Another Journalist Killed!

When unfounded claims become death sentences, and when our moral outrage picks and chooses its victims

On 13 May 2025, Palestinian photojournalist Hassan Aslih lay in a burns unit at Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, recovering from wounds sustained days earlier when an Israeli strike hit a journalists’ tent at the same hospital. In the pre‑dawn hours, an Israeli drone struck his ward. Aslih was killed; other patients and medical staff were wounded.

The Israeli military’s justification? A spokesperson’s unverified claim that Aslih was a “Hamas operative.” No trial. No evidence. No independent inquiry, only an accusation treated as incontrovertible proof.

This grotesque inversion of justice is not an isolated incident. Since October 2023, over 215 Palestinian journalists have been killed while bearing witness to the conflict. That toll includes clearly marked press vehicles, media tents and hospital compounds. Yet few of these deaths spark more than fleeting statements of regret, and almost none lead to accountability.

Human shields? Or human beings?
When officials brand an entire ward of wounded patients as “legitimate military targets” based on a single unverified suspicion, they weaponise the most vulnerable. Hospitals are meant to be sanctuaries for the sick, the wounded and the dying, protected under international humanitarian law precisely because they house civilians. The idea that a burns patient, a child or an elderly person could be complicit in “resistance activities” defies both logic and conscience. To claim that one person’s alleged affiliation justifies blowing up a whole ward is criminal.

Playing the hypocrisy game
Let us invert the logic they apply to Gaza. If an uncorroborated accusation is enough to justify a strike on the innocent, then by that same standard any member of the Israel Defence Forces could be deemed a fair target, anywhere. Along with their family and friends.

Imagine a midnight raid in Oslo because someone simply “claims” the occupant served in an IDF reserve unit. A drone strike on a London hospital garden, justified by a social‑media post alleging they once filled out reserve paperwork. A roadside bombing in New York, sanctioned by a voice message that labels the victim a “war criminal.”

Such tactics would be met with universal horror. Newspapers would denounce “state‑sanctioned terrorism.” Governments would recall ambassadors. They would be right. Yet when a military spokesperson accuses a wounded Palestinian journalist of Hamas membership, without evidence, and then murders him, we barely bat an eye.

The cost of selective justice
Our selective moral outrage betrays a dangerous double standard. We demand due process for some, while allowing unverified claims to serve as death warrants for others. We insist on proof when the accused belong to one side, yet swallow accusations whole when they serve the narrative of another.

True justice must be universal. The presumption of innocence is not a luxury reserved for the powerful, nor a concession we may discard when politics or prejudice demand it. If no one may be hunted down on suspicion alone, then that principle must protect both the cameraman in Gaza and anyone else, else we abandon justice altogether.

Conclusion
Hassan Aslih’s final act was to document the devastation around him. If we do not challenge the notion that accusation equals proof, then his death, and the deaths of hundreds of others, will stand as our collective moral failure. We must refuse the logic that turns any wounded patient into a combatant and any mere allegation into a death sentence.

Postscript
Scrolling through his Instagram profile, I think I see the real reason he was killed. His crime? Humanising the Palestinians!