Israel is now the leading cause of death for journalists.
And their Western colleagues won't even pretend to care.
Yesterday, Israel intentionally struck the Nasser Medical Complex hospital, located in Khan Younis in southern Gaza, with targeted shelling from a Merkava tank; this intentional strike on a hospital complex is a war crime by itself.
As rescue workers and journalists rushed to the scene to provide medical assistance or report on the events, Israel then executed what is known as a “double-tap” strike, another war crime, in which a second strike hits any arriving first responders. At least twenty-one Palestinians were confirmed dead as a result of Israel’s “double-tap” war crime, including five journalists.
Al Jazeera photojournalist Mohammad Salama, who is stolen from his fiancée at age 24
Reuters photojournalist Hussam al-Masri, who is stolen from his cancer-surviving wife at age 48
Freelance video journalist Moaz Abu Taha, who is stolen from his older brother at age 27
Freelance journalist Ahmed Abu Aziz, who is stolen from his wife at age 29
Freelance photojournalist Mariam Abu Dagga, who is stolen from her 13-year-old son at age 33
NBC News journalist Alexander Smith makes the point that in the past, America condemned this kind of “double tap” as the tactics of groups like al-Qaeda. But Israeli journalist and Oscar-winner Yuval Abraham makes it clear in his writing at +972 Magazine that the Israeli military executes the “double tap” strategy as routine practice.
It’s very clear to me that this war crime is only condemned when the perpetrator stands in opposition to Western interests. Evil when al-Qaeda does it, justified when the IDF does it. We should not hesitate to call Israel’s murder of medics and journalists what it is: a dedicated campaign of violent terrorism.
The justification that Israel gave for this act of terror is that a “Hamas camera” was broadcasting a live feed from the building, which in reality was a camera feed operated for Reuters by Mr. al-Masri. Israel claims he was not a target, but admits with this that they explicitly targeted him for performing basic journalistic activities.
Ms. Abu Dagga had based herself in the hospital to document the stories of starving Palestinian children, taking photos for the Associated Press of the tiny, emaciated victims of Israel’s genocidal man-made famine. Her reporting was essential to the documentation of Israeli war crimes.
And now that she and her fellow journalists have been silenced by Israeli weapons, their memory will be defamed and slandered by a dedicated Israeli propaganda unit, which exists for the core purpose of manufacturing reasons to murder journalists.
As of today’s writing, in the twenty-two months since the beginning of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, 278 journalists and media workers have been confirmed killed, including 273 Palestinians, three Lebanese and two Israelis.
For contrast, the Committee to Protect Journalists claims 29 deaths of journalists and media workers in the Russo-Ukrainian (2014-now), 76 deaths in the Afghanistan War (2001-2021), and 228 deaths in the Iraq War (2003-2011). The only one of these to come close in death count is Iraq, but that was in an eight-year span while Israel’s campaign started less than 700 days ago, and is still going.
We can go even further back to cover the numbers from the Yugoslav Wars and the Vietnam War, and they also do not touch Israel’s sum of murdered journalists. But perhaps it is the Vietnam War which makes clear just why Israel is going to such extensive effort to kill every journalist in Gaza.
After all, it was public reporting on American war crimes during the Vietnam War which rightfully enraged the world and galvanized opposition against the United States, with one big example being Seymour Hersh’s explosive reveal of the My Lai massacre.
The belligerents of other conflicts generally understand that targeting and killing journalists reporting on the conflict is counterproductive to their war goals; they may not care about committing war crimes, but they do care, to an extent, about limiting negative stories that may provoke sanctions, arms embargoes, or peacekeeper deployments.
Israel, however, doesn’t care at all about negative public perception. Sure, they make efforts at propaganda, but Israel has a robust military industrial complex of their own, and the United States government has been deeply bipartisan in their material support for Israel’s military campaigns, including their veto at the United Nations Security Council. Israel has essentially become immune to negative PR.
Haaretz presents various examples of mainstream Israeli journalists, working for outlets like i24NEWS, Israel Hayom, and Channel 12, praising the murders of these Palestinian journalists, and most disturbingly, condemning Netanyahu for not going far enough in their warped judgment.
Western journalists have not been quite so bloodthirsty in public, but they refuse to cover these stories or make excuses about them. When they do talk about it with some measure of honesty, they frequently fail to even mention the names of their dead colleagues.
And then they pivot from the dead journalist whose name they refuse to say, and talk about the importance of “international” journalists being allowed into Gaza, while refusing to give the Palestinian journalists who freelance for them the dignity of being called a journalist.
Obviously, journalists from around the globe should be free to enter Gaza and report, but it says a great deal that there are already journalists who are providing coverage from Gaza, and their international colleagues are using their reporting while at the same time impugning them as “biased” for being Palestinian and writing about where they live, something Western journalists are never accused of.
Many of these murdered Palestinian journalists are very close to my own age; they’re doing exactly what I would be doing, if I had been born in Gaza like they were. But in dehumanizing them to such an extent, we refuse to admit they’re doing the job better than any of us in the West ever have.
The finding here is clear, and it is undeniable: Israel has become the leading cause of death worldwide for journalists. That is because Israel has something they want to hide…and it is something the world needs to see.