Ghost Archive Link – Live coverage getting updated. Bullet Points:
- The Israeli Army escorts Times journalists to Al-Shifa, a focus of its invasion.
- Israel says a 2nd hostage’s body was found near Al-Shifa, as pressure grows over the captives.
- Israel says it will allow some fuel into Gaza for the U.N. and other operations.
- Despite lack of evidence, U.S. insists Hamas was operating under Al-Shifa.
- Jordan signals that it won’t sign a water deal with Israel in protest of the war.
Excerpts:
Almost 48 hours after entering Gaza’s largest medical complex, the Israeli military escorted journalists from The New York Times through a landscape of wartime destruction Thursday night to a stone-and-concrete shaft on its grounds with a staircase descending into the earth — evidence, it said, of a Hamas military facility under the hospital.
But Col. Elad Tsury, commander of Israel’s Seventh Brigade, said Israeli forces, fearing booby traps, had not ventured down the shaft at the hospital, Al-Shifa. He said it had been discovered earlier in the day under a pile of sand on the northern perimeter of the complex.
Senior U.S. officials said Friday that they remain confident that Hamas and Palestinian militants have been operating under the Al-Shifa Hospital complex in Gaza, even as the Israeli military has struggled to produce proof to back its assertion that Hamas was using the hospital and its patients as human shields.
Jordan’s foreign minister has signaled that his country, one of the driest in the world, will not sign a new water-for-energy deal with Israel because of the Israeli military’s continued bombardment of Gaza.
They will tell you “controlled” visits are for safety, but I remember in the post 9-11 Gulf War reporting how the Pentagon went all in for “embedded journalism”. Yeah, sure, it keeps the press ‘safe’, but it changes what gets covered. The media initially loved it, but later realized there were valid criticisms of the process.
More to the point: yeah, covering news should not be a death sentence. Even if you are covering a war, as civilian non-combatants you shouldn’t be targeted by any military… a la the ‘Collateral Murder’ wikileaks video of journalists shot by US helicopters.