World ‘leaving behind key ethics’ during genocide: Journalist
Rahma Zein, an Egyptian journalist and consultant for Tech for Palestine, says mainstream media are complicit in the Gaza genocide.
“We’re seeing beheaded bodies, limbs, families being burnt alive and then juxtaposing that is not only media silence, but media complicity,” she told Al Jazeera on the sidelines of the Al Jazeera Forum in Doha, Qatar.
Zein added that while the world prides itself on being developed technologically, “it’s a world that’s leaving behind key ethics and key values.”
Referencing the killing of six-year-old Hind Rajab, who was shot by Israeli forces as she awaited emergency services after the soldiers killed her family, Zein said: “I’m not so happy if I have the latest AI, but a child is being shot at 355 times and the individual who shot her is allowed to go and travel here and there with full impunity.”
Speaking of big tech companies silencing pro-Palestinian voices, Zein said it was time to “build our own infrastructure, so that we’re no longer apologetic, no longer appeasing”.
The partial reopening of Gaza's southern Rafah crossing with Egypt has been marked by chaos and severe restrictions imposed by Israel, as tens of thousands of Palestinians continue to wait for medical evacuation to receive urgent care outside the Gaza Strip. According to U.N. data, only 36 Palestinians in need of medical treatment were allowed to leave Gaza during the first four days of the crossing's reopening. Palestinians permitted to reenter Gaza have also reported abuse and hourslong interrogations. This comes amid growing skepticism over the implementation of the second phase of the Trump-brokered ceasefire, which Israel has repeatedly violated with near-daily attacks across Gaza since the truce took effect in October.
"No one inside Gaza is calling this a ceasefire," says Arwa Damon, former CNN correspondent and the founder of INARA, a nonprofit organization that supports children impacted by war. She says ongoing Israeli restrictions on medical evacuation are essentially a death sentence for many people, including children. "They are either going to end up with permanent injury or they are going to die."
