Saturday, May 12, 2018

That's A Lot of Journalists

According to the well-placed and well-connected PCHR group report, this past Friday's count of killed and wounded amongst those who attempted either to breach and/or damage the security barrier dividing the territory of Gaza ruled by the terrorist entity Hamas and Israel's sovereign state area was but one civilian killed while 338 others were wounded.

Of course, there is no real way to confirm such figures as all medical units are either linked to Hamas or supervised by Hamas.

What is notable is the continuing sharp decline of the numbers of persons killed or wounded, something I blogged previously:

Obviously, either IDF snipers are improving their technical capabilities, or there is less smoke or the Gazans are getting more careful, the drop in the statistics of dead and wounded is quite impressive. [And] While all figures of dead and wounded must be treated with certain circumspection and even doubt, especially as regards the number of injured, and to the identity label of "journalists"...

And now, to that label "journalists".

According to yesterday's summation, 41 "journalists" were wounded and 2 killed.



Journalism in a war-zone is a particularly dangerous profession. Two weeks ago, in a suicide bomb attack, 9 were killed in Afghanistan (a 10th was shot that same day in another location).

According to the International Press Institute, in all of the last year from May 2017, 46 journalists worldwide lost their lives since last May in targeted attacks. Another source for detailed information is here. Between 1992 and the beginning of 2018, 119 journalists were killed in the severe fighting in Syria alone. Yet another source lists 115 professional journalists killed in the past 15 years.

I found no source for numbers of wounded/injured which I sought for a comparison between the events at the Gaza border and those in other hot spots around the globe.

In any case, the figure appears quite large and would indicate, given the probabilities, that either there truly are hundreds of press persons in the area, or that, given the stark reduction overall in injuries since the first Friday, indeed Israel forces are targeting the media or, that these journalists are not all journalists.

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