How is forced starvation allowed?

[Tinycatnoise]

The top story in the BBC right now is the starvation of Gazans by Israel. The images are horrifying and not dissimilar to seeing those images of concentration camps in Nazi Germany. I cried seeing those and am crying now. I am sure someone will claim antisemitism because of this statement, but anyone looking at these images of starving children would agree.

How is this still going on? I feel like we are watching a genocide take place that the world has turning a blind eye to. The daily shooting by Israel of people trying to get aid too is just barbaric. If nothing is being done to stop this, what is the next horror that will unfold in the world that people will just accept?

www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce9xkx7vnmxo

But I haven't linked that photo as far as I can see - can you clarify which post of mine you are referring to ?

@Twiglets1 I had a look at the spectator article and tbh there is so much bias, opinion and untruths in it making it hard to take seriously

The email, which was sent to BBC staff on Friday, begins by declaring that ‘the argument over how much aid has crossed into Gaza is irrelevant’ and instructs staff that ‘we should say’ the current distribution system ‘doesn’t work’. It explicitly favours a particular explanation of suffering in Gaza: one that blames the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a relatively new aid body established with US and Israeli cooperation, while glossing over the role of Hamas, the rulers of Gaza and a proscribed terrorist organisation under British law.
Not sure what is meant to be wrong with this everyone even you admit the GHF has been a disaster

if Hamas is hijacking, obstructing, or reselling aid, as Israeli and independent reports suggest, and as documented footage and testimony have supported, then the location, handling, and efficacy of aid delivery become vital indicators of where the problem lies.
But that has not been proven in fact the opposite has, there is no evidence for it so why would the BBC repeat this? It wouldn't get past BBC verify

Blaming Israel alone for the humanitarian breakdown while exonerating or ignoring Hamas is not responsible or fair journalism, especially as Israel argues it is going to extreme lengths to try to mitigate the jihadi terrorists’ efforts to persecute and deprive Gazan citizens. Again untruths. Netanyahu funded gangs to loot food.

The BBC’s memo labels the GHF system a failure and instructs staff to say so. Yet the evidence is far from conclusive. Hunger and deprivation levels in Gaza remain unclear, with wildly varying estimates depending on source and political posture. Hunger and deprivation levels to remain unclear
the integrated food security phase classification has declared that famine thresholds have been reached.

The BBC – which declined to comment on the email – appears content to accept casualty figures and starvation claims from Hamas-linked bodies or sympathetic NGOs as definitive, while dismissing or omitting Israeli data and counterclaims. The email directs staff to reference ‘mounting evidence’ of starvation and deaths around aid centres, yet makes no mention of Hamas operatives looting convoys, obstructing access, or even firing on civilians attempting to collect food – allegations which have been made publicly by Israel and backed at times by video and eyewitness testimony. Again the accusation of Hamas looting convoys has been disproven and it definitely has not been proven yet that Hamas are obstructing access, or even firing on civilians attempting to collect food – so this would not get past BBC verify

Even the photographic evidence used by some UK newspapers has been limited and uncertain: this has nothing to do with the BBC.

Nor is the GHF model simply an improvised, amateur system as the memo suggests. On the contrary, it is a tightly managed, military-grade distribution network designed to ensure aid reaches civilians directly and safely. Operated by vetted personnel with logistical oversight, GPS tracking, and on-the-ground medical and security staff, the GHF has reported a zero aid diversion rate. By contrast, the UN system the BBC nostalgically defends saw multiple convoys looted at gunpoint, with documented losses reaching 90 per cent in some cases. It is therefore tendentious to assert that the older model ‘did work’ when, in fact, the BBC itself breathlessly reported widespread hunger under that very system well before the GHF system was in place: on 10 February 2024, for example, the BBC’s Lucy Williamson reported that in northern Gaza, ‘children are going without food for days’ and that some residents had resorted to ‘grinding animal feed into flour to survive.’ This is just this publications opinion not fact or evidence.

Most egregious is the email’s declaration that it is ‘indisputable’ that Israel is the occupying power in Gaza and therefore legally responsible for preventing hunger. This claim is presented without qualification, despite the fact that the status of Gaza under international law is disputed. Israel disengaged from Gaza in 2005, removing all settlers and military presence. It argues, with some legal backing, that it does not meet the criteria of occupation, since it neither governs Gaza nor maintains a permanent presence. Even under post-October 7 operations, Israel maintains that its actions constitute temporary military engagement, not sovereign control.
It is recognized as illegally occupied by the UN and the UK government so hardly a BBC bias
International legal opinion may be divided on this. That's irrelevant it is the UK
governments position.

The closer the GHF and Israeli army get to finally defeating the terrorists, What? why are the GHF tasked with defeating Hamas? thought they were there for aid distribution and not meant to be militarising it.

In the open letter from the journalists they are requesting free and unfettered independent access to all areas of Gaza as well as protection for local
journalists.

So that would mean they would refuse to be embedded with the IDF and just go off on their own?

Isn’t this unusual in an active war zone when war correspondents generally are embedded with one side?

They also want the IDF to protect local journalists while saying they don’t need protection themselves, but there will be few, if any, unbiased Palestinian journalists and a lot seem to have popped up during the war and work for Hamas (otherwise they would be executed!).

So they are calling for one side to protect the other sides propaganda machine.

Have I read it wrong?!!

@ComeAsYouAreAsAFriend I posted the article in full as @PinkBobby was expressing interest in it.

You don't have to agree with it. I think it's a very interesting insight into the pressure BBC journalists have to report events in Gaza in a certain way. Though some of it is just opinion as you say, which people can agree with or not agree with.

I'm not sure.

How is the GHF a disaster when thousands of Palestinians received aid that they didn’t have to pay for for the first time during the war?

How has massive quantities of FREE aid been sold at markets throughout the war if it wasn’t hijacked and stolen? Do you seriously think Hamas would have allowed civilians to steal it and sell it off their own back when it is their main revenue stream?

Do you not think it’s an extremely odd coincidence that the sudden famine in Gaza, and massive media frenzy started, along with very emotive pictures of children proven to be suffering from medical conditions that could explain their malnourished appearance but not clearly disclosed in their stories, at the same time that thousands of tonnes of aid has been proven to be sitting rotting inside Gaza without being distributed.

Re the ICC, or U.N., I agree that they are by no means perfect but do we just accept then that war has no rules, or there shouldn’t be some global attempt to find consensus over issues?

I think everyone reasonably agrees war should have rules, but it would be healthy for people to understand the difficulty presented when only one side follows them.

I can’t bring myself to say that we should let go of these ideals, even if they aren’t anywhere close to perfectly executed. Surely it’s better than nothing?

Of course, we should not let go of ideals, but I personally think a better approach would be to criticise vehemently the side who use war crimes and crimes against humanity as their openly chosen strategy. We somehow lost sight of that here and people hold Hamas to such a low standard.

Re NGOs that are ‘anti-Israel’, I think these are groups that have tracked Israel treatment of Palestinians over a long period of time and this impact their narrative when it comes to the current conflict.

I agree with you, but there's certain issue in the world where we know what side NGOs will fall on. they are lefty activists largely at the end of the day. I personally think they are wrong about a lot of things, but also appreciate a lot of work they do.

Of course, Hamas escalated the conflict significantly with the horrendous acts on 7/10 but many charities/NGOs have been tracking their interactions for a long time and have been critical of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians for a long time.

True, and they have good points, but unfortunately they omit 50% of the story because they are biased.

As an example, in 2010 they reported on Israel’s ‘seperate and unequal’ approach to Palestinians. So whilst I can understand your assumption that they are Just out to get Israel, I think it’s also important to note that their interest in the dynamic between Palestinians and Israel goes back a long time and they may have an anti-Israel stance because as an org that tracks human rights violations and have found Israel guilty.

I find this really hard to make sense of. Israel, for all its flaws, manages to live in relative peace with around two million Palestinians, granting them equal rights under the law. Meanwhile, on the Palestinian side, Jews aren’t even allowed to enter, and doing so can mean death. On top of that, they pay people to kill Israelis. It’s hard to understand the logic, unless the goal isn’t fairness at all. Maybe if both sides were actually held to the same standard, it might start to look like justice.

And again the comparison between human rights in Israel and human rights under Hamas are not the comparison people are looking at in this conflict. Because it goes without saying that Hamas commit atrocities.

To me, that's simply not fair. You can't fight for Palestinian human rights by holding only the government in the country next door responsible.

But the interaction between Palestinians and the Israeli government/military and the potential inequality is a real concern at the moment and is, as has been reported, an on going issue.

For sure, it is. I don't think it, in fact I hate it, but then I remember that these two groups are at war, and while we accept hatred on one side, we expect the other to be constantly kind and generous. Is that right?

“Gaza will be okay when the majority of people in it believe Israel and Jews have a right to be in the middle east and have a right to independence.” I think the same is true for Israel. I think if they accepted the existence of Palestinians in their homes and the right to independence, Gaza would be ‘okay’.

Israel has always recognised that Palestinians have a right to live in the Middle East - two million live inside Israel itself. I’ve never heard an Israeli suggest Palestinians should leave or go elsewhere. In contrast, the dominant rhetoric from the Arab world has consistently been that Jews don’t belong there and should “go back to Europe.” That doesn’t reflect all Palestinians, but sadly, it has been a constant theme from their leadership.

On the question of independence, most Israelis genuinely supported the idea of a Palestinian state for decades. But that support has steadily eroded, not because of racism, but because they were attacked again and again by people who openly say they want Israel destroyed. They’ve faced suicide bombings, rocket attacks, and seen Palestinians celebrated as heroes for killing Jews, literally rewarded financially for it.

In the early 2000s, 72% of Israelis supported a two-state solution. By 2012 it was down to 61%, by 2016 it was 44%, and after the October 7 massacre it collapsed to 27%. Now it’s just 21%. People rarely acknowledge this: if you keep attacking a population, support for compromise and coexistence collapses. In the end, like anyone else, Israelis will prioritise their own survival over someone else’s self-determination.

I realise that works both ways, and cases of IDF brutality, shitty behavior from Israel or some of the horrific settler behavior will also have a similar effect, but the difference here is that Palestinians had a choice to accept peaceful coexistence for a very long time, and the Israelis never did.

But I fear the tactics used by Israel in this war can only inflame the hatred that Hamas will capitalise on. Because, as I’ve said before, if you bomb a lot of civilians, the people left are never going to see you as anything but to blame for deciding to drop the bomb.

Maybe, but then if I am honest I have no idea how this cycle stops other than Palestinians realising no amount of attacks and deaths and wars is ever going to erase Israel and they just have to get along with living. My belief is that most Israelis and actually most Palestinians probably just want peaceful lives, but unfortunately since this conflict (the broader one) began the leadership on the Arab side has never been willing to accept this and the Palestinian people are hampered from doing anything about it because they live in societies where they can't.

A person in Gaza can't, for example, form a political party that says "we want to just make peace with the Jews" and form a movement behind it, because they'd be killed. So what are they supposed to do? The international community doesn't help them, they actually help the oppressors! The UN is basically in cahoots with Hamas rather than meaningfully fighting for Palestinian people to choose a different path.

At the end of the day we see only the extremes, but I am sure most Gazan people are sitting in a tent praying for this to be over, hoping for a safe life for their kids, a roof, a job, the same things everyone wants but nobody seems to hear them because they are prevented from speaking.

Thanks for the reasoned post - few of those about!

I find this really hard to make sense of. Israel, for all its flaws, manages to live in relative peace with around two million Palestinians, granting them equal rights under the law. Meanwhile, on the Palestinian side, Jews aren’t even allowed to enter, and doing so can mean death. On top of that, they pay people to kill Israelis. It’s hard to understand the logic, unless the goal isn’t fairness at all. Maybe if both sides were actually held to the same standard, it might start to look like justice.

Yes, I remember the Ramallah lynching in 2000 and weren’t there two vulnerable Israeli civilians with mental illnesses released a few months ago who had been held hostage in Gaza for over 10 years just for wandering in?

I don’t disagree - I don’t think Gaza is a safe place for anyone at the moment thanks to Hamas’s general disregard for human life and Israel’s current approach to warfare. My point was more focused on the fact that we don’t get as many reports about what Hamas is doing and one of the reasons might be because we don’t have the visibility. They can’t wipe out cities like Israel has done or control the boarder. These two things (and the related consequences) are more visible and therefore more widely reported. Of course, in the future, we may have more accounts of Hamas’s treatment on its people while the world has been shut out but for now we don’t have that visibility. And neutrality doesn’t mean making sure there are as many reports about Hamas as there are about Israel. It means accurately reporting (to the best of their ability) when they have a story. I would think way less of the press if their rule was ‘every Israel story must be followed by a Hamas story’ or vice versa.

I think Hamas is winning the propaganda war because they have a lot of ‘ammunition’ to throw in Israel’s face. A slower but more targeted approach to Hamas would’ve saved many innocent lives. I appreciate that that increases the threat on Israel - the longer Hamas exist, the more time to attack - but I don’t think that justifies the scale of destruction we can see in Gaza. I fear that Israel is making it way too easy for Hamas to recruit people and that is on Israel’s govt. and its military.

Yeah, this is what I mean.

Two IDF reservists lost, beaten to death by a mob, and their bodies mutilated and thrown from a window.

Two mentally ill Israeli civilians crossed into Gaza unarmed and alone. They’ve been held hostage for nearly a decade, denied Red Cross access etc.

Meanwhile, Israel treats Palestinian civilians in its hospitals, allows Arab parties in its Knesset, and guarantees legal equality under the law, imperfectly, yes, but it exists.

The comparison is staggering: on one side, a flawed democracy; on the other, a terror regime that treats Jews not just as enemies, but as subhuman.

So thank you for proving my point. This isn’t about two sides behaving badly. It’s about one side held to the highest moral standards, and another given a free pass no matter how grotesque the violence.

I can't see that this is correct at all - why hold Jewish people uniquely to this impossible standard? Why can't both be expected to not kill or hurt the other?

I completely agree that a more targeted, long-term strategy would have been better. That said, I’m not a military expert with access to intelligence, so I’m not in a position to judge operational decisions with much authority. I do think more could have been done to spare innocent lives (there has never been a war where I didn't think that), though I’m not even sure how many of the reported casualties were civilians.

What gets me is this: for decades, there’s been detailed reporting on Hamas and similar groups, torture, executions of political rivals, indoctrinating children, using human shields. It’s all out there, but no one really paid attention. Even after 7 October, when the atrocities were livestreamed, rape, murder, hostage-taking, there was a brief reaction, and then the world turned on Israel (even during the attack!)

If a group can proudly commit something like 7 October, go on TV vowing to do it again, still hold hostages, put their own children in danger, refuse ceasefires, and somehow still escape blame while Israel is vilified, then maybe, the PR war was unwinnable from the start. People, for whatever reason, hate Israel. Irrationally. Obsessively. I have my theory on why!

Honestly what are you talking about. It was not ignored because Hamas was not and is not a recognised government. It is recognised as a terrorist group.

Israel is completely isolating itself because of it’s own actions. Countries in the EU and the UK gave Israel their full support after 7/10. They never had more support but now its friends are condemning it, they are openly saying that they think the Israeli government is lying. It is actually quite extraordinary how much support they lost. After all is said and done Israel’s relationship with its allies will be forever changed.

How is the GHF a disaster when thousands of Palestinians received aid that they didn’t have to pay for for the first time during the war?
1000 people were shot trying to access this aid. Have you evidence that the UN and other aid agencies were charging for aid that's a new one on me.

How has massive quantities of FREE aid been sold at markets throughout the war if it wasn’t hijacked and stolen? Do you seriously think Hamas would have allowed civilians to steal it and sell it off their own back when it is their main revenue stream?
This has been reported by the Israeli government but evidence has not been provided that Hamas were stealing large quantities of aid in fact a report just out by USAid found no evidence of widespread Hamas theft of Gaza aid. Unfortunately there is always looting and it can be sold on the black market that is not unique to Gaza.

Do you not think it’s an extremely odd coincidence that the sudden famine in Gaza, and massive media frenzy started, along with very emotive pictures of children proven to be suffering from medical conditions that could explain their malnourished appearance but not clearly disclosed in their stories, at the same time that thousands of tonnes of aid has been proven to be sitting rotting inside Gaza without being distributed
No children are starving whether there's pictures of them or not. The integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) has declared that the threshold for famine has been reached. Thr UN and other aid organisations have said Israel were not facilitating the safe distribution of aid. Lack of aid is not the issue it is getting it into and around Gaza. The 3 month blockade has massively contributed to the famine conditions we see now.

A starving baby too weak to cry

www.instagram.com/reel/DMpwUCyoOCk/

That’s simply not true. Hamas has governed Gaza since 2007. It was elected. It functions as the de facto ruling authority for over two million people. It runs the ministries, controls the police, the borders, the schools, the hospitals, and collects taxes. Every war, every ceasefire, every negotiation in Gaza goes through Hamas.

Yes - wars that involve sides playing by different rules is never going to feel ‘fair’ as terrorists can do as they please with seemingly no accountability whereas states are held by a higher standard. Hamas are particularly challenging as they are both govt. and terrorists. But I have to stick with the idea that states, especially western democracies must stick to international law and do their upmost to protect innocent people. Because stooping to the level of terrorists condones that behaviour and sets a precedent for others to repeat it without fear of repercussions.

And as I said in another post, I think it’s harder to report on the crimes that Hamas are committing because we currently have less visibility. A news story can’t be “we all know Hamas will be doing terrible things inside Gaza”.

Re human rights, I don’t mean that Hamas shouldn’t be held accountable for their violations. I meant that Israel is solely accountable for theirs. So yes, Hamas have and will continue to violate human rights. But so have Israel. And I know that the tactics of Hamas mean that Israel has an incredibly challenging task when trying to eradicate them but they must still attempt to act within the realms of international law and human rights. The widespread bombing, for example, or bombing of a school or hospital was inevitably going to cause civilian deaths and I’m not sure how many Hamas militant deaths justify X number of civilian deaths. I would say exactly the same about the ‘war on terror’ that the allies conducted - by very definition, it is an incredibly challenging battle to win (and was not really won in the end) but I would hold all of those countries to the same standard. If you are going to invade another country, I believe you do have a responsibility to protect innocent people as far as possible and value innocent life more than the possibility of enemy death.

Re Israeli rhetoric and their views on Palestinians, the following show that at least some Israelis do not view Palestinians as equal or at the very least are happy to use rhetoric that dehumanises Palestinians or assumes that all Palestinians are terrorists:

“Deputy Knesset speaker Nissim Vaturi from the ruling Likud party wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, that Israelis had one common goal, “erasing the Gaza Strip from the face of the earth.” Israeli Heritage Minister Amichay Eliyahu, from the far-right Jewish Power party, suggested that Israel drop a nuclear bomb on Gaza and said there were “no uninvolved civilians” in the territory.”

“National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir argued that his right to freedom of movement as a Jewish settler outweighs the same right for Palestinians.
“My right, the right of my wife and my children, to move around Judea and Samaria is more important than freedom of movement for the Arabs,” Ben-Gvir said Wednesday, using the biblical name for the West Bank. “The right to life comes before freedom of movement.”

I have also included a link to the 2010 report I mentioned previously. It’s a long read, I know, but it does highlight the inequality that Palestinians have been dealing with for years

https://www.hrw.org/report/2010/12/19/separate-and-unequal/israels-discriminatory-treatment-palestinians-occupied

Coincidentally, I also came across this report from the same year re Israel using a young boy as a human shield. I’m actually sharing it because Huamn Rights Watch do balance their coverage of Israel with coverage of Hamas. Link available but here’s a paragraph:

https://www.hrw.org/news/2010/11/26/israel-soldiers-punishment-using-boy-human-shield-inadequate

“While the Israeli military has convicted and disciplined several soldiers, Hamas authorities in Gaza have not taken any credible steps whatsoever to investigate its own troops or members of other Palestinian armed groups for alleged war crimes and serious human rights abuses during the conflict, including deliberately launching hundreds of rockets at Israeli population centers and extrajudicially executing alleged Palestinian collaborators.”

I thought you and others might appreciate their attempts to be neutral and balanced.

Re the support for a two state solution, the figures I’ve found from a C4 report from 2023 suggest that in Palestine, the figure was around 60% in 2012 too and fell to 24% in 2023 so not massively dissimilar. And similarly to the Israeli perspective, if you treat a population badly for a long period of time and exert excessive control over their movements and minimise their quality of life, hatred and resentment builds. I think these figures actually reflect wrong doing on both sides over the years as actions on both sides have caused harm and reduced the chance of a peaceful solution.

And I think there’s also the fact that Palestinians didn’t exactly choose Hamas to lead them to begin with and haven’t had an opportunity to vote for change since 2006. It seems unfair to say that Palestinians had a choice to peacefully coexist or how can the cycle end “other than Palestinians realising no amount of attacks and deaths and wars is ever going to erase Israel and they just have to get along with living” This may have been a typo as you seem to agree that it is not the Palestinians who are to blame for not attempting peace. Palestinians are victims of both Hamas as their horrendous government and Israel as their foreign oppressor.

And yes, I appreciate anyone who can have a constructive debate. I also remain opened minded to people who come with a lot of anger and passion because we are talking about a very emotive topic here and people want justice for the many innocent people who have lost their lives or lost loved ones.

Just to add some additional context - it was elected by a small majority (and didn’t win an outright majority in any district) and was meant to run in coalition with the more moderate Fatah party. Hamas then pushed out/killed members of that party and seized control of Gaza and hasn’t allowed elections since. I only add this because I think it is important to highlight that the Palestinian population were not all backing Hamas in those elections.

I think it is more shocking when a western democracy is killing innocent people in war than terrorists. It may be unfair but I think in today’s world, brutal acts of terroism are absorbed or not dwelled on. Perhaps for our own sanity. Or because it is expected of them/ we don’t expect anything better from them. I’m not sure they escape blame but in a forum like this, it often becomes Israel focused because there are a lot of people who also refuse to acknowledge that Israel has done wrong. I would hope that most, if not all, posters accept that Hamas are not the ‘good guy’ but people get increasingly frustrated if/when Israel are declared as the good guy or somehow absolved from responsibility because Hamas committed horrendous acts. Especially when it can seem like people are tying themselves in knots to explain away Israel’s behaviour rather than just agreeing that they’ve done wrong and that doesn’t mean you’re siding with Hamas or antisemitic. Israel’s actions cannot be entirely blamed on Hamas. They have to be held accountable for their decision making. And I believe that is what most people are trying to stress.

Of course, there will be people using this war as a cover for anti-semitism, just as 9/11 and the war on terror massively impacted the Muslim population. Neither are acceptable and I hope that we can all continue this debate without sweeping comments about Jewish people or Muslim people. I’ve actually only seen such statements made about Muslim people so far but I know a few posts have been deleted so many have missed antisemitic ones.

I agree with a lot of what you say but Hamas is unique in that it's a terror organisation that is taken / treated as a government in a lot of ways - with none of the responsibilities.

Ie, they can collect take, they can join the ICC, they can negotiate for Gaza, they cam run schools or be quoted on the BBC but then simultaneously they can't be held responsible for anything at all.

I do think that has to change.

Yes, I know.

Are you being fucking serious?

I have personally volunteered in humanitarian aid distribution multiple times in a variety of places.

I have friends who work full-time for organisations such as MSF, Oxfam, and the ICRC.

Literally none of us has ever been part of a distribution which basically also doubled as a field study on social darwinism in action. Every org who is even semi-serious about this stuff - including the ones, and they do exist, which are more missionary than humanitarian in ethos - will adhere to certain standards and protection frameworks.

And getting 1000 of your service users killed in the context of food distribution is simply unheard of!

And a final comment (for now!). Starmer set out conditions for Israel to avoid the UK recognising Palestine as a state.

“Those "substantive steps" that Israel must take include:

• Agreeing to a ceasefire
• Allowing the UN to restart the supply of aid
• Committing to a long-term peace process that "delivers a two-state solution"
• And guaranteeing that the occupied West Bank will not be annexed in the future

The prime minister also reiterated the demands that remain in place for Hamas, which are:

• Also agreeing to a ceasefire
• Releasing all the remaining hostages from the territory
• Accepting they will play no role in the government of Gaza
• And full disarmament”

I know it can’t be part of the list because Netanyahu would never accept it but I genuinely don’t see how a two state solution can happen now unless the current government of Israel are replaced (through democratic elections or whatever other means they have constitutionally speaking so that Netanyahu isn’t involved).

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cdrkj810plvt

Well neither will accept those terms so it sounds like just gas from Starmer!

Yes, killed by IDF bombings.

Yet your post omits that, instead gives the impression its Hamas doing the killing.

No I didn't ignore the IDF my post said It would be yet more He said/She said situation with different people blaming either Hamas, local gangs or the IDF if a journalist got shot.

It's a war so yes the IDF are causing deaths including civilian, so are Hamas.