Oct 26, 2023
Al Jazeera Journalist Learns His Family Was KILLED By Israeli Air Strike
Al Jazeera Arabic’s bureau chief Wael Dahdouh's family was killed by an Israeli air strike.
- 12 minutes
The wife and two children and
grandchild of a journalist Wayal al Dadu,
the Gaza Bureau chief for Al Jazeera,
was killed by an Israeli airstrike that
targeted the home that they
were actually sheltering in.
After they had fled their
actual home in Northern Gaza,
[00:00:17]
as they were told to by
the Israeli military.
This is footage, and fair warning,
it is hard to watch.
It is footage of while
the moment he saw his two kids,
one was 15 and one was seven.
[00:00:33]
>> Speaker 2: Throughout the day,
Al Jazeera's, Gaza Bureau chief,
Wayal al Dadu, was live on air reporting
on the latest Israeli strikes,
only to learn that one of those
strikes killed his own family.
He lost his wife, his 15 year old son, his
seven year old daughter, and his grandson.
[00:00:52]
Other loved ones, including another
son and a granddaughter, were injured.
More are missing under
the rubble of their house in
the new Cyrus camp in central Gaza.
>> Speaker 1: One interesting detail
about all this is one of his children,
[00:01:09]
one of his sons did survive, but
they had to perform surgery.
He had a massive head wound and
they had to perform surgery on him in
a hallway because there was not
enough facilities at the hospital.
This is just devastating.
[00:01:25]
Dadu, again, is the Al Jazeera bureau
chief and his 15 year old son,
interestingly, had just recorded
this little video a few days
earlier to the world saying, hey,
this is what's going on in Gaza.
[00:01:41]
This is where we're being targeted,
please help us live.
He says he apparently wanted to be
a journalist just like his father.
Take a look.
>> Speaker 2: This is the fierce and
the most violence war we have lived in.
>> Speaker 3: Where are the human rights?
[00:01:56]
Where are the international laws?
Where are the countries of the world
to see what's happening for us?
>> Help us to stay alive.
>> Speaker 1: So there he was again,
only 15 years old.
Speaking from Gaza,
Al Jazeera's Youmna Elsayed said,
[00:02:12]
it's heartbreaking to be reporting about
Wayal family and see how broken he is.
He calms everyone, he speaks to us like
a big brother, not just a bureau chief.
He didn't leave Gaza City, he stayed
behind despite all threats and warnings,
and didn't stop for 19 days in a row.
He said, I must be here in Gaza City to
report about these people who are getting
[00:02:32]
bombed every day.
That being said, the Israeli military
officials have maintained that they do not
deliberately target civilians or
journalists.
In a statement to CNN, the Israeli Defense
Forces said it had targeted, quote,
Hamas, terrorist,
infrastructure in the area.
[00:02:47]
Again, this was in the area that
they told civilians to flee to,
but this is not the only journalist family
that has been targeted, but certainly
not the only time that journalists
have been targeted in this war.
[00:03:04]
According to the Committee
to Protect Journalists,
at least 24 are among the more than
6000 people dead who've been killed in
the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas.
According to the latest tally released
Wednesday, they said they're investigating
about 100 more incidents of outlets and
other journalists being targeted.
[00:03:20]
Of the two dozen journalists who
have died, 20 were Palestinian,
three were Israeli, and one was Lebanese.
At least eight other journalists
have been reported injured,
while three others are believed
to be missing or detained.
This is important to note because foreign
correspondents are actually not allowed
into Gaza right now.
This is the big thing, is that Gazan
journalists, Palestinian journalists,
[00:03:39]
Israeli journalists are often
the only people we have to rely on.
Citizen journalism, as they say, right?
People with only a camera and
an Internet connection and
that is slowly slipping away as
these journalists are targeted.
Again, the Geneva conventions under
Article 79, it protects journalists,
[00:03:59]
it says journalists in war zones
must be treated as civilians and
protected as such, provided they
play no part in the hostilities.
Now, some folks might be surprised to
know that the targeting of journalists or
their families would be happening.
[00:04:15]
In fact, I wanted to just play this clip,
I believe we have it.
This is another journalist who actually
in worked for Al Jazeera, works for
Al Jazeera.
He was in the West Bank when he found out
that his family had been killed again,
back in Gaza, in the South of Gaza,
where they were told they would be safe.
[00:04:32]
This is Mohammed Farah reacting to
the news that his family had been killed.
>> Speaker 2: Farah.
[NOISE]
[00:04:58]
>> Speaker 1: Mohammed Farah there in
the West Bank doing other
coverage while his family
was in Gaza and sadly,
was killed in a strike.
Again, the Israeli military has said
that they don't target journalists, but
[00:05:14]
we all know that last year the Israeli
military initially had denied that one of
its soldiers shot and
killed Palestinian American journalist
Shireen Abu Akleh of again, Al Jazeera.
At the time, she was wearing a helmet and
vest and was labeled Press the CPJ has
Committee to Protect Journalists and
issued a report this year highlighting how
[00:05:30]
her death was not a one off, but rather
part of a long, devastating pattern.
The organization's report found that at
least 20 journalists have been killed by
the Israeli military since 2001,
for which, to date,
no one has been held accountable.
So, again, 20 since 2001 and
then 20 just in the last two weeks.
[00:05:48]
I mean, it's very scary to me was
the way that our last lifelines for
information truly are being snuffed out.
But reactions to this.
>> Obviously, it's awful what's happening.
[00:06:06]
You would hope that journalists
are a protected class of people,
but I don't see how anybody could
not see this coming, right?
In the sense that they've gotten
a full throated endorsement from
the United States government.
[00:06:21]
Ie, our military,
which diplomatically means, and
it's funny to even use that
word do as we would do,
which everybody knows the United States
does not abide by International Law.
They don't abide by the Geneva Convention,
in the Geneva Convention,
[00:06:39]
you're not allowed to torture people.
If you guys will remember, around 911 and
the years immediately following,
we tortured people.
We hold people without lawyers
in Guantanamo indefinitely,
we do all kinds of heinous stuff.
[00:06:54]
And so once the United States government
comes out and says, you can do as we do,
these kinds of things are gonna happen.
And I would say that even if you
take the most charitable view around
what the Israeli military is doing at the
moment, there's no way to be targeted and
[00:07:12]
precise in the way that they're
bombing Gaza right now.
And the most important thing
that I think people aren't
saying enough is that
it's not going to work.
Meaning you will not achieve a victory,
quote unquote,
[00:07:28]
outside of collecting scalps.
If you wanna come out and say,
we're gonna collect some scalps and
that'll be our victory, then cool.
But this idea that you're gonna stamp
out Hamas and now all Israeli citizens
are gonna forever be safe because of that,
because we know that's not true.
[00:07:45]
Even if they somehow
manage to stamp out Hamas,
there will be other groups that rise up.
We don't know how militant, how much
more violent those groups might be.
And the reason why we know other groups
will rise up cuz we've seen this movie
already.
We've seen it when the Soviets
invaded Afghanistan,
[00:08:03]
we've seen it when we invaded Afghanistan.
We've seen it when we invaded Iraq, we've
seen this happen over and over again.
This isn't World War II where you're
battling some conventional military and
you're taking conventional
military victories.
[00:08:20]
You're going you're seizing a city,
securing it, taking it, and
moving forward.
You're battling basically
some militia group, right,
in which you go into a population you're
not gonna be able to know who's who,
which means you're gonna go out and
just kill people indiscriminately.
[00:08:36]
And eventually the tide is going to turn,
the goodwill for this war,
this battle,
this killing is going to turn.
And it's not just cuz I feel like
a lot of people be like, well,
why doesn't Israel get to just kill people
indiscriminately like other nations have?
[00:08:52]
You'll hear that argument be put forward,
it must be because of some
level of anti-semitism.
I would say that's not true.
People soured on the Iraq war, even over
here, people who don't even have to think
about Iraq on a day to day basis soured on
it, they soured on the Afghanistan war.
[00:09:10]
And what I would say know to people who
think this military operation could
somehow yield a victory, just remember
last year we pulled out of Afghanistan.
We were there for 20 years, the Taliban
took about four hours to take it back.
[00:09:27]
Four hours, we did 20 years there guys,
this strategy is just not going to
work in a way that makes sense.
And sorry, I know, I'm going long.
I just want people to understand that the
only military option that would actually
work is to kill everybody over there,
literally holocaust these folks.
[00:09:45]
That's the only military,
quote unquote option that would so,
you know, I just don't see what
the point of all of this is.
>> Speaker 1: I mean,
that actually might be the point.
As we've seen, there's been no restraints
either coming from the United States or
[00:10:00]
from the Israeli military itself.
There are reports that tanks have actually
started rolling into Northern Gaza.
I think the bit about this that is
the most chilling to me that I think is
important to know is that the strikes
weren't aimed at the journalists,
the strikes were aimed at
the journalists family.
[00:10:17]
Now, that could be because they
happen to be by Hamas infrastructure.
I'm gonna call BS on that,
I think they know exactly who they are and
where they are, and we're gonna get
more information as the days go on.
But the idea that you would punish
someone's family for the reporting and
[00:10:33]
the work, the reporting,
this is not terrorism, this is reporting
of their family is really chilling.
Let's just pick up on this one
final piece before we move on.
Waz said something about there
is no military solution.
In fact, Secretary of State Anthony
Blinken agrees with TYT on this and
[00:10:49]
said he doesn't think there's
a military solution either.
We just did that story recently,
and yet the US continues to support
this military action and
this arguable ethnic cleansing.
And what's so chilling about Tony Blinken
is that he also recently told a group of
[00:11:05]
American Jewish community leaders on
Monday that he asked the Qatari prime
minister less than two weeks ago
to tone down Al Jazeera's rhetoric
about the war in Gaza.
According to three people
attended the meeting.
Now, it's important to know that
Al Jazeera to Israel is considered
[00:11:20]
basically a mouthpiece for Hamas.
They see that, they've said that already,
they've targeted Al Jazeera
journalists in the past.
Full disclosure,
I used to work for Al Jazeera,
I know the folks who have been sent and
who've done on the ground reporting.
They are not terrorists and yes,
Al Jazeera gets its funding from
[00:11:40]
the Qatari government, but
there is not this direct line to Hamas.
In fact, the Qatari government has been
helping negotiate releases of hostages,
as we saw just last week,
between Hamas and Israel.
So again,
[00:11:55]
Blinken didn't say exactly what kind of
rhetoric he wants Al Jazeera to tone down.
But it's really scary to know that
just days after he said that,
that this attack back happened on
two journalists who worked for
that organization, plus so many more and
so many independent journalists.
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