Gaza’s remaining lifelines were flooded with blood once again on Monday. Nasser Medical Complex was struck by Israeli shells in the city of Khan Younis, already bursting with war wounded, killing a minimum of 19 Palestinians, five journalists among them and multiple emergency workers. This was not merely an “incident” on the pages of a war diary. This was an affront on the sanctity of human life, medical havens, and the notion of the truth.
The Broad Daylight Murder of Journalists
Among the fatalities were Reuters cameraman Hussam al-Masri, Al Jazeera cameraman Mohammad Salama, freelance journalist Mariam Abu Daqqa, NBC contributor Moaz Abu Taha, and Ahmad Abu Aziz.
Reuters photographer Hussam al-Masri’s live broadcast was severed mid-stream, seconds before the Israeli missiles struck the hospital. As colleagues dashed to preserve lives, the second assault, a “double-tap” in the language of the authorities, took them too.
This was no “collateral damage.” This was cold-blooded killing to avenge those recording facts.
The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate was equally blunt: it’s an “open war on free media” intended to scare journalists into silence and keep them from revealing crimes to the world.”
Over 250 media workers were assassinated since the 7th of October 2023. Gaza is no longer the most risky mission any media worker would receive, it is a tellers-of-the-truth graveyard.
Hospitals Under Siege:
It struck one of the few working medical centers in Gaza. The Nasser Hospital was full to capacity when the medicine, electricity, and supply levels were catastrophic. Ambulance personnel, civil defense members – those whose sole responsibility is to move shattered bodies from debris – were among the dead attempting to extract the wounded.
Let it register: patients, reporters, medics were attacked within a hospital, an internationally-law-protected facility. And Israel shelled the health infrastructure of Gaza to bits again. The UN had already warned that the medical infrastructure of Gaza was on the verge of complete collapse. Monday’s massacre propelled it closer to the edge.
Silence from Israel
Nothing from the Prime Minister’s Office and the Israeli army. No explanation. No apology. Just silence, as if the lives of dozens can be treated casually.
While foreign media outlets whose reporters were attacked and assassinated plead for simple medical care for their injured reporters, Reuters relates that it is “deeply shocked” but persists in “desperately seeking government authorities” to come to their aid. Let us be candid: this constitutes impunity.
The Human Cost
The ministry reports that more than 62,686 Palestinians have been killed since the war began on October 7, thousands beneath the rubble. Reporting the killing of journalists, whose mission it is to endanger everything to report the tale of truth, signifies something else. Crimes go unreported without reporters. The war machine operates on the black market without reporters.
It is not just murder of a witness. It is murder to ensure there is never any means of proving the crime.
Enough Is Enough
Each attack on a hospital, each bombing of a medic, each intentional killing of a journalist declares one undeniable fact: Gazan human life is worthless. International law, Geneva Conventions, “laws of war,” they are all irrelevant when there is shelling of packed hospitals full of civilians. If the world can just sit back and watch Nasser Hospital burn, patients, doctors, journalists, trapped rescuers underneath its rubble, and do nothing, then we’re complicit. Silence is a choice. And right now, it is costing lives.
