Israel murders Gaza journalists Hossam Shbat, Mohammad Mansour
Original article by Aseel Saleh republished form peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.
Israel’s genocide in Gaza is in full swing as the Trump administration unleashes its ally and provides it with all the weapons it needs.
One week after the resumption of Israel’s genocidal aggression on Gaza, Netanyahu appears determined to continue on a path of massacres and devastation rather than return to negotiations to restore the ceasefire.
For almost a year and a half, using the most advanced military technology, Israel systematically targeted journalists and media workers, hospitals, and shelters full of civilians. The attacking of such “strategic” targets across Gaza by Israeli forces has resumed with the return to genocide.
Bombardment of hospitals
The Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital
On Friday, March 21, the IOF blew up the only cancer health facility in the war-torn enclave; the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital in central Gaza. The Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza clarified that the IOF detonated the hospital after using it “as a headquarters” for its troops throughout the time they have been occupying the Netzarim Corridor, which separates the northern part of the Gaza strip from its south.
The ministry described the bombardment of the hospital as a “heinous crime” and affirmed that “this criminal behavior by the occupier is consistent with the systematic destruction of the healthcare system and is part of the ongoing genocide.”
For its part, the Turkish Foreign Ministry denounced the destruction of the hospital, which was built by Türkiye and operated by local authorities in Gaza, in a statement on Friday. The ministry said that the attack is part of Israel’s broader policy that aims at “making Gaza uninhabitable”.
“The deliberate targeting of a hospital providing healthcare services to civilians in Gaza is part of Israel’s policy to render Gaza unlivable and force the Palestinian people to displacement,” the statement said.
The ministry further urged the international community to take “firm and effective steps against Israel’s unlawful attacks and systematic state terrorism.”
Nasser Hospital
Israel’s systematic targeting of hospitals and healthcare workers has continued with a new deadly air strike that hit the surgical unit at Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis in Northern Gaza on Sunday, March 23.
The assault killed at least two people and injured several staff members. One of those killed was identified as Ismail Barhoum, a member of Hamas’s political bureau in the Gaza strip, who was receiving medical treatment in the surgical unit at the time of the assault. The other slain person is a 17-year-old boy.
Barhoum was reportedly admitted to Nasser hospital as he had sustained critical injuries in an Israeli airstrike around one week ago.
Many believe the attack was launched to assassinate Barhoum. However, analysts and activists suggest that it also targeted four non-Palestinian physicians, who were frequently interviewed by western media outlets about the crimes committed by the IOF that they witnessed during the genocide in Gaza.
These physicians are:
- Dr. Mark Perlmutter
- Dr. Feroze Sidwha
- Dr. Tanya Haj Hassan
- Dr. Tammy Abughnaim
They were operating for hundreds of days on ICU patients and saving lives with limited medical supplies amid daily power outages.
Analyzing the attack, the Palestinian Youth Movement highlighted the significant role these physicians would play as witnesses at future international tribunals against Israeli officials via a post published on Instagram.
“The ability of these world-class surgeons to serve as highly educated, Western-based, ‘credible’ outside witnesses to the genocide, put their lives at existential risk from the moment they began their work during the genocide. The doctors knew this, yet despite the grave danger they continued to be under, they never stopped working and serving their patients, refusing to abandon them even after Israel’s ceasefire violations that caused the all-out war to resume,” the group wrote.
Surviving the attack, American trauma surgeon Dr. Feroze Sidwha wrote on his account on X: “I was at Nasser Hospital in Gaza when it was bombed today. One of my patients, a 17-year-old boy, was killed. He would have gone home tomorrow. If I had been changing his dressings, as I planned to this evening, I probably would have been killed too. Attacking hospitals is a war crime, and it needs to stop.”
Two Palestinian journalists killed in one hour
Amidst the resumption of its genocidal aggression on the Gaza strip, Israel has resumed the systematic targeting of journalists in an attempt to silence the truth. On Monday, March 24 two Palestinian journalists were assassinated in two separate attacks in one hour.
Palestine Today correspondent Mohammad Mansour was killed in an Israeli airstrike north of Khan Younis, before another airstrike hit the car of Al Jazeera Mubasher correspondent Hossam Shabat in Salah al-Din Street in the northern Gaza strip.
Videos of Mansour’s family bidding him a farewell were posted online. The videos showed the journalist’s grief-stricken father carrying his microphone and trying to make Mansour hold it again with his lifeless hands.
“Speak up, speak up, tell the whole world about what has been happening, the image can express everything,” Mansour’s father said as he was sobbing over his son’s dead body.
Hossam Shabat’s team shared his final message via his official X account, which he seems to have requested be published after his death.
“If you’re reading this, it means I have been killed—most likely targeted—by the Israeli occupation forces. When this all began, I was only 21 years old—a college student with dreams like anyone else. For the past 18 months, I have dedicated every moment of my life to my people. I documented the horrors in northern Gaza minute by minute, determined to show the world the truth they tried to bury. I slept on pavements, in schools, in tents—anywhere I could. Each day was a battle for survival. I endured hunger for months, yet I never left my people’s side,” he wrote.
“By God, I fulfilled my duty as a journalist. I risked everything to report the truth, and now, I am finally at rest—something I haven’t known in the past 18 months. I did all this because I believe in the Palestinian cause. I believe this land is ours, and it has been the highest honor of my life to die defending it and serving its people.”
“I ask you now: do not stop speaking about Gaza. Do not let the world look away. Keep fighting, keep telling our stories—until Palestine is free,” Hossam urged the free people of the world at the end of his message.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemned the assassination of the two journalists in a statement on Monday.
“CPJ is appalled that we are once again seeing Palestinians weeping over the bodies of dead journalists in Gaza,” CPJ’s Program Director Carlos Martinez de la Serna said.
“This nightmare in Gaza has to end. The international community must act fast to ensure that journalists are kept safe and hold Israel to account for the deaths of Hossam Shabat and Mohammed Mansour. Journalists are civilians and it is illegal to attack them in a war zone,” De la Serna added.
Israel appears indifferent about the lives of its captives
Since October 2023, Israeli fighter jets have been launching arbitrary shelling across the Gaza strip putting the lives of everyone there at imminent risk, including Israeli captives.
The Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, released a new video on Monday showing the two Israeli captives Elkana Bohbot and Yosef Haim Ohana, speaking to the Israeli public about their suffering.
Ohana emphasized that the video was not broadcast as an act of psychological warfare on Hamas’ part, but was instead something that he and Bohbot requested from their captors to have their voices heard by their people.
The captive stressed that closing the border-crossings and blockading humanitarian aid to Gaza by their government has left them with no food to consume. He also affirmed that Hamas fighters were “keen and concerned”, providing them with everything they needed.
Ohana said that he received a “severe blow” by his government when it decided to resume its aggression on Gaza on March 18, as the IOF’s aerial attacks could have killed them, and that they saw death before their eyes.
With an obvious outrage at the Israeli government, Bohbot said: “Enough with this government silencing our voice.”
“The prisoners who were with us before and now released, give them a chance to speak and express their opinions. Stop silencing their voices. Let them Speak. Let the truth come out,” he added.
Ohana and Bohbot called on released captive Ohad Ben Ami to recount his experiences in captivity, thus, that would pressure the Israeli government for speeding up their release.
The US has “unleashed Israel” with all the weapons it needs to proceed with genocide
Confirming the US’s full support and partnership in the renewed genocide in Gaza, Deputy US Special Envoy to “the Middle East” Morgan Ortagus told Fox News on Sunday, that the Trump administration “has unleashed Israel and provided all the weapons needed to continue the war.”
While the US seeks to reaffirm its partnership in murdering Palestinians, Israel continues to commit daily massacres across the Gaza strip, raising the official death toll to over 50,021 people killed since October 2023, according to the latest report published by Palestinian health authorities.
Widely respected institutions such as The Lancet medical journal, and UN human rights bodies have asserted that the death tally is likely severely undercounted, with the actual number being up to 40% higher.
Original article by Aseel Saleh republished form peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.
