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new york times
'They Must Be Prosecuted': Video Found on Phone of Murdered Gaza Medic Refutes IDF Claims
"Everyone involved in this crime against humanity, and everyone who covered it up, would face prosecution in a world that had any shred of dignity left."
Apr 05, 2025
A video presented to officials at the United Nations on Friday and first made public Saturday by the New York Times provides more evidence that the recent massacre of Palestinian medics in Gaza did not happen the way Israeli government claimed—the latest in a long line of deception when it comes to violence against civilians that have led to repeated accusations of war crimes.
The video, according to the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS), was found on the phone of a paramedic found in a mass grave with a bullet in his head after being killed, along with seven other medics, by Israeli forces on March 23. The eight medics, buried in the shallow grave with the bodies riddled with bullets, were: Mustafa Khafaja, Ezz El-Din Shaat, Saleh Muammar, Refaat Radwan, Muhammad Bahloul, Ashraf Abu Libda, Muhammad Al-Hila, and Raed Al-Sharif. The video reportedly belonged to Radwan. A ninth medic, identified as Asaad Al-Nasasra, who was at the scene of the massacre, which took place near the southern city of Rafah, is still missing.
The PRCS said it presented the video—which refutes the explanation of the killings offered by Israeli officials—to members of the UN Security Council on Friday.
"They were killed in their uniforms. Driving their clearly marked vehicles. Wearing their gloves. On their way to save lives," Jonathan Whittall, head of the UN's humanitarian affairs office in Palestine, said last week after the bodies were discovered. Some of the victims, according to Gaza officials, were found with handcuffs still on them and appeared to have been shot in the head, execution-style.
The Israeli military initially said its soldiers "did not randomly attack" any ambulances, but rather claimed they fired on "terrorists" who approached them in "suspicious vehicles." Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, an IDF spokesperson, said the vehicles that the soldiers opened fire on were driving with their lights off and did not have clearance to be in the area. The video evidence directly contradicts the IDF's version of events.
As the Timesreports:
The Times obtained the video from a senior diplomat at the United Nations who asked not to be identified to be able to share sensitive information.
The Times verified the location and timing of the video, which was taken in the southern city of Rafah early on March 23. Filmed from what appears to be the front interior of a moving vehicle, it shows a convoy of ambulances and a fire truck, clearly marked, with headlights and flashing lights turned on, driving south on a road to the north of Rafah in the early morning. The first rays of sun can be seen, and birds are chirping.
In an interview with Drop Site News published Friday, the only known paramedic to survive the attack, Munther Abed, explained that he and his colleagues "were directly and deliberately shot at" by the IDF. "The car is clearly marked with 'Palestinian Red Crescent Society 101.' The car's number was clear and the crews' uniform was clear, so why were we directly shot at? That is the question."
The video's release sparked fresh outrage and demands for accountability on Saturday.
"The IDF denied access to the site for days; they sent in diggers to cover up the massacre and intentionally lied about it," said podcast producer Hamza M. Syed in reaction to the new revelations. "The entire leadership of the Israeli army is implicated in this unconscionable war crime. And they must be prosecuted."
"Everyone involved in this crime against humanity, and everyone who covered it up, would face prosecution in a world that had any shred of dignity left," said journalist Ryan Grim of DropSite News.
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'Abhorrent. Evil. Indefensible.' Trump Cutting Vaccine Alliance Funds Could Kill 1.2 Million Children Worldwide
"This isn't fiscal responsibility. It's a political decision to let preventable diseases spread—to ignore science, lend legitimacy to anti-vaccine extremism, and dismantle the infrastructure that protects us all."
Mar 26, 2025
Public health experts and other critics on Wednesday condemned the Trump administration's decision to cut off funding to the global vaccine alliance Gavi, which the organization estimates could result in the deaths of over 1 million children.
"Abhorrent. Evil. Indefensible," Atlantic staff writer Clint Smith said on social media in response to exclusive reporting from The New York Times, which obtained documents including a 281-page spreadsheet that "the skeletal remains" of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) sent to Congress on Monday.
The leaked materials detail 898 awards that the Trump administration plans to continue and 5,341 it intends to end. A spokesperson for the U.S. State Department, which runs the gutted USAID, confirmed the list is accurate and said that "each award terminated was reviewed individually for alignment with agency and administration priorities."
The United States contributes 13% of Gavi's budget and the terminated grant was worth $2.6 billion through 2030, according to the Times. Citing the alliance, the newspaper noted that cutting off U.S. funds "may mean 75 million children do not receive routine vaccinations in the next five years, with more than 1.2 million children dying as a result."
"The administration's attempt to unilaterally walk away from its Gavi commitment raises serious legal questions and should be challenged."
Responding to the Trump administration's move in a social media thread on Wednesday, Gavi said that U.S. support for the alliance "is vital" and with it, "we can save over 8 million lives over the next five years and give millions of children a better chance at a healthy, prosperous future."
"But investing in Gavi brings other benefits for our world and the American people. Here's why: By maintaining global stockpiles of vaccines against deadly diseases like Ebola, mpox, and yellow fever, we help keep America safe. These diseases do not respect borders, they can cross continents in hours and cost billions of dollars," Gavi continued.
The alliance explained that "aside from national security, investing in Gavi means smart economics too. Every dollar we invest in lower income countries generates a return of $54. This helps countries develop and communities thrive, taking away pressure to migrate in search of a better life elsewhere."
"The countries Gavi supports, too, see the benefit in our model: Every year they pay more towards the cost of their own immunisation program, bringing forward the day when they transition from our support completely," the group noted. "Our goal is to ultimately put ourselves out of business."
"For 25 years, the USA and Gavi have had the strongest of partnerships," the alliance concluded. "Without its help, we could not have halved child mortality, saved 18 million lives or helped 19 countries transition from our support (some becoming donors themselves). We hope this partnership can continue."
Many other opponents of the decision also weighed in on social media. Eric Reinhart, a political anthropologist, social psychiatrist, and psychoanalytic clinician in the United States, said, "A sick country insists on a sick world."
Dr. Heather Berlin, an American neuroscientist and clinical psychologist, sarcastically said: "Oh yes, this will surely end well. Good thing the U.S. has an invisible shield around it to protect us from 'foreign' diseases."
Some Times readers also praised the reporting. Dr. Jonathan Marro—a pediatric oncologist, bioethicist, health services researcher, and educator in Massachusetts—called the article "excellent but appalling," while Patrick Gaspard, a distinguished senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and its action fund, said that it was "crushing to read this important story."
The newspaper noted that "the memo to Congress presents the plan for foreign assistance as a unilateral decision. However because spending on individual health programs such as HIV or vaccination is congressionally allocated, it is not clear that the administration has legal power to end those programs. This issue is currently being litigated in multiple court challenges."
Liza Barrie, Public Citizen's campaign director for global vaccines access, also highlighted that point in a Wednesday statement. She said that "the Trump administration's decision to end U.S. funding for Gavi will cost more than a million children's lives, make America less secure. It abandons 25 years of bipartisan commitment to global immunization and undermines the very systems that help prevent deadly outbreaks from reaching our own doorsteps."
"Vaccines are the most cost-effective public health tool ever developed," Barrie continued. "This isn't fiscal responsibility. It's a political decision to let preventable diseases spread—to ignore science, lend legitimacy to anti-vaccine extremism, and dismantle the infrastructure that protects us all. In their shocking incompetence, the Trump administration will do it all without saving more than a rounding error in the budget, if that."
"Congress has authority over foreign assistance funding," she stressed. "The administration's attempt to unilaterally walk away from its Gavi commitment raises serious legal questions and should be challenged. Lawmakers must stand up for the rule of law, and for the belief that the value of a child’s life is not determined by geography."
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Our Covid Reichstag Moment: How Eugenic Interpretations Fuel Authoritarianism
The retroactive calculus of whose lives are worth sacrificing for economic metrics is eerily reminiscent of early 20th-century eugenic practices that sorted humans into categories of "fit" and "unfit," determining whose lives were expendable.
Mar 21, 2025
In a recent episode of The New York Times' "The Daily" podcast, host Michael Barbaro interviewed two Princeton political scientists about their new book examining Covid-19 policy failures. Instead of contextualizing the pandemic response within our current democratic crisis, the episode introduced a troubling revisionist narrative: that public health officials who prioritized saving lives were somehow wrong.
Shrouded under the protective guise of political scientist academics presenting "objective" analysis, a politically biased argument was offered as necessary news for the day—an editorial choice made even more striking given the sheer volume of immediate, existential threats to our democracy that warranted urgent coverage instead. This was the necessary deep dive audience needed to know according to The New York Times to better understand the news of the day on the exact same day when U.S. President Donald Trump was expected to announce the closure of the Department of Education and days after Chief Justice Roberts issued a rare public rebuke of Trump for threatening to impeach a federal judge over a migration ruling. While our judiciary's independence was under direct assault and educational access for millions of Americans hung in the balance, The "Daily" chose to relitigate pandemic policies through the lens of economic grievance—a choice that speaks volumes about which narratives powerful media institutions consider worthy of amplification.
Public health officials who refused to accept this calculus—who insisted that every life deserved protection—were vilified by those who preferred simpler narratives about individual freedom over collective responsibility.
This shift in narrative about Covid-19 and the deliberately limiting analysis of this complex issue is not just provocative but dangerous given the coordinated assault on public health happening across the country. As multiple Republican-led states advance legislation to ban masks—tools proven to save lives and reduce symptom severity—and as the Trump administration threatens academic freedom by pressuring Columbia University to comply with a list of harrowing demands including criminalizing masking on campus, major media platforms are inexplicably amplifying critiques of the very experts who risked their careers and safety to protect the public during a deeply uncertain time. These public health officials have already endured death threats and targeted harassment campaigns from right-wing extremists, including Elon Musk who tweeted one early Sunday morning in 2022 "My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci." Now, The New York Times lends its institutional credibility to the same dangerous narratives, effectively mainstreaming the delegitimization of scientific expertise—a classic precursor to authoritarian control.
What's most striking about this conversation isn't just its timing, but what it omits. Throughout history, crises have been exploited by authoritarian forces to dismantle democratic institutions and consolidate power. Covid-19 represents our generation's Reichstag fire moment—a crisis that has been weaponized to erode democratic norms worldwide.
Crisis as Opportunity for Authoritarianism
The historical pattern is clear. After the 1933 Reichstag fire, Hitler immediately blamed communists, enacted emergency powers, suspended civil liberties, and used propaganda to create fear among the German population. Similarly, Russian President Vladimir Putin exploited the 1999 Russian apartment bombings to blame Chechen separatists, launch military campaigns, restrict civil liberties, control media, and crack down on political opposition.
Covid-19 has followed the same authoritarian playbook globally. Governments worldwide enacted emergency powers, increased surveillance, eroded democratic norms, and exploited societal fears. Myanmar's military used the pandemic to justify their 2021 coup. Right-wing extremist groups weaponized misinformation to promote xenophobic rhetoric.
But what's uniquely dangerous about The New York Times' framing is how it subtly reinforces the authoritarian narrative by questioning the very public health experts who refused to calculate human life against economic metrics. When the voices of Dr. Anthony Fauci and others are played alongside criticism from political scientists—not public health experts—who make clear that they measure success beyond the saving of lives, we're witnessing the normalization of disposability. This calculus of whose lives are worth sacrificing for economic metrics is eerily reminiscent of early 20th-century eugenic practices that sorted humans into categories of "fit" and "unfit," determining whose lives were expendable—a ideology that was once condemned by civilized society but now finds subtle—rolling back Medicaid and cutting special education impact disabled people the most—and terribly overt resurrection in our public sphere.
The Real Covid-19 Story Is About Who We Choose to Save
The pandemic revealed which communities our society deemed worthy of protection and which were considered sacrificial for economic priorities. Public health officials who refused to accept this calculus—who insisted that every life deserved protection—were vilified by those who preferred simpler narratives about individual freedom over collective responsibility.
We cannot separate our understanding of the pandemic from the broader context of growing authoritarianism. The forces threatening democracy today are not single-issue problems but interconnected crises: white supremacy, media fragmentation as social media algorithms feed us visions of worlds comprised of binaries instead of nuances, attacks on gender and racial equity, and ludicrously widening wealth inequality. The rich are getting richer while essential workers—disproportionately the economically marginalized and people of color—were sacrificed during the pandemic. And we have lost our shared reality as social media oligarchs make billions from our mistrust of one another—the same oligarchs who now fund the politicians seeking to rewrite pandemic history, who now have metaphorically repaved the front lawn of the White House as a used car lot. These aren't coincidences but a coherent authoritarian strategy: fragment the population, erase collective memory, pit communities against each other, and dismantle faith in expertise and shared facts. And, as The New York Times demonstrated on March 20, you can do this all under the guise of objective reporting.
Covid-19 was successfully exploited by authoritarian leaders worldwide precisely because they offered simple explanations where reality required nuance. They promised quick returns to normalcy when responsible leadership demanded difficult truths. They divided communities into the essential and non-essential, the worthy and unworthy.
Responsible Media Must Connect the Dots
When major media outlets like The New York Times allow political scientists to critique public health experts without this broader context, they become unwitting accomplices in the authoritarian project. By focusing narrowly on whether lockdowns were "effective" without examining how authoritarians exploited both the crisis and the response, they miss the forest for the trees. They become complicit in emboldening authoritarians.
The question isn't whether public health officials made perfect decisions with imperfect information during an unprecedented global emergency. The question is: Who benefits from undermining trust in the institutions and experts who tried to save as many lives as possible, regardless of economic cost? The answer should trouble us: the same authoritarian forces that have weaponized every crisis throughout history to dismantle democratic institutions and consolidate power.
As we approach the fifth anniversary of the Covid-19 crisis, we will inevitably see more attempts to understand and reframe that era—but these analyses must be conducted responsibly.
As we reflect on Covid-19's impact, responsible journalism must place these conversations within our broader democratic crisis. The political scientists at Princeton should know better. The New York Times should know better. And those of us who lived through the pandemic—who witnessed firsthand how extremist politicians like Trump weaponized confusion and suffering to stoke fear, cultivate rage, and deepen divisions—we certainly do know better. We watched as misinformation about masks, vaccines, and public health measures was deliberately spread to fracture communities and undermine institutions. We saw how this manufactured outrage directly fueled the violence at the Capitol and created the fertile ground for today's authoritarian resurgence. Our lived experience of this cynical exploitation demands more from our media than revisionist narratives that conveniently forget this deliberate destabilization.
We must ask ourselves why certain narratives are amplified at specific moments in our national conversation. As we approach the fifth anniversary of the Covid-19 crisis, we will inevitably see more attempts to understand and reframe that era—but these analyses must be conducted responsibly, with full awareness of how limiting narratives can embolden authoritarians and reinforce eugenic hierarchies. The New York Times chose to revisit Covid-19 policies on the same day the Department of Education faced potential elimination—yet they failed to connect how disabled students, already disproportionately harmed during the pandemic, would lose critical protections and supports if this department disappeared. This is not coincidental. It is part of a pattern where eugenic ideology infiltrates mainstream discourse precisely when vulnerable communities need protection most. Media institutions that claim to help us make sense of the world instead reinforce the disposability of certain lives—whether by advocating economic metrics over human survival, by giving platforms to those who see the disabled as acceptable collateral damage, or by simply choosing which crises deserve attention and which can be ignored.
Our responsibility is clear: We must identify these eugenic patterns whenever they appear, name them for what they are, and refuse to accept any worldview that sorts human beings into categories of those worth saving and those not worth saving. When media fails in this moral obligation, we must hold them accountable—not just for the stories they choose to tell, but for the future they help create through those choices. The lessons of history demand nothing less.
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