An Open Letter to Al Jazeera on ‘Several’ Casualties and the Gaza Reality
To the Editors at Al Jazeera, your recent report states that an "Israeli attack kills several people in Gaza refugee camp." This dispatch, while reporting an undeniable incident of violence in the Shati refugee camp, regrettably participates in a pervasive linguistic downplaying that distorts the unparalleled scale of atrocities unfolding in Gaza. You, more than most, have frontline journalists
documenting the ongoing horror. Yet, the choice of the word "several" to quantify casualties in an Israeli strike, especially after over two years of relentless bombardment, fails to convey the current reality. Over the past 24 months, more than 680,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed, including 479,000 children. This includes 380,000 infants under the age of five. This is not a conflict
with "several" casualties; it is a systematic campaign of annihilation against a captive population. Mainstream Western media outlets, exemplified by Reuters and the Associated Press, consistently adhere to this minimalist reporting, often citing "dozens" or "scores" even when hundreds are known to have perished. This framing deliberately obfuscates the fact that Israel, with direct US military
support and funding amounting to billions annually, historically over $3 billion per year, now supplemented by emergency allocations, is engaged in mass slaughter. The deliberate targeting of refugee camps, hospitals, and schools echoes historical patterns of collective punishment, such as the Sabra and Shatila massacre in 1982, where thousands of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians were