The Washington Post publishes a video that contradicts the Israeli version of a raid that killed two Al Jazeera journalists, accused of being terrorists.
On January 7, the Israeli army carried out a targeted rocket attack on a car in which there were four Palestinian journalists, just outside Khan Yunis in southern Gaza. Two members of an Al Jazeera team – Hamza Dahdouh, 27, and drone operator Mustafa Thuraya, 30 – were killed along with their driver. Two freelance journalists were seriously injured. They were returning from the scene of an earlier Israeli attack on a building, where they had used a drone to film the aftermath.
And the drone itself would be central to the Israeli justification of the attack. The Israel Defense Forces said in a statement the next day that it had “identified and targeted a terrorist operating an aerial vehicle who posed a threat to IDF troops.”
Two days later, the army announced that it had discovered evidence that both men belonged to militant groups – Thuraya in Hamas and Dahdouh in Palestinian Islamic Jihad – and that the attack had been in response to an “immediate” threat.
The Washington Post obtained and reviewed drone footage of Thuraya, which were stored on a memory card recovered at the scene and sent to a Palestinian production company in Turkey. No Israeli soldiers, planes or other military equipment are visible in the footage shot that day – which the Post publishes in its entirety – raising questions about why the journalists were targeted. Other journalists said they were unaware of troop movements in the area.
Interviews with 14 witnesses to the attack and colleagues of the slain journalists offer the most detailed account yet of the deadly incident. The Post found no indication that either man was acting as anything other than a reporter that day. Both had passed through Israeli checkpoints on their way south at the start of the war; Dahdouh had recently been granted permission to leave Gaza, a rare privilege unlikely to be granted to a known militant.
In response to multiple requests and detailed questions from the Post, the IDF said: “We have nothing further to add.”
The Post failed to identify other cases during the war in which journalists were targeted by the IDF for flying drones, which were widely used to capture the extent of the devastation in Gaza.
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