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A few hours later, the Israel military accomplished what critics say is the exact opposite of Netanyahu’s stated wish.

In a targeted missile strike that sheltering in a press tent outside a Gaza City hospital, those critics say that Israel once again punctured the truth with an attack on journalists to spread lies about its war.

The most prominent among the dead was correspondent Anas al-Sharif, and , the social media platform, was his truth.

He wrote that he was witnessing “intense and focused Israeli bombardment” and “fire belts” — a term to describe the targeting of many missiles on a single location — in the southern and eastern parts of Gaza City.

Attached to the post was a haunting 13-second clip showing a darkened palm tree against a night sky, the nocturnal scene lit up by incoming rocket fire and pierced by the echo of a missile striking its target.

Had he not been killed, that haunting video clip would be likely destined for the outer reaches of the digital clouds, unseen by most, unremarkable in a nearly two-year war in which the horrors have ceased to shock, or nearly.

Perversely, this is a testament to the work of al-Sharif and all the other local Gaza journalists, living and dead, who have been labouring under unfathomable conditions to document the impacts of the war.

If not for their efforts, the world would know little of what has been happening in Gaza, little of the more than 60,000 who have been killed, little of the in the besieged Palestinian territory.

Taking out the Al Jazeera team is another huge blow — one that the Israel Defence Forces quickly claimed responsibility for and even celebrated online with, of all things, .

Al-Sharif, the IDF claimed, was in fact a “Hamas terrorist … who posed as an Al Jazeera journalist.”

Citing “intelligence and documents from Gaza,” it said al-Sharif’s name showed up on “rosters, terrorist training lists and salary records” proving that he was an operative for Hamas who “integrated” into the news network.

The origin or authenticity of the documents and intelligence Israeli forces claimed to have recovered was not possible to verify.

But the killing of Al-Sharif and his four colleagues — fellow correspondent Mohammed Qreiqa and photographers Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Nawfal and Moamen Aliwa — caps a long-running effort by Israel to denounce the Al Jazeera journalist.

Mohammad Shehada, a visiting fellow with the European Council on Foreign Relations, said the allegations against al-Sharif are baseless, one among many “lies” proffered by Israeli officials in the war.

“You should attach as much value to Israel’s allegations about Anas al-Sharif, as to the dust on the floor,” .

Irene Khan, the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression, of engaging in “a blatant attempt to endanger his life and silence his reporting” on what she referred to as “the genocide in Gaza.”

The targeting reportedly began early in the war. Al Jazeera accused the Israeli military of threatening and then deliberately striking al-Sharif’s Gaza home, killing his father, .

Al-Sharif would go on to win a , one of journalism’s most coveted awards, for breaking news photography for Reuters’ coverage of the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks in Israel by Hamas and the first weeks of the war in Gaza.

“The team maintained a clear-eyed focus under the unrelenting and exhausting pressure of covering the deadliest conflict for journalists in decades,” .

But after nearly two years of war, al-Sharif was “the last surviving journalist of Al Jazeera in northern Gaza,” Khan said, adding that it was even more important to protect those “who are only doing their job of telling the truth to the world.”

That’s a bold statement in a world where declarations of truth are too often points to be debated — and debated by Netanyahu himself.

His Sunday appearance before the media was an attempt to push back against the many ways in which, he said, “the Jewish state is being maligned.”

The truth, Netanyahu said, was that Palestinians in Gaza were “fighting back” against Hamas and welcomed Israel’s renewed military campaign to eliminate the remnants of the group.

The truth, he said, was that the United Nations, which has pressured Israel to relieve the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, is “unwilling” to deliver the available aid.

And the truth, he said, was that intensifying the war in Gaza, over the objections of that vast majority of the international community as well as the head of the Israeli military and his own national security adviser, was the quickest way to reach a definitive conclusion.

But he admitted that Israel was losing the propaganda war, what with longtime allies like Canada, France, the United Kingdom and others pledging to recognize a Palestinian state at the United Nations next month and condemning the planned Gaza takeover.

“I think there are vast forces that are raised against us,” he said, blaming the algorithms of social media, which he said are manipulated by fake accounts, or bots, to make it seem like all the world is shifting against Israel.

“That’s a big issue we have to contend with, and we also have to stand up and tell the truth — probably at a greater frequency than we’re doing now,” he said.

But does it take a journalist falling — yet another Palestinian journalist, the 186th, , since the war’s start — for that truth to emerge?

In April, al-Sharif had the presence of mind to prepare , having seen colleagues die, having known that his “mission,” as he called it, increased his own chances of meeting an identical fate.

His words are a haunting tribute to the truth and a condemnation of those who ignore it.

“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 — so that Allah may bear witness against those who stayed silent, those who accepted our killing, those who choked our breath, and whose hearts were unmoved by the scattered remains of our children and women, doing nothing to stop the massacre that our people have faced for more than a year and a half.”