By Leo Mahe
On March 23, nearly two years into the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, ambulances were sent out to evacuate Palestinian civilians after an Israeli shelling. An ambulance and its crew were “hit” on their way to the civilians’ location, leading several more ambulances, a fire truck, and a clearly labeled United Nations vehicle to head over and try to rescue them. Seventeen people were dispatched in total, but never returned from their dispatch, sparking international concern for their well-being.
It took five days for the United Nations and the Palestine Red Crescent Society, a branch of the International Red Cross, to gain permission from the Israeli government to search for the missing aid workers. They found 15 of the dispatched medics buried in a shallow mass grave, alongside their ambulances and equipment. The Red Crescent reported that one medic was still missing and another had been detained by Israeli forces before eventually being released.
Cellphone footage obtained by The New York Times from an anonymous senior United Nations official revealed that “the ambulances and fire truck that [the aid workers] were traveling in were clearly marked and had their emergency signal lights on when Israeli troops hit them with a barrage of gunfire.” The bursts of gunfire continue throughout the five minutes of footage, and the medics can be heard praying to God as they run for their lives.
The paramedic who recorded the footage, and whose name was not disclosed “because he has relatives living in Gaza concerned about Israeli retaliation,” can be heard saying, “Forgive me, mother. I just wanted to help people. I wanted to save lives.” He was found with a bullet in his head in the mass grave.
The Israeli military later admitted to the BBC that [1] the aid workers were unarmed, proof that, despite not being under any clear threat, Israeli soldiers chose to continue their onslaught for several minutes straight.
While the incident itself points to concerning behavior from Israeli soldiers, the shooting is important for another reason: the true events completely contradicted the then-official Israeli narrative.
When the UN officials uncovered real video footage of the incident, the fabrications fell away: the ambulances had emergency signal lights on, the medics were wearing reflective gear, and all the shots fired were from Israeli troops at close range. Importantly, however, before the footage was released to the public and to Israel itself, Israel chose to contrive their own narrative to justify the mass shooting incident.
In a claim The New York Times describes as “erroneou[s]” and a “contradiction” of the video footage they were provided, the Israeli military had asserted that the vehicles had “advanced suspiciously… without headlights or emergency signals.” Israeli forces went on to claim—without evidence—that “at least six of the 15 were Hamas operatives,” and, on April 5 (after the footage was released), an army official claimed that “aerial footage showed troops opening fire ‘from afar.’” The Israeli military refused to comment on the findings from the BBC, which suggested much closer gunfire than Israel was suggesting.
Many of these claims are either partially or entirely contradictory to the facts that have since been laid out, disproven by the video footage and subsequent audio analysis. There were emergency signals; there were headlights; and the medics advanced in a manner not distinguishable from any other medical emergency situation. None of the supposed Hamas militants seemed to have any weapons, making it impossible to justify firing at them blindly—even if they were militants.
Even more glaringly, an Israeli spokesperson posed the argument that “Hamas operatives in Gaza often did not wear military uniforms and that Israel had seen them posing as civilians.” Israel’s claim that any Gazan could be a Hamas operative sets a profoundly dangerous precedent: in a warzone where Hamas militants make up less than 2% of Gaza’s approximately 2.1 million inhabitants, the claim suggests that Israel sees every Gazan as a potential target.
Furthermore, while Israel did not provide any evidence of Hamas militants posing as civilians or aid workers, there is much more well-documented evidence of Israel doing so: in an entirely separate incident, “about a dozen Israeli forces disguised as civilians and medical staff entered [a West Bank] hospital carrying guns” to carry out a raid. Perhaps the Israeli military’s comfort with posing as civilians has led them to believe other militant groups would do the same; or, at the very least, it is extremely hypocritical for Israel to criticize another group for doing the same thing they have.
Yet where Israel has failed to provide an accurate account of events, humanitarian organizations have proven their accuracy in reporting. In the days after the mass grave was discovered, the Palestine Red Crescent accused Israeli forces of killing the medics “in cold blood,” emphasizing that the aid workers “had not been carrying weapons and posed no threat.” These facts far more closely align with what was seen in the footage, an unsurprising fact given their humanitarian—and thus apolitical—stance in the conflict.
Oftentimes, when we read reports from The New York Times or other prominent American newspapers, claims from the Palestine Red Crescent Society are presented alongside claims by the Israeli military, with both sides generally given equal weight. This time, things were different—the facts very clearly aligned with one side, and mainstream media reported accordingly. But more broadly, the Israeli military’s brazen disregard for factual reporting on their actions should force us to question this false equivalence.
We cannot simply allow the Israeli military to apologize as though their inaccurate reporting of what occurred was simply a “mistaken” initial report. Israel has a vested interest in justifying their own actions, something journalists should keep in mind when reporting on the conflict. When doctors state that supposedly Hamas-controlled hospitals are not actually harboring terrorists, we should listen. When legal authorities, journalists, and doctors say that Israel is targeting innocent civilians, we should listen. And when Israel claims they are not intentionally attacking civilians, we must no longer accept their claim at face value. This false equivalence must end.
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