Can you imagine being a reporter in Gaza, knowing that you’re on a target list by Israel simply because you are a reporter and feeling compelled to write a will to your young son? That’s what Maryam Abu Dagga, the tireless and brave freelance reporter for the AP, did before she was murdered this week, along with four other journalists, rescue workers and Palestinian civilians, in a targeted double-tap strike by the Israelis outside a hospital. Here’s what she wrote…

At least 20 people, including 4 journalists (one a freelancer for AP), a first responder and hospital staff, were killed Monday in an Israeli “double-tap” strike just minutes apart on the same location at southern Gaza’s Nasser Hospital. The double-tap strikes are meant to kill first responders sent to rescue the wounded from the initial strike…

Yuval Abraham on Israel’s use of double-tap airstrikes: “Source in Southern Command: ‘Another strike will be carried out to ensure that rescue efforts do not take place. First aid providers, rescuers – kill them. Attack again, on them. This is the procedure. Since October 7, it has been in place.”

Dr. Atef Al-Hout, Director of Nasser Medical Complex, described Israel’s double-tap attack on the hospital’s central surgery ward, then hit the staircase opposite the department where journalists had gathered to document events, after an earlier Israeli airstrike in the same location had already murdered Reuters cameraman Hussam Al-Masri:

What happened was that an Israeli drone bombed the surgery department, more specifically, the staircase opposite the surgery department, resulting in a number of martyrs, mostly journalists who were there to document the events. Without any prior warning or anything. And it was targeted twice, not once. The surgery department at the hospital. We are trying to finish these surgeries, as it will soon be put out of service until it’s restored. We are talking about the central surgery department here. It contains six operating rooms, roughly 70 percent of the number of operating rooms within the Nasser complex. What results from that, we will be witnessing with our own eyes very soon.

In the 22 months since October 2023, Israel has launched more than 800 attacks on healthcare facilities in Gaza.

While Netanyahu wrote off the Israeli attack on Nasser Hospital that killed journalists, rescue workers and civilians as a “tragic mishap,” his own favorite TV network, Channel 14, reported that “The soldiers say: the attack on the Nasser terror headquarters was approved and coordinated with the high command.”

Dr. Yawa Hawari offered this in response to Israel’s assertion that the airstrike that murdered 20 people at Nasser Hospital was meant to knock out a “Hamas camera” (which actually belonged to Reuters journalist Hussam al-Masri, who filmed the attack that killed him): “They want you to believe that Israeli regime surveillance is so precise that it can see a camera set up on the stairwell of a hospital building but can’t see all the journalists and civil defense workers around it.”

The “Hamas” camera…

…actually belonged to Reuters journalist Hussam al-Masri, who was using it to provide a live feed from the hospital.

The targets were the very people Israel murdered. They’ve bragged about how precise their airstrikes are, using the Habsora, Lavender and Where’s Daddy? AI systems….

Jerome Grimaud, Médecins Sans Frontières’s emergency coordinator in Gaza, on Israel’s double-tap strike on Nasser hospital:

We denounce in the strongest possible terms Israel’s horrendous attacks on the Nasser medical complex today – the only partially functioning public hospital in the south of Gaza. Israeli forces killed at least 20 people and injured 50 more in consecutive strikes, including healthcare workers, rescuers, and journalists.

Among them was Mariam Abu Dagga, a freelance photographer who frequently worked with MSF. We are heartbroken by her death. Mariam leaves behind a son who must now grow up without his mother. At least four other journalists were also killed today.

Some MSF staff members were forced to shelter in the laboratory as Israel repeatedly struck the building amidst rescue efforts. We are outraged as the Israeli forces continue to attack healthcare workers and journalists with impunity.

For the past 22 months, we have watched as healthcare facilities have been levelled, journalists silenced, and healthcare workers buried beneath the rubble by the Israeli forces. As Israel continues to shun international law, the only witnesses of their genocidal campaign are deliberately being targeted. It must stop now.

Photojournalist Valerie Zink on why she can no longer work for Reuters…

Western media is directly culpable for creating the conditions in which this can........

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