Mass graves and truth-telling in Gaza

Bryn Evans • April 25, 2024

Chapter Tags: Politics, Philosophy

Following the termination of Israel’s siege and occupation of the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis and al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, humanitarian crews uncovered more than 300 bodies buried in mass graves surrounding the hospital complexes. Preliminary reports recount Palestinian victims—including women, children, and medical staff—missing limbs, stripped of clothing, or with their hands tied. Several reputable media outlets suggest that these discoveries are evidence of Israel's torture and execution of innocent Palestinians. Head of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights for the Occupied Palestinian Territory Ajith Sunghay confirmed he had seen images of victims with their hands tied, but that they did not yet meet the standard required to be considered fact.

While Israeli officials have been quick to delegitimize the discoveries, calling reports “baseless and unfounded,” United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk and European Union spokesman Peter Stano among many other global leaders have called for an “independent investigation.” As Türk restated: under international law, the intentional killing of hors de combat individuals, including civilians and medical workers, is a war crime.

There is undeniably a significant amount of material within the preliminary reports that requires further investigation. For example, the identity of the victims could provide important context; only 42 bodies have currently been identified.

However, a more fundamental problem jeopardizes the independent investigation of these mass graves as well as any other truth-telling mission in Gaza. Thanks to its ongoing military occupation, Israel unilaterally dictates access for reporters and aid workers into the Palestinian territories it illegally occupies. For Western journalists—the only journalists that major world leaders choose to trust—this means that Israel can control where, when, and how reporting takes place. Barring a tiny handful of foreign reporters who were permitted entry into Gaza after agreeing to be "embedded" with the Israel Defence Forces, Israel requires that Westerners cover the occupation from Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, or southern Israel. All journalists operating within Israeli jurisdiction must submit their materials to the Israeli Military Censor, a body affiliated with the country's army, for approval prior to publication. Moreover, on April 1, the Israeli Knesset passed a law that would allow the government to ban foreign news networks, with the Prime Minister vowing to use it against renowned international outlet Al-Jazeera.

Even before Israel's most recent invasion of Gaza, government took a hardline approach to the free press. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has enjoyed the "unfailing support" of one of Israel's largest print media companies, Israel Hayom, for over a decade and is accused in multiple corruption cases of bribing outlets to influence their editorial policies. Between 2001 and 2023, Israeli military forces killed 20 journalists in a "decades-long pattern" of impunity, including Al Jazeera correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh on May 11, 2022 as she covered an Israeli raid on the Jenin refugee camp, dawning a protective vest with the word “PRESS” in white letters across the chest and back.

Permeating a journalist’s work in Gaza or Israel is therefore the threat of expulsion, should restrictive conditions on access not be complied with, or worse: 25 journalists have been arrested by Israel since October 7th for “ideological prejudice” in reporting, while 97 journalists, most of them local Palestinians, have been killed in the violent Israeli occupation. Many more have been deterred from their work by Israeli threats, cyberattacks, and killings of family members. Because of a lack of press freedom for foreign reporters, local Palestinian journalists are being forced to actively document the very war that they and their families are trying to survive.

On February 1, five special rapporteurs of the UN Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights advised: “We have received disturbing reports that, despite being clearly identifiable in jackets and helmets marked ‘press’ or traveling in well-marked press vehicles, journalists have come under attack, which would seem to indicate that the killings, injury, and detention are a deliberate strategy by Israeli forces to obstruct the media and silence critical reporting.”

Since October 7th, Israeli forces have also killed 220 humanitarian aid workers, many of them UN employees, in Gaza: the largest number killed in a single conflict in modern history. Independent investigation was again called for after Israel shared inadequate internal reviews of certain killings, such as the murder of seven World Central Kitchen aid workers by an Israeli strike. Thousands more aid workers have been prevented by Israel's inhumane policy on  from fulfilling their role of delivering food, water, and supplies to Palestinians.

Although Israel has repeatedly stated that it is not official policy to kill journalists or aid workers, the ongoing failures by its highest ranking military officers to stem the indiscriminate slaughter of neutral individuals suggests that these killings may be intentional or at the very least negligent. A strong argument can be made that the killing, intimidation, and restriction of neutrals is a useful political tactic for Israel. The very journalists and UN employees who are left harrowed by the fate of their peers and whose access to Gaza and Israel is severely limited are ultimately the only ones capable of conducting the type of “independent review” that will convince global leaders to act against Israel’s wrongdoings. As long as Israel maintains an environment so hostile to neutral parties that these parties cannot effectively operate, it can continue to deny accountability for the atrocities leading to the mass graves, as well as numerous other actions that many scholars and NGOs have already concluded are illegal and criminal.

There is good reason that the press is often labelled the “public watchdog.” Its role in providing unbiased information in contentious situations is an invaluable tool in holding those in power to account, furthering public discourse, and ultimately solving urgent dilemmas. As history shows, when the press cannot fulfil this role, tyranny and public misdirection rise. In Gaza, the tactical inhibition of the press' role can turn the discovery of a heinous war crime into a petty debate over reliability.