An artistic memorial that gives back identity and dignity to the journalists killed while reporting from Gaza.
For the past months, investigations (+972) have revealed the existence of an Israeli military cell, the “Legitimization Cell,” whose mission is to gather intelligence in Gaza to fuel propaganda campaigns and shape international opinion. Among its most controversial activities has been the targeting of local journalists, portraying them as members of Hamas to justify their deaths. In at least one case, documents were circulated suggesting that a reporter was a platoon commander by night, despite full knowledge that he was nothing more than a working journalist.
This practice highlights the deliberate blurring of lines between information and disinformation, turning reporters into enemies and stripping them of the protections that international law should guarantee. The recent killing of Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif is emblematic. He was one of the most recognizable reporters in Gaza, and he died in an Israeli strike alongside several other journalists. Even before his death, he had been the subject of unverified allegations of Hamas affiliation, a narrative that worked to delegitimize his work and, in retrospect, his life.
Against this systematic erasure, art has become a counterweight. Italian artist and activist Gianluca Costantini has dedicated himself to creating a visual memorial for the journalists killed in Gaza. Since the beginning of the war, he has drawn dozens of portraits in collaboration with the Committee to Protect Journalists. These works were first exhibited in Bologna in the show “In the Crosshairs of Memory,” which presented around eighty digital portraits and large-scale drawings on paper. Each portrait seeks not only to preserve a face but also to restore a story, offering a gesture of care and remembrance in the face of silence.
Costantini’s portraits have not remained confined to gallery walls. They have been carried in protests and vigils across cities such as New York, Berlin, Naples, and Seattle, projected in festivals and human rights events, and shared widely across social platforms. His work has become part of a collective ritual of remembrance, one that insists on giving identity and dignity back to those who were silenced.
For two decades, Costantini has used his art to engage with struggles for human rights: from the uprisings in Egypt, Istanbul, and Hong Kong, to the personal story of Patrick Zaki. His work on Gaza extends this trajectory, confronting the violence of erasure with the persistence of memory.
In the midst of a war where information itself is weaponized, Costantini’s drawings stand as acts of resistance. Each face testifies to the courage of those who reported, and each line of ink pushes back against the machinery of propaganda. Where the state attempts to obscure, the artist restores. Where lives are reduced to statistics, he rehumanizes them. And in doing so, his portraits become more than images: they are monuments of truth.
