Israel-Hamas war, Gaza genocide

[SvennoJ]

‘Where is the outrage’ and solidarity from international journalists?

Mohamad Elmasry, media studies professor at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, says he is “at a loss for words” over Israel’s latest deadly attack on journalists in Gaza.

“Israel has been at war with journalism and journalists from the very beginning of the war,” Elmasry told Al Jazeera. “They’re not hiding it. They’re very open about this.

“But the question that I have is, where are the international journalists? Where is The New York Times? Where is CNN? Where are the major mainstream Western news outlets?

“Because when Charlie Hebdo journalists were killed in 2015, that caused global outrage for months. It was a major story in every single Western news outlet. And I applauded journalists for coming to the aid of their colleagues. But now, where is the outrage?”

We’re running out of words

This is not the first time that Israeli forces attacked Nasser Hospital and this is not the first time a journalist was killed. It is, indeed, a very hard day for journalists again.

Palestinian journalists have been mourning their colleagues every single week. We just lost four Al Jazeera colleagues in the past couple of weeks, and Palestinians are still mourning and grieving journalists again today.

Many of my colleagues are now reporting on the incident and reporting on this attack just like I am. And for the first time, we’re running out of words; our colleagues have been killed live on air.

This has been documented, and there are many other journalists who are still trying to recognise other journalists, right now, who have been wounded in this attack.

Israel feels it can ‘do whatever it wants’

Mohamad Elmasry, media studies professor at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, says Israel has learned it can “pretty much do whatever it wants” with no repercussions during the course of the Gaza war.

“If there’s anything that Israel has learned over the last 23 months, it’s that it can pretty much do whatever it wants and get away with it,” he told Al Jazeera, referencing attacks that killed paramedics, aid workers and journalists.

“All they’ve [Israel’s army] have had to do is come out with a statement either denying it, deflecting it or blaming Hamas,” Elmasry said. “We’ll see what they say about this [latest attack on Nasser Hospital].

“Within the next couple of hours, they’ll make some comment. My best guess is that they’ll probably say they were targeting a ‘terrorist’ and then just move on.”