{"id":6309,"date":"2025-08-29T16:13:56","date_gmt":"2025-08-29T14:13:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/?p=6309"},"modified":"2025-08-29T16:13:56","modified_gmt":"2025-08-29T14:13:56","slug":"media-gaza-investigations-atrocities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/2025-08-29\/media-gaza-investigations-atrocities\/","title":{"rendered":"Even the media’s Gaza ‘investigations’ hide the real story of Israel’s atrocities"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The atrocity news treadmill makes sure western media are so busy chasing after Israel\u2019s latest crime in Gaza they never pause long enough to piece together the bigger story of genocide<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

An investigation by CNN<\/a> into Israel\u2019s strike on the Nasser Hospital this week \u2013 an attack that killed more than 20 people, including emergency workers and five journalists \u2013 is a case study in how even well-intentioned journalism, ostensibly examining Israeli crimes, ends up concealing more than it reveals.<\/p>\n

CNN\u2019s detailed examination of footage of Monday\u2019s strike on the hospital in Khan Younis found that Israel\u2019s so-called \u201cdouble-tap\u201d actually involved three missiles.<\/p>\n

The first strike hit a fourth-floor stairwell close to a hospital upper balcony. Then, 10 minutes later, as emergency crews and journalists scrambled to help the victims, a second and third strike hit precisely the same spot.<\/p>\n

A munitions expert who examined the footage notes that the second and third missiles were almost certainly fired from two different tanks in very close succession.<\/p>\n

As he and CNN conclude, that removes any last trace of doubt on whether the attack on the hospital was, as Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu claims, \u201ca tragic mishap\u201d. Rather, it was a highly coordinated precision strike.<\/p>\n

CNN reiterates a further and important contextual point that should obliterate Israel\u2019s subsequent justification for its attack, following what Israel terms an \u201cinitial investigation\u201d.<\/p>\n

Let us note in passing that the Israeli military is pretending to investigate itself only to dampen the rare furore that has erupted over the strike, chiefly because the new atrocity was caught on camera and killed journalists working for major western news organisations. Israel has abandoned<\/a> almost all of its previous investigations as soon as the western media could be provided with a fresher atrocity to report on. And Israel seems to have an endless production line of atrocities with which to distract them.<\/p>\n

All too predictably, Israel\u2019s \u201cinitial investigation\u201d found a \u201cHamas\u201d excuse.<\/p>\n

According to the Israeli military, it hit Nasser Hospital\u2019s stairwell because it had identified a camera there supposedly being used by Hamas<\/a>.<\/p>\n

No \u2018mishap\u2019<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Even if we take this claim seriously \u2013 which, outrageously, is exactly what the western media are doing \u2013 it falls apart on even the most cursory inspection.<\/p>\n

Not least, the Israeli military was fully aware that this was a favoured spot for Gaza\u2019s journalists, a place where they often congregated.<\/p>\n

The high elevation and good cell signal meant that it was ideal for uploading their material and for conducting live broadcasts.<\/p>\n

And the location at Nasser Hospital \u2013 the last (barely) functioning medical facility in southern Gaza \u2013 meant it was certain to be at the centre of the story every time Israel bombed the surrounding area, as it does relentlessly.<\/p>\n

Nasser Hospital was the site from which emergency crews were dispatched, and it was the place where Israel\u2019s bloodied victims were brought for treatment.<\/p>\n

CNN\u2019s investigation features several photographs and videos of the journalists Israel killed this week working on the balcony and stairwell in the preceding several months. The photo below, by Mohammad Salama, was taken on June 12 and includes two of the journalists Israel killed this week: Mariam Abu Daqqa and Moath Abu Taha.<\/p>\n\"\"\n

All of this was known to the Israeli military. When they targeted a \u201cHamas camera\u201d, they knew that, in reality, that camera was being used by a Reuters journalist, Hussam Al-Masri.<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s ever-present drones, their whine constantly filling the skies over Gaza, had been watching him and other journalists on that stairwell day after day, week after week, for months on end.<\/p>\n

And when Israel struck 10 minutes later with two coordinated missiles, it knew that the main victims would be the emergency workers who went to rescue survivors from the first strike and journalists \u2013 al-Masri\u2019s friends \u2013 who were nearby and rushed to the scene.<\/p>\n

Nothing was a \u201cmishap\u201d. It was planned down to the minutest detail.<\/p>\n

Reuters smears itself<\/strong><\/h3>\n

But here is where we get to the main problem with CNN\u2019s coverage.<\/p>\n

In picking apart Israel\u2019s patently bogus claims, the investigation treats those claims with a seriousness they in no way merit. And worse, it ignores the wider context that damns Israel and makes the investigation itself \u2013 any investigation \u2013 utterly redundant in terms of determining whether a war crime was committed.<\/p>\n

On that matter, there can be no debate. And yet, CNN\u2019s investigation takes as its premise the idea that there are two sides to be considered and settled. That the truth has to be determined. That Israel\u2019s case needs to be weighed.<\/p>\n

These are the straws that western leaders, and the large contingent of genocide apologists in western professional circles, including journalists, so desperately clutch at.<\/p>\n

Because otherwise it would be only too clear that they have been cheerleading \u2013 and assisting \u2013 a genocide for two years.<\/p>\n

The first point is this: An investigation by Israel, or anyone else for that matter, is not needed to establish whether the targeted camera belonged to Hamas. It didn\u2019t because it belonged to Reuters news agency.<\/p>\n

The extraordinary contortions made by Reuters to avoid pointing this simple fact out are illustrative of the way media outlets are willing to construct narratives that actually undermine the very thing they are supposed to be engaged in: truth-telling journalism.<\/p>\n

Reuters knows the camera position on the stairwell was not being used by Hamas because Reuters was using it for their live feeds. Images of the wrecked camera even show it wired up for broadcast at the time it was hit.<\/p>\n

And yet like the rest of the media, Reuters is required to play dumb: it reports<\/a> Israel\u2019s outright lie that it targeted a \u201cHamas camera\u201d \u2013 and six terrorists alongside it \u2013 as if that might be true.<\/p>\n

Reuters headline on the story \u2013 the only part that most people read \u2013 runs: Initial inquiry says Hamas camera was target of Israeli strike that killed journalists<\/em>.<\/p>\n\"\"\n

Notice, Reuters does not even put scare-quote marks around the term \u201cHamas camera\u201d to alert readers to the fact that this claim should be treated with caution, or better still derision.<\/p>\n

Nor does the agency include a comment from one of its senior editorial staff disputing Israel\u2019s claim or presenting its own side of the story.<\/p>\n

Astonishingly, Reuters instead colludes in smearing itself by entertaining Israel\u2019s claim that its own live-feed camera was being used by Hamas.<\/p>\n

Rather than defend its own journalist, it leaves it up to an Israeli military spokesperson to later conclude that al-Masri, Reuters\u2019 journalist, was not the intended \u201ctarget\u201d \u2013 and thereby, presumably, exonerate him of being a terrorist. If only Reuters had done that first.<\/p>\n\"\"\n

But the Israeli spokesperson\u2019s \u201cadmission\u201d only deepens the absurdity of Israel\u2019s claims. How was a Reuters camera serving Hamas when it was being operated at the time by a Reuters journalist who was not the target?<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t look to Reuters, or CNN, or any of our western media for an answer. The mystery will simply be left to permanently cloud our understanding.<\/p>\n

Are the media doing all this in the interests of a self-sabotaging notion of phoney \u201cbalance\u201d? Or because the job of Reuters and the rest of the establishment media is to reinforce a western narrative in which Israel is always the good guy, even when it is perpetrating genocidal \u201cmishaps\u201d \u2013 and because the journalists these media outlets employ are terrified of incurring the wrath of Israel, and Washington behind it?<\/p>\n

If even Reuters behaves this way when its own camera has been recruited by Israel to justify the murder of one of its own journalists, what more can we expect of media like CNN when they \u201cinvestigate\u201d the story?<\/p>\n

These outlets are all so utterly servile to an overarching narrative that promotes the interests of the West and its top military client state in the oil-rich Middle East that they would rather bury the truth than risk taking on the centres of power.<\/p>\n

Routine war crimes<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Second, even if we accept Israel\u2019s ludicrous claim that it identified a \u201cHamas camera\u201d at the site, why did it fire two more missiles 10 minutes later?<\/p>\n

The Reuters camera was destroyed and the journalist operating it killed in the first hit. Israel knew that because its drones surveilled the site of the attack.<\/p>\n

A second round of missiles was entirely unnecessary \u2013 if the aim was to take out the camera.<\/p>\n

But, of course, that wasn\u2019t the aim. The goal was \u2013 as it has been throughout this genocide \u2013 to target both the enclave\u2019s medical workers, who are needed to save the lives of those Israel wants to exterminate, and the media workers Israel wishes to kill so there are no witnesses to its Final Solution for the people of Gaza.<\/p>\n

A 10-minute delay between strikes was ideal in attracting the very people that are highest on Israel\u2019s list to murder.<\/p>\n

The point intentionally lost as CNN and the rest of the media pretend to debate the logistics of the strike is that this is yet another attack by Israel \u2013 one of hundreds \u2013 on Gaza\u2019s hospitals over the past two years.<\/p>\n

And it is just the latest assassination strike against Gaza\u2019s journalists, more than 200 of whom have been killed \u2013 an unprecedented death toll.<\/p>\n

Intentionally attacking hospitals and killing journalists used to be considered the gravest of war crimes.<\/p>\n

Now these attacks are so routine that the latest one on Nasser Hospital is simply the unremarkable backdrop to a story \u2013 a preposterous one \u2013 about whether there was a secret Hamas camera in a busy stairwell used by journalists. Even to entertain the story as credible, as the western media is doing, is an insult to Gaza\u2019s journalists and to western audience\u2019s intelligence.<\/p>\n

Third, shortly after the attack on Nasser Hospital, CNN interviewed Dr Mimi Syed, who revealed<\/a> that, exceptionally, there had been no foreign doctors or aid workers at Nasser Hospital that day. All of them had been required to attend in person a training session on gender sensitivity at the offices of the World Health Organisation. Attendees have backed up her account.<\/p>\n

\n

Dr. Mimi Syed reports that Israel asked foreign doctors to evacuate the Nasser Hospital in Gaza before bombing it today. Israel knows as long as they kill Palestinian doctors & journalists rather than foreign ones they can carry on with the genocide, business as usual. pic.twitter.com\/BB1huuYnR9<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Zachary Foster (@_ZachFoster) August 25, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n