News - Middle East: An investigation has revealed how a character assassination campaign by pro-Palestinian Authority (PA) individuals targeted heroic Palestinian journalist Anas al-Sharif before his actual assassination by the Israeli regime and even after his martyrdom.

The probe was conducted by Eekad, an open-source intelligence platform, which published its results on Sunday.

The defamation onslaught saw the individuals launch a “coordinated effort of incitement and slander” against him.

The campaign largely aligned with the Israeli regime’s strategy of pushing to legitimize deliberate attacks on non-combatant targets such as ordinary people, hospitals, and media workers.

According to Eekad, a digital and media network tied to the PA began replicating the Israeli rhetoric so closely that it appeared to be serving shared objectives with the regime, namely incitement against individuals before attacks and trying to justify them afterward.

The investigation, which was the result of months of tracking and specialized analyses, exposed key actors, their digital tools, and the methods by which narratives were disseminated.

The targeting of Sharif escalated in October 2024, when Israeli army spokesperson Avichay Adraee accused him of being affiliated with the Gaza Strip’s Hamas resistance movement. Sharif was accused of, what the Israeli official would call, “obscuring Hamas crimes,” and “misleading the public,” with Adraee going as far as calling the victim “voice of lies.”

Over the following months, pro-PA accounts mirrored this framing, trying to portray Sharif as biased and unprofessional.

A key moment in the campaign was January 17, when Telegram channel al-Monkhol claimed he was a “planted agent,” using derogatory and threatening language.

Another highlight was escalated character assassination efforts between June and July, ahead of the Israeli regime’s plan to occupy the Gaza City, when pro-PA accounts renewed accusations of “Hamas ties.”

Also, after Sharif and his Al Jazeera colleagues were killed, both Israeli and pro-PA accounts doubled down, trying to convince the public that he used to be a “Hamas operative,” an effort aimed at justifying his assassination.

Sharif was slain on August 10 in targeted Israeli strikes against Gaza City that also claimed the lives of four other personnel enlisted with the news network.

The atrocity ended his decades-long untiring crusade of communicating Gaza’s insufferable plight to the world in the face of all overwhelming odds.

The smear campaign against him echoed tactics used previously on other journalists, the report added.

Commenting on the probe, observers noted that the regime had so far targeted numerous media professionals in such a manner, naming Shireen Abu Akleh, Anas’ former colleague in Al Jazeera, who was killed in the occupied West Bank in 2022, as a case in point.

Source: Press TV