Footage recovered from the drone of an Al Jazeera team killed by the IDF in a targeted Jan. 7 missile strike raises critical questions about the Israeli justification for the attack.
By Louisa Loveluck, Imogen Piper, Sarah Cahlan, Hajar Harb and Hazem Balousha, The Washington PostHamza Dahdouh, left, with his brother, Mahmoud, who was also killed in an Israeli strike.
The Israel Defense Forces said in a statement the next day it had “identified and struck a terrorist who operated an aircraft that posed a threat to IDF troops.” Two days later, the military announced it had uncovered evidence that both men belonged to militant groups - Thuraya to Hamas and Dahdouh to Palestinian Islamic Jihad, its smaller rival in Gaza - and that the attack had been in response to an “immediate” threat.
Local journalists told The Post there was no official guidance on drones from the IDF, although one reporter said an Israeli officer had privately warned him against using one. Another said he had opted not to use his drone during the conflict, fearing it could be used as a pretext for an Israeli strike.
“It’s not enough to say that we suspected them so we killed them,” she said. “It’s very easy to say that in a combat situation.” Al Jazeera journalist Wael Dahdouh holds the hand of his son Hamza, who also worked for Al Jazeera and who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Rafah, Gaza Strip, Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024. Dahdouh lost his wife, two other children and a grandson earlier in the war and was nearly killed himself.
The men lived in tents for more than two months with other journalists in the city of Rafah, an area close to the Egyptian border, where some 1.4 million displaced Palestinians have sought refuge. The journalists laid their mattresses on wooden slats to insulate their beds from the cold, they said, and traveled to the scene of airstrikes and other attacks in groups - believing there was safety in numbers.
A social media post suggested that at least four people were killed in the strike, and that some of the dead and wounded had already been taken to the hospital.But with more bodies believed to be under the rubble, at least 11 journalists in Rafah set out for the scene - among them Dahdouh, Thuraya, and freelance reporters Muhammad al-Qahwaji and Hazem Rajab. By 10:39 a.m., Thuraya had a drone in the air, according to the metadata of videos he filmed that day.
William Goodhind, an open-source researcher with Contested Ground, a research project that tracks military movements in satellite imagery, said he found no sign of “armored vehicles, military trucks, strongholds, revetments, and/or rocket and mortar firing points.” He identified a police checkpoint around half a mile northwest of the drone launch but said it was unclear if it was still in use.
Palestinians look at a car targeted by an Israeli airstrike in Rafah, Gaza Strip, Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024. Al Jazeera journalist Wael Dahdouh mourns his son Hamza, who also worked for Al Jazeera and who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Rafah, Gaza Strip, Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024. Dahdouh lost his wife, two other children and a grandson earlier in the war and was nearly killed himself. The night of the attack, a battle over the narrative began. The IDF said in a statement that its aircraft had “identified and struck a terrorist who operated an aircraft that posed a threat to IDF troops.
The IDF’s justification for the strike fit “a pattern of responses that we identified even before this war,” said Sherif Mansour, the Middle East and North Africa program coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists - “evading responsibility, throwing accusations of terrorism on the journalists” and saying they “were in a position that threatens Israeli positions on the ground.”
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