It had been a relatively quiet month in Gaza when 23-year-old Reuters cameraman Fadel Shana got in the company SUV on Wednesday afternoon and headed off with a soundman to cover the latest Israeli military incursion.
Three Israeli soldiers had been killed earlier in the day and tensions were high as Israeli tanks and troops pushed into central Gaza.
Shana stopped the SUV, clearly identified with large red-and-white "TV" and "PRESS" logos, a few hundred yards from an Israeli tank settled on a ridge nearby.
Shana got out of the SUV and started filming. In the footage, things are quiet as Shana zooms in, then pans back. There is a flash from the tank's cannon muzzle and a plume of black smoke. Then Shana's camera goes black.
Shana was one of 20 Palestinians killed in the deadliest day in Gaza in weeks.
From the footage, it looks as if the blast decimated the Reuters SUV. Shana's flak jacket was partially blown off.
On Thursday, doctors in Gaza said it was clear that Shana had been killed by an especially controversial kind of Israeli tank shell.
The doctors said the tank fired a flechette shell that explodes in the air and sends thousands of small metal arrows flying through the air. Human rights groups have unsuccessfully urged Israel for years to stop using such shells in Gaza because of the increased danger to innocent civilians.
Reuters Editor-in-Chief David Schlesinger called for an "immediate and full investigation."
"We and the military must work together urgently to understand why this tragedy took place and how similar incidents can be avoided in the future," Schlesinger said.
The Israeli military apologized for the incident and said it was unintentional.
Thousands of people turned out Thursday for Shana's funeral where some local journalists accused Israel of deliberately targeting the cameraman for trying to film the attacks that killed several innocent civilians and young children.
Covering clashes in Gaza is always risky, especially for cameraman like Shana whose job it is to get footage of the violence.
Simply wearing a flak jacket with "PRESS" on it, or driving around in a car with "TV" on the side is never a guarantee of immunity. And, in some cases, it can make you a target.
Gaza kidnappers over the last few years have targeted cars with both PRESS and United Nations logos on the side.
Last year, Palestinian journalists issued a public denunciation after Islamic Jihad militants reportedly disguised one of their cars with TV logos in an attempt to stage an attack on Israeli forces on the Gaza border.
In an ironic twist to yesterday's events, one of the three Israeli soldiers to be killed, 20-year-old Manhash al-Baniyat, was an Arab Bedouin from an unauthorized Israeli village.
Manhash was due to be married next month and had built a home in his Negev village that the Israeli government had already threatened to demolish.
"Sometimes you feel like belonging to the state, but sometimes you get fed up because you build a house and they come and destroy it," said al-Baniyat's cousin, Awada Smaana.
McClatchy recently wrote about the Bedouin in Israel, which you can read here.
UPDATE: Four days after Shana's death, the IDF announced on Sunday that it would conduct a formal investigation into the cameraman's killing.
The announcement followed days of calls from various sources for an immediate investigation.
On Thursday, the Foreign Press Association, of which McClatchy is a member, issued a statement expressing "profound concern over the lack of a clear explanation" from the IDF about Shana's death.
"Video footage shot by Fadal himself shows that he was hit by a tank shell," said the FPA. "At the time, Fadal was not in an area where any fighters were present. He and his vehicle had clear markings indicating he was a member of the press. He was at least one and a half kilometers [about a mile] from the tank from which the shell that killed him was fired. A full accounting of this occurrence from the IDF is necessary and urgent."
On Saturday, Human Rights Watch concluded that the Israeli military "fired recklessly or deliberately" at the Reuters crew.
“Israeli soldiers did not make sure they were aiming at a military target before firing, and there is evidence suggesting they actually targeted the journalists,” said Joe Stork, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “Israel should investigate these deaths and, if crimes were committed, hold to account those responsible.”
Such IDF investigations usually lead nowhere, but we will see what comes of this one...
buenos,
solid post.
godspeed.
los
Posted by: Carlos Townsend | April 17, 2008 at 11:11 AM
How horribly tragic. Just reading your post and the links you provided is terribly sad - nothing new - but sad none the less.
I hope a 'real' investigation into Mr. Shana's death is conducted so that other incidents like this can be avoided.
What makes me even sadder though is that innocent civilians were killed, including five kids and yet they are of little consequence with little mention in any of the news reports you provided or even in your blog post. As usual, these kids are nameless, ageless, with no family, no friends, no life ... no value?
Posted by: Edie | April 17, 2008 at 03:54 PM
OMG Dion. Do you know Martin Fletcher, NBC correspondent? He's a real ... (darn, promised I wouldn't name call) ...
Checking out different stories online, I visited MSNBC's WorldBlog and found his post:
http://worldblog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/04/17/911786.aspx
He says things like, "Following a storm of Palestinian rockets, Israel killed 120 Palestinians in Gaza six weeks ago and bought a few weeks of relative calm. Now Hamas is back again, firing rockets and ambushing Israeli soldiers. In return they got 20 dead Palestinians on Wednesday and provoked yet more threats from Israel that it would launch a major offensive to clean out Gaza of rockets and gunmen."
Just a bit skewed.
I understand the frustration with Hamas, they definitely choose tactics that are ... questionable in their effieciency, but then again I wasn't born under occupation or have lived in a ghetto my whole life with no hope of improvement for myself or my children; political pawns.
What pissed me off is this skewed perspective and this post, definitely made after the latest violence not only doesn't mention the killing of kids, but any civilians at all.
You can also see in his comment above that he fails to mention that the 'ambush' was when the soldiers were on Palestinian territory. How dare the fighters ambush soldiers on their land?! I mean the arrogance.
He needs to get out of Tel Aviv. He's reporting like an embedded reporter instead of someone trying to balanced. His whole analysis of Hamas is amateurish (or he's being fed ideas).
Hope he's not a friend.
Posted by: Edie | April 17, 2008 at 08:15 PM
If you watch the Reuters video of Shana's final moments and the footage immediately afterwards you can see the evidence of a very typical Palestinian scene throughout the intifada: A small group of Palestinian journalists filming a 'routine' operation by the Israelis (the IDF carries out several such invasions everyday, somewhere in the WB and/or Gaza).
The Israelis have near total surveillance coverage of the situation - they are watching video from their tanks, from their towers and from the constant drone footage. The IDF is not locked in pitched battles; they are slowly and deliberately positioning themselves in an open area. The scene is not bang-bang, it often takes hours to unfold (in this case, they are 'securing' a buffer zone in a non-built-up area in Gaza). And the Israelis have been watching the area for hours as this well-worn dynamic unfolds.
The Israelis can see the clearly identified journos with their well-marked vehicles operating in easily discernible and entirely predictable patterns. These Palestinian wire service reporters capture virtually every frame the world sees from Palestine are serious and skilled professionals.
And of course, in Palestine, almost invariably, there are a group of kids on their bikes hanging around to watch them work and to watch the events unfolding in their villages and camps.
Without warning or reason, the Israelis decide at whatever moment to fire a flechette shell and spray the area of the journos and the kids on their bikes with white hot metal darts.
Watch the footage, the only people around are the other wire journos and the maimed and killed kids on their fallen bicycles. There are fields around them. The tank commander would have known full well what was happening and the weapons operator, too.
In a just world, this would be a crime scene. And although it has been five years since Israel killed a journalist in cold-blood, the nine journalists killed by the IDF from 2001-2003 would be aggravating evidence, to say nothing of the nine hundred kids Israel has killed in the last eight years.
Posted by: Todd Shishler | April 18, 2008 at 04:12 PM