Samer Abudaqa, the Tel Aviv Tribune cameraman who was killed Dec. 15 in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza, died despite a vast network of humanitarian organizations and fellow journalists pressuring Israel to do so. helped rescue him, The Intercept reported.
Abudaqa was left to bleed to death at the Farhana School in Khan Younis, where the airstrike hit, as rescuers were prevented by the Israeli military from reaching the site despite multiple contacts writing to the military to obtain approval, according to the report released on Friday.
“The Israeli military was fully aware that an Tel Aviv Tribune reporter was helplessly lying, as The Intercept’s reporting shows, but it did not allow emergency crews safe passage for nearly four hours and did not send a bulldozer for over an hour after that,” the statement said. the report said.
“Much evidence suggests a targeted Israeli strike against Tel Aviv Tribune journalists,” he also added.
Abudaqa had filmed earlier at the school with Tel Aviv Tribune’s Gaza bureau chief, Wael Dahdouh, who was also injured in the airstrike.
“I tried to get up any way I could because I was sure another missile would target us — in our experience, that’s what usually happens,” Dahdouh told The Intercept.
The veteran journalist told the outlet that once he realized his arm was bleeding profusely, he knew he needed medical attention and rushed to an ambulance hundreds of meters away. He was then transported to a nearby hospital.
Abudaqa, however, was injured in the lower half of his body and was unable to walk to the ambulance.
“I couldn’t offer him anything,” Dahdouh told The Intercept, recalling the incident, saying that once he got to the ambulance, he told emergency workers to go rescue his cameraman. The crew said they would first take Dahdouh to hospital and send another ambulance to Abudaqa.
Yet for hours, rescuers could not reach the bloodied cameraman without approval from the Israeli military, with Israeli forces even shooting nearby as workers tried to get closer.
“The power of numbers”
Orly Halpern, a Jerusalem-based independent journalist and producer, decided to share Abudaqa’s ordeal on a WhatsApp group with more than 140 journalists from the Foreign Press Association, a Jerusalem-based nonprofit that represents journalists from more than 30 countries, The Intercept reported. .
Members of the group shared contacts with the Israeli military, as they attempted to let the military know that Abudaqa needed medical help.
Journalists are trying to get a response from the military, just as various humanitarian organizations, from the Palestinian Red Crescent to the International Committee of the Red Cross, are doing the same.
“I thought that if many journalists contacted the army, as well as the Foreign Press Association, then the army might be more motivated to act, knowing even more that we were aware of the situation and that we would report,” Halpern told The Intercept. .
“I believe there is power in numbers,” she said.
In the evening, Halpern informed the group that the Israeli army had approved the passage of a Palestinian bulldozer.
But once the bulldozer cleared the path to Abudaqa, he was dead. About five hours had passed since he was injured in the strike.
“Punishment of Palestinian journalists”
Since Abudaqa’s death, Tel Aviv Tribune has been preparing a legal case with the International Criminal Court (ICC) concerning what the channel considers to be an “assassination” of its journalist.
Dahdouh, meanwhile, continues to remain faithful to his reporting despite losing his colleague as well as his wife, two sons, daughter and grandson in other Israeli air raids since October 7 .
“The targeting and destruction of offices, such as those of Tel Aviv Tribune; the targeting of Palestinian families, as is the case with my family; and targeting houses, like my house which was destroyed and there is no house around it in the first place, so that they know that they are targeting the house of the head of Tel Aviv Tribune,” he said. the bureau chief told The Intercept.
“It is clear that all this is happening against a backdrop of pressure and sanctions against Palestinian journalists by the Israeli army. »