Watan-The Washington Post published an analysis refuting the narrative of the Israeli occupation regarding the targeting of the martyrs Hamza Al-Dahdouh and Mustafa Thraya in Khan Yunis, southern Gaza Strip.
The newspaper stated that the Israeli occupation forces launched a missile strike on January 7, 2024, targeting a car carrying four Palestinian journalists outside the city of Khan Yunis in southern Gaza.
The occupation claimed that the journalists’ use of a drone was the reason for targeting them.
The journalists cited by Al Jazeera network were Hamza Al-Dahdouh (27 years old), a drone operator, and Mustafa Thraya (30 years old), along with the driver. Two other independent journalists were seriously injured.
The journalists were returning from the scene of a previous Israeli airstrike on a building and had used the drone to film the aftermath. The drone, a commercially available model sold at Best Buy, was central to the Israeli justification for the targeting.
The Israeli occupation army said in a statement the next day that it had identified and targeted a person operating a drone posing a threat to army forces.
Two days later, the Israeli occupation army announced that it had uncovered evidence indicating that the two men belonged to armed groups—Thraya to Hamas and Al-Dahdouh to Islamic Jihad—and that the attack was in response to an “imminent” threat, according to its claim.
Scenes of the Targeting
The newspaper obtained footage from Thraya’s drone and reviewed it. The footage was stored on a memory card retrieved from the scene and sent to a production company in Turkey. No Israeli soldiers, aircraft, or other military equipment appeared in the footage taken that day, raising sensitive questions about why the journalists were targeted.
Interviews with 14 eyewitnesses to the attack and colleagues of the slain journalists provide the most detailed account to date of the deadly targeting.
The newspaper found no evidence that either man was doing anything other than journalistic work that day. Both passed through Israeli checkpoints on their way south early in the conflict.
The newspaper could not determine other instances where the Israeli occupation army targeted journalists during the war because they used drones, which are extensively used to film the extent of destruction in Gaza.
Local journalists told the newspaper that there were no official directives from the Israeli occupation army to use drones, although one journalist said an Israeli officer secretly warned him against using them.
Another journalist explained that he chose not to use his drone during the conflict for fear that it could be used as a pretext for an Israeli airstrike.
Wael Al-Dahdouh, the Gaza bureau chief for Al Jazeera, said his son Hamza joined the Al Jazeera bureau in Gaza during the war and worked as an assistant cameraman and field producer.
Thraya was a well-known independent journalist who contributed photos and footage from a drone to Al Jazeera, as well as to Agence France-Presse, Reuters, and Getty Images.
According to many friends and colleagues of the journalists interviewed by the newspaper, both Al-Dahdouh and Thraya left Gaza City, the main focus of the Israeli military operation, in late October 2023 via a designated route for evacuating civilians specified by the Israeli occupation army. The two men lived in tents with other journalists in Rafah for more than two months.
According to Amer Abu Amer, a photographer for Palestine Today, who was present at the scene, the two journalists woke up on January 7, 2024, to news of an Israeli airstrike on the Abu Al-Naja family’s home south of Khan Yunis. The Israeli occupation army later described the home as an office for Islamic Jihad.
At least 11 journalists, including Al-Dahdouh, Thraya, and independent journalists Mohammed Al-Qahouji and Hazem Rajab, rushed from Rafah to the scene. According to the descriptive data of the video clips filmed by Thraya that day, he had launched his drone into the air by around 10:39 a.m.
Recovery of the Martyrs’ Bodies
The footage obtained by the newspaper shows the journalists wearing their blue vests as they inspect a mass of wires and debris. Children watched as men recovered the bodies, and civil defense workers covered and carried them away.
The footage consists of 38 clips lasting just over 11 minutes. Thraya is seen at times looking at the drone control device and allowing his colleagues to look at the screen. He zooms in the image twice briefly to show the scene northwest and southwest of the demolished house, reaching a distance of about a mile (1.6 km) in each direction. No Israeli forces, aircraft, or other military equipment are visible in the footage.
At the request of the newspaper, analysts reviewed satellite images taken by Planet Labs and Airbus on January 7, 2024, covering a circle with a radius of about 1.2 miles (about 1.9 km) from the drone launch site.
None of the experts saw any evidence of military deployment or armed activity.
The day after the Israeli occupation army announced its targeting of what it described as “terrorists at the scene,” the spokesman for the Israeli occupation army, Daniel Haggai, seemed to backtrack, telling NBC News that “every journalist’s death is regrettable,” adding that the drone made them look like “terrorists.”
In a statement on January 10, the Israeli occupation army said that the drone constituted a “imminent threat” to nearby forces, even though the airstrike occurred about 15 minutes after Thraya stopped filming.
The statement also mentioned that the intelligence branch of the Israeli occupation army had confirmed that Al-Dahdouh and Thraya were members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad respectively.
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