Comment by bawolff
1 month ago
This list seems to include people who were journalists but weren't killed while acting in the capacity of a journalist (as far as i can tell). If this is how you define journalist then world war 2 was certainly much much deadlier for journalists. To put it bluntly, i have my doubts that its making an apples to apples comparison with other conflicts.
The nature of journalism has changed since ww2, but the comparison isn’t ww2 vs gaza - it’s EVERY SINGLE WAR SINCE.
So unless you have some clear evidence that the definition of journalist is different in other conflicts, you’re just making excuses.
The post used the phrase "all known conflicts in the history of the world". Is world war 2 not a known conflict?
I do not know how many journalists were killed in most conflicts. I do know more than 242 were killed during world war 2, so on its face the claim seems false that it is the deadliest war for journalists in the history of the universe.
The only way their claim can possibly make sense is if they are using different definitions between wars. I'm assuming that to give them the benefit of the doubt. The only alternative explanation i can see is they are straight up lying.
I don't know enough to verify related claims, like deadliest for journalists post world war 2. However given the source seems to be blatently incorrect, i'm not really inclined to believe them on related claims.
It takes like 30s of reading to figure out their criteria: an average of 13 journalists per week. That is the number they are usung to compare conflicts. Do you know how many journalists were killed on average per week of ww2? Because unless you know, you are just denying based on vibes i guess? When I google it the number that comes up is 69 - so unless ww2 was a lot shorter than i remember, fewer than 13/week seem to have been killed - at least by the records we have.
I said that the nature of journalism has changed since ww2, because there’s a lot more citizen-journalism - which probably means there are more journalists around to be killed today than during most conflicts in history. So it doesn’t actually surprise me that the highest number would be from a conflict post-2010.
Yeah - for example Abdullah Ahmed Al-Jamal was killed because he was holding three hostages in his apartment, yet he was included in the list of "journalists killed" anyway.
That’s not quite right.
There were three hostages in his father’s apartment. He was also staying there, but the home belonged to his father.
But ok, have a look at what went down that day:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuseirat_rescue_and_massacre
> the Israeli military killed at least 276 people and injured over 698
Or if you don’t want to believe anybody but the IDF, “The Israeli military acknowledged fewer than 100 Palestinian deaths”
In order to what? What was the cause of the murder of 276 (or 100) people?
To rescue 4 hostages.
Well, I should say more likely in retribution for the holding of those hostages… the air strikes that killed the majority of people appear to have happened AFTER they had extracted the hostages.
The 276 figure is a claim from Hamas. I don't think they regularly make up casualty numbers, but they certainly did in the Baptist Hospital case, where they initially claimed Israel killed "at least 500" before it became clear it was actually a PIJ rocket. It's highly plausible that they made another exception to their usual casualty reporting process for this embarrassing incident.
Even if we accept the claim at face value, it's just a total. It includes Hamas fighters who were trying to kill fleeing hostages and their rescuers, and anyone killed by them.
In any case, Israel has a responsibility to try to rescue its citizens that were kidnapped. The moral culpability for collateral damage lies with the terrorists who kidnapped and held civilian hostages, and then fought to prevent their rescue, not with the rescuers.
If some terrorists kidnapped several American citizens on US soil, and the US determined that any rescue plan would risk disproportionate harm to the country that kidnapped them, would you expect the US to just give up and ignore the hostages?
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> There were three hostages in his father’s apartment. He was also staying there, but the home belonged to his father.
Does it matter who owns the apartment? It seems likely based on this description he could be deemed as participating.
Like in normal domestic law, if someone is kidnapped, and the fbi raids the apartment where the kidnapped person is being held, i imagine everyone living in the apartment is going to jail. Who owns the apartment isn't really relavent.
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