This week, Israel struck Nasser Hospital in Gaza, one of the largest and last functioning hospitals in the besieged Gaza Strip. The strikes killed 22 people, including health care workers and five journalists (working for Reuters, the AP and Al Jazeera), and injured more than 50 others.
Early reports said the Israeli military hit the hospital twice in rapid succession in what’s known as a “double-tap,” a type of sadistic warfare tactic where one first strikes a target and then follows up with another strike to hit the people who rush to help rescue victims from the initial attack. NBC News later obtained video that showed Israel in fact struck the hospital in four successive strikes.
NBC News later obtained video that showed Israel in fact struck the hospital in four successive strikes.
Israel initially didn’t offer an explanation for why it carried out this strike. But in the face of global outrage, it called the attacks a mishap and attempted to justify them by saying it was targeting a “Hamas camera” — a ludicrous statement by any measure, but especially so given the ruthlessness of a quadruple strike.
These killings are not random tragedies of war. They are the predictable outcome of a worldview promoted by the Israeli government, peddled by American officials and propagated by American and Western media that systematically dehumanizes Palestinians.
That dehumanization is not subtle. In an interview with The New Yorker’s Isaac Chotiner, former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Jacob Lew rationalized the staggering number of child deaths in Gaza by suggesting that Israel views them as “the children of Hamas.” Think about that: a justification for stripping children of their innocence, reducing them to political extensions of militants, erasing their humanity simply because of who their father was. If every child can be seen as “Hamas,” then no child is truly innocent in the eyes of Israel. And as Lew and so many others have made clear, the Biden administration readily accepted that depraved rationale.
Under President Donald Trump, we’ve seen no deviation from that logic, from callously discussing the real estate value of Palestinian land to overseeing $12 billion in arms sales and expedited military assistance to Israel to carry on with its annihilation of the population, all while reducing Palestinians to Hamas members who aren’t interested in peace.
And that same logic was at play in the Nasser Hospital attack when Israel claimed it was targeting a Hamas camera at the facility. Not a commander. Not a weapons cache. Not a rocket factory. A camera.
When Al Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif was assassinated along with five other journalists while inside a media tent near a different hospital in a different deadly attack on Aug. 10, Israel claimed without any evidence that he was a Hamas rocket-launching commander. When Israel bombed schools, they were “Hamas” shelters. Mosques? “Hamas” weapons depots. Refugee camps? “Hamas” hideouts. And just this week, the killing of more journalists? Blamed on targeting a “Hamas” camera.
In this Israeli narrative, Palestinians are not people. They are not journalists. They are not doctors or teachers. They are not fathers, mothers or children. They are simply Hamas.
This is not new, nor should it be shocking. It is exactly what Israeli officials have been saying since they launched their genocidal war on Gaza following Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack in which 1,100 Israelis were killed and more than 250 hostages were taken, including soldiers and civilians, when President Isaac Herzog declared “there are no innocent civilians” in Gaza.
Equally insidious is the narrative that Israel claims when it faces global outrage. In April 2024, when Israel struck a World Central Kitchen aid convoy, killing seven humanitarian workers, the Israeli military called it a “grave mistake.” But it took no measures to mitigate such killings in the months and months that have followed.
These are not aberrations. They are patterns excused by the language of error while the system of impunity rolls on.
But these tactics only work in part because Western media, and specifically American media, so often takes these statements at face value. The Wall Street Journal published an op-ed titled “Who is a ‘journalist’ in Gaza?” that all but accused Palestinian reporters of being Hamas propagandists based on unsubstantiated and unverified claims.
These strategies — Israel labeling everything as a “Hamas” target or dismissing attacks that draw condemnation as “tragic mistakes” — gain strength largely because Western media echoes them.
Even more depraved was an article in Bari Weiss’ “The Free Press” that suggested that Palestinians suffering and dying from starvation in Gaza were suffering from “pre-existing medical conditions.” That distortion was so appealing to the Israeli government that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, an indicted war criminal, shared it on his official X account. Think about that: an indicted war criminal amplifying an American media outlet that trivialized starvation in Gaza due to the bad health of Palestinians.
Together, these strategies — Israel labeling everything as a “Hamas” target or dismissing attacks that draw condemnation as “tragic mistakes” — gain strength largely because Western media echoes them rather than challenges them.
Dehumanization drives the narrative. Mistakes go unpunished and the media launders them repeatedly.
History has taught us that atrocities are only made possible by campaigns of industrial dehumanization. For Palestinians, Israel has been leading that campaign for decades, and it has intensified it since Oct. 7.
To justify its genocide in Gaza, whether bombing a hospital or attacking journalists and aid workers, Israel does not need to provide any credible evidence. It simply needs the world, with the help of American media, to believe that Palestinian lives do not matter.
The world must reject this perverted logic. The deaths at Nasser Hospital should not just shock us. They lay bare how the language of dehumanization — “children of Hamas,” “pre-existing conditions,” “Hamas camera” — becomes a license to kill Palestinians. And they remind us that defending Palestinian dignity is not simply a political stance, it is a moral imperative.