While finding Hamas operatives scattered among Palestine's journalists is inevitable, the problem is that these attacks keep happening to entire groupings of journalists, simultaneously killing all the other journalists working in proximity to the intended targets:
Just over one week ago, for example, a completely
different attack was made directly on yet another grouping of journalists. They were working in a media tent outside the seoarate
al Shifa hospital. That attack evidently received little western coverage because all of the journalists killed in it were working for Al Jazeera (
news article and
dedication broadcast).
In contrast, I believe the reasons the latest attack yesterday is drawing so much international condemnation are:
* It was captured clearly on video, not once but twice, first in a
live broadcast, and simultaneously, in an even more vivid video from
one of the journalist victims' own cameras, at the actual point of impact.
* During
this Democracy Now segment yesterday, it was revealed that the exact 4th floor hospital balcony targeted in the strike was a known location journalists frequented every day to achieve the altitude needed to reach Israeli cell towers (given the complete collapse of Gaza's cellular infrastructure). That Democracy Now segment also revealed that an Israeli surveillance quadcoper was photographed hovering over the location for an hour before the attack by a Reuters journalist setting up livestreams on the hospital roof, suggesting that the IDF could see who was up there, and what they were doing, in the lead-up to the attack.
* The attack was a "double tap" strike. After the first victims were struck by the initial missile, a second missile was fired at the same spot after rescuers and
even more journalists had gathered there to tend to and document the injured and dead. This was also reported in the Democracy Now segment above, but is so pertinent a fact, it deserves its own bullet point.
This incident is appalling. Many people, even
in Israel itself, are beginning to question whether the attacks on all these journalists aren't retaliation for their coverage of the war and growing famine. (The Democracy Now segment above reported that the number of journalists killed in Gaza since October of 2023 has reached 244, more than in Vietnam or WWII.)
I hope this post won't be taken offensively or as political by anyone. I know this conflict is a tinderbox to both sides, and I have done my best to keep everything above about the facts of this particular attack ... on broadcasters.