If they are going to run around killing civilians with drones, I think they should first announce that operating a drone to take photographs is a risk since they cannot determine the nature of the drone. And they could perhaps also name the regions of highest risk so that journalists can make decisions for their own safety.
Do we even know that these three were just journalists and that they were doing what is claimed they were doing with that drone?
We know that many Gaza journalists also moonlight as Hamas terrorists.
We know that Israeli military spokespersons often claim the journalists killed by the IDF were part of Hamas but have not provided credible evidence to substantiate those claims.
Israel has been targeting journalists in Gaza since the start of the current war.
Israel has found evidence that links about half of them to the terrorists. That is far, far above chance. And there's no reason to think that Israel would have an ID on everyone when they strike the propaganda people.
A
study by Brown University in April found that Israeli attacks in Gaza since the war began in October 2023 have killed more journalists there than the U.S. Civil War, World Wars I and II, the Korean War, Vietnam War, the wars in Yugoslavia in the 1990s and 2000s, and the post-9/11 war in Afghanistan, combined.
The Committee to Protect Journalists
says "Israel is engaging in the deadliest and most deliberate effort to kill and silence journalists that CPJ has ever documented." Israeli attacks have also killed
dozens of relatives of
prominent journalists reporting in Gaza.
The smears are part of the strategy.
The problem is they call their propaganda people "journalists".
The latest major attack was Aug. 25, when an Israeli strike hit Reuters cameraman Hussam al-Masri during a live transmission from the open stairwell of a hospital, killing him on the spot. Israeli forces struck that same stairwell minutes later again, killing medics, first responders and four more journalists working for international media, including The
Associated Press and
Al Jazeera.
An initial finding by the military said troops targeted a camera positioned by Hamas, but the military provided no evidence and did not respond to further NPR questions. The military also said six militants were killed in the attack, but did not say if they were the intended target nor answer further questions.
And there is no question they are targeting journalists, which btw is a war crime, when they launch an airstrike on a clearly marked press tent.
Clearly marking a tent "press" doesn't make so.
And note that even a bona fide reporter who won't stop broadcasting stuff useful to the enemy is a valid target (say, the Al Jazeera people Israel threw out for refusing to stop broadcasting a live feed of Gaza.) You've already cooked your goose here: "camera positioned by Hamas". There is no need to show it was currently being used for hostile purposes.
And why does it not occur to you that someone operating a camera positioned by Hamas might very well be Hamas?
Two weeks before the Aug. 25 attack, on Aug. 11, six journalists were killed in a targeted Israeli airstrike on a press tent outside one of Gaza's main hospitals.
Israel's military said it was targeting Anas al-Sharif, Gaza's most well-known television reporter, who was killed while wearing a blue "PRESS" vest. The 28-year-old was Al Jazeera's correspondent in the north and had a massive online following. Before his death, he had denied Israeli allegations of affiliation with Hamas' military wing, and continued reporting despite the risks to his life. Early in the war, his home was bombed by Israeli forces and his father was killed.
Al Jazeera--as the organization that was left scrambling when Israel found one of their "reporters" guarding a hostage.
