral.
During the funeral, which set off on Thursday morning from the hospital, dozens of journalists gathered to mourn Wishah alongside his family and relatives. A deep sorrow hung over the mourners, as well as an intense anger over the repeated targeting of journalists in Gaza. Wishah was born in 1986 in Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza.
He studied, graduated, and worked as a journalist, then joined Al Jazeera Mubasher – Al Jazeera’s Arabic-language live television network – in 2018, where he remained until he was assassinated. Talal al-Arouqi, a fellow correspondent with Al Jazeera Mubasher, said that he was extremely sad to lose Wishah as a colleague, as well as a friend. He was a colleague, a brother, a friend, and someone loved by everyone,” he added.
Everyone here cried in grief and heartbreak over him. Everyone was devastated and shocked by the news of his killing.” Al-Arouqi said that he believed Israel had deliberately targeted Wishah following an incitement campaign against him, similar to the ones that had taken place against fellow Al Jazeera journalists Anas al-Sharif and Mohammed Qreiqeh before their killings, accusing them without basis of being members of Hamas. Because of the incitement campaign by the Israeli army against Wishah, he was forced – during his war coverage – to stay away from his home and family, in addition to facing intense work pressure.
He would sleep in tents with other journalists and work long hours throughout the day. And he would have known the risks of working as a journalist in Gaza: authorities in the Palestinian enclave say that 262 media workers have been killed by Israel since the start of the war in October 2023. Abdullah Miqdad, a correspondent for Al Araby TV in Gaza, was one of those who knew Wishah.
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