For the twentieth consecutive day, Israeli warplanes have been bombing the Gaza Strip, intensifying their daily bloody attacks and committing more heinous crimes as part of a planned and systematic genocide in which the Israeli occupation employs the deadliest weaponry, including illegal weapons, with full support from the US and the West.
Yesterday, the family home of Al Jazeera journalist Wael Al-Dahdouh was attacked by the Israeli occupation after his family was forced to flee to a refugee camp in southern Gaza after the occupation ordered their evacuation. However, 12 members of his family—including his wife, daughter, grandson, and seven other children—were killed by the Israeli airstrikes.
The Israeli occupation forces are equipped with military technology that enables them to accurately identify their targets. This means that targeting the Al-Dahdouh family was a deliberate attack. The Israeli military analysts unequivocally confirmed this in a TV interview, with one stating that the Israeli bombing is not “usually random” and that the Al-Dahdouh house was a target for the occupation army.
In retaliation, the Israeli occupation has consistently targeted journalists since the start of the ongoing Israeli aggression. In a display of savage terrorist behavior and blatant disregard for international law, which forbids targeting journalists and punishing their families, children, and women, we have documented the murder of 24 journalists, numerous injuries, the destruction of over 50 media establishments, the bombing of numerous journalists’ homes, and the killing of their entire families.
The attack on Wael Al-Dahdouh’s family comes at the same time as a UN investigation’s findings confirmed that the occupation forces killed the Al-Jazeera journalist, Sherine Abu Aqla, more than a year ago, despite the occupation’s insistence that it had no intention of killing her. Nevertheless, the international community and its institutions are unable to prosecute those responsible for this crime or any other, even after the crime has been proven.
Arab Organisation for Human Rights in the UK (AOHR UK) confirms that targeting journalists is a desperate attempt to silence the voice of the victims and hide the Palestinian narrative, stressing that these crimes should not go unpunished and calling on the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court to take action to prosecute those responsible for this crime and all the documented crimes against journalists.
AOHR UK also affirms that the targeting of the displaced families in the southern Gaza Strip is evidence of the occupation’s deliberate plan to drive out all Gazans outside the territory. This is a crime against humanity that has been added to the long list of crimes committed by Israel against the Palestinian people since the start of its aggression and over the course of the seventy-five years since the Nakba, it added.
AOHR UK calls on the international community to stop its double standard policy, adhere to its moral and legal obligations, and intervene urgently to take immediate measures to protect civilians and allow immediate humanitarian aid in and to evacuate the injured for treatment.
