What Happened to the Missing Paramedics in Southern Gaza?

Right, so yesterday, finally, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, part of the International Red Cross organisation as they are, managed to recover the bodies of missing paramedics and civil defence workers in southern Gaza, but what they found was not the aftermath of collateral damage, but far worse. You see these were not battlefield casualties, they shouldn’t have been casualties at all, these are aid workers with all of the international protections that comes with that, but when those protections never get enforced upon Israel, we get stories like this instead, of aid workers having been bound and handcuffed before their lives were ended, carried out by Israeli forces in yet another grotesque escalation of their genocidal campaign in Gaza.
Despite overwhelming evidence, Western media outlets have refused to call this what it is and instead the reports sanitise the killings with passive language—"died in strikes," "found dead"—erasing the deliberate cruelty of Israel’s actions.
Since October 7, 2023, Israel has killed over 1,400 medical personnel in Gaza, systematically dismantling the healthcare system while the world watches. The deaths of these Red Crescent and Civil Defence workers is not a mistake, not an error, it is deliberate—it is part of a calculated strategy to make Gaza uninhabitable for the Palestinian people the land belongs to, so media sanitisation of that becomes even more unacceptable.
Right, so the bodies of the missing rescue workers, missing for 8 days as they had been, were discovered in Rafah, victims of an Israeli attack as has quickly become obvious that they had been. The victims, who were aid workers and fire fighters were found tied and handcuffed making it abundantly clear as to the circumstances under which their lives were ended.
Where YouTube will not permit me to go into further detail, the manner in which these aid workers were found leaves no ambiguity: this was not an accidental strike, nor a tragic case of "friendly fire," or any other load of chuff the mass media might cough up, this was the deliberate killing of unarmed humanitarians.
Initially, the Israeli military admitted to firing on unidentified vehicles, before finally admitting they were ambulances and fire trucks. However, the discovery of the bodies proves that even that had to be a lie, because they didn’t handcuff themselves did they?
If Israel’s intent were merely to combat militants as they claim, to avoid civilian casualties, to only be targeting Hamas, this is clear evidence that that is a lie.
The Palestinian Red Crescent put out a statement the day before the bodies were found, which damns Israel utterly:
‘For the eighth consecutive day, the fate of nine Palestine Red Crescent paramedics remains unknown after they were directly shot by the occupation forces, wounding several of them.
Contact with them was lost about a week ago, when they responded to a call to provide first aid to a number of people injured by the occupation forces' shelling in the Hashashin area of Rafah in the Gaza Strip. The Palestine Red Crescent Society is shocked by the occupation forces' targeting of its paramedics while they were carrying out their humanitarian work, despite them bearing the Red Crescent emblem, an emblem protected by international laws, including international humanitarian law, which requires the occupation forces to respect and protect the emblem, facilitate the mission of humanitarian workers, and refrain from harming their lives in any way. If they are injured, they must be provided with the necessary medical care to preserve their lives and not expose them to danger.
The occupation's targeting of Red Crescent paramedics and their international emblem can only be considered a premeditated crime punishable by international humanitarian law, which the occupation continues to violate in full view of the entire world without taking serious steps to prevent these blatant violations of international conventions.
Not knowing the fate of our paramedic colleagues is a great tragedy, not only for us at the Palestinian Red Crescent, but also for humanitarian work and humanity.
The Society holds the occupation authorities fully responsible for the safety and lives of its paramedics, especially since they have been delaying allowing Red Crescent crews to enter the area to find out the fate of their colleagues from the very beginning.
The Society calls on the international community to pressure the occupation authorities to reveal the fate of the missing crew.
We also call on the international community and the states that have signed the Geneva Conventions to take serious steps to provide protection for medical personnel.
The Society renews its call on the international community, represented by the United Nations with all its bodies and institutions, the states party to the Geneva Conventions, and all international human rights and humanitarian organizations, to fulfill their legal obligations by urgently taking the necessary measures to compel the occupying state, "Israel," to immediately stop committing further grave violations against Palestinian medical personnel in particular and Palestinian civilians in general, to fully comply with the principles and provisions of international humanitarian law and human rights law legally applicable to the occupied Palestinian territory, and to work to put a final end to the occupying state's policy of impunity."
Despite that evidence though, mainstream Western media continues to downplay such atrocities don’t they?
Headlines avoiding active language, the omission of key details, interviews with Israeli figures who are clearly going to defend anything and uncritical repetition of IDF claims without independent verification, thereby justifying the unjustifiable.
This is not journalism—it is complicity in genocide. When media refuses to accurately describe war crimes, it enables their continuation and so we get incidents like this one that should never happen.
Compare it to how other conflicts are reported. If Russian forces executed Ukrainian medics, it would be front-page news, labelled a war crime, no hesitation.
If ISIS had bound and shot aid workers, the world would rightfully call it terrorism.
Yet when Israel does the same, the language softens, the context disappears, and the victims are dehumanised.
The targeting of these paramedics is not even an isolated incident as we know. Since October 2023, Israel has:
Bombed hospitals, from Al-Shifa to Al-Ahli to the Indonesian Hospital, to most recently the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital.
They have sniped doctors inside medical facilities and arrested others, such as Hussam Abu Safiya.
They have blocked ambulances from reaching the wounded and done so as we now know, in the most lethal way they could.
Over 1,400 medical staff have been killed since the Israeli genocide following the night of October 7th began. A number that represents a targeted annihilation of Gaza’s healthcare system. This in and of itself meets the legal definition of genocide under Article II(c) of the Genocide Convention: "Deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about a group’s physical destruction."
Under international humanitarian law medical personnel are explicitly protected. Under the Geneva Conventions attacking medical workers is a war crime and under the Rome Statute which underpins the ICC, Intentionally targeting humanitarian personnel is a crime against humanity.
Israel’s actions are not just immoral—they are very much illegal. Yet, because of Western political backing, accountability remains elusive, various ICC member states refuse to arrest the likes of Benjamin Netanyahu despite the ICC arrest warrant out against him.
This latest atrocity committed against civil defence workers and medical workers needs to be a turning point, a moment where Israel’s brutality can no longer be disguised as "self-defence" and any media outlets doing that or watering down the reality of a situation to suit the interests of the perpetrators must be condemned. This was a calculated act, designed to instil terror and ensure no one is left to save the people of Gaza.
The media’s failure to accurately report these crimes makes them accomplices in my view. Being bad at your job is one thing, calling you out as this channel has done since its inception is one thing, but this is complicity and that is a whole new level of failure on their part. If we allow language to be sanitised, we allow the crimes to continue.
History will judge not just Israel’s perpetrators, but those who provide cover for them as well as those who stayed silent. I won’t stay silent, will you?
Meanwhile, all of this might soon be even harder for Israel to justify and even harder for the media to defend, because for as much as Israel claim to be fighting Hamas, what happens if you take Hamas out of the equation? Hamas might be about to hand over power completely to an all new administration not involving them at all, so what will Israel do then? Get all the details of that story in this video recommendation here as your suggested next watch. Please do also hit like, share and subscribe if you have not already done so, so as to ensure you don’t miss out on all new content published daily as well as help support the channel at the same time which is very much appreciated and I will hopefully catch you on the next vid, Cheers folks.