Meanwhile, in Gaza…

An exposé on of the gullibility and incompetence of Western legacy media™, as exemplified by Norwegian state broadcaster NRK, shows how bad things have become

A long-ish piece, not so much about what transpires in the Middle East but about the further decay (as if that’s so easy) of legacy media journalism™.

Non-English content comes to you in my translation, with emphases and [snark] added.

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Israel Attacked Hospital in Gaza City

‘Everything is destroyed and out of order. Now we’re picking up the pieces’, says one of the doctors working there.

By Tora Carlsen Haaland, Milana Knežević, and Ingrid Bjørndal Farestvedt, NRK, 13 April 2025 [source]

Around midnight local time, the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) attacked Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital.

Healthcare workers were given less than half an hour to evacuate their hospitalised patients in the deep of the night before the IDF attacked, an employee recounts.

A hospitalised child with a head injury was killed, says one of the emergency doctors who worked there [that’s a link to Dr. Fadel Naim’s Twitter/X Posting; this appears to be what Elon Musk meant when he noted ‘you’re the media now’—a legacy media/state broadcaster is now basing its (second-hand) reporting™ partially on what’s posted on Twitter].

The congregation running the hospital stated the same.

[here and elsewhere in the piece, there are images that ‘visual journalist’ Milena Knežević has taken from other sources, such as AFP and Norwegian press agency NTB; I’m not reproducing them here because I wish to make a very different point (see below the translated piece)]

The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) and Shin Bet intelligence services claim that the hospital was a command centre for Hamas.

They have not presented any evidence for their claim.

Ceiling Collapses

Sam Attar, an American doctor who worked at the hospital, was asleep when a nurse burst into his room [note that with one exception (which I’ll mark below), these are my translations of the Norwegian (Nynorsk) versions offered by NRK; I didn’t look for the original wording, which is surely found in some other primary reporting (for what NRK is doing is—second-hand reporting™)]:

He was frantic, screaming that I had to get up. When I got to the acute emergency ward, it was totally empty. People just ran away from the hospital.

He met another nurse who told him that the IDF had asked them to evacuate.

Likewise, he [Dr. Attar] decided to stay.

Everyone believed I had the answer, but I had merely determined to stay.

Together with the nurse, he waited for about half an hour [the following quote is offered in English (in an embedded sound file; I’ve transcribed it; this is one quote that’s not been translated to Norwegian (Nynorsk) by NRK].

Then there was a loud explosion. The ceilings have [ahem] portions of it have collapsed…The power went out. We stayed put, and the power went on. And the paramedics were risking their lives just picking up people off the streets and driving them to nearby hospitals.

‘The emergency ward, the outpatient clinic, the [triage] patient tent [in the parking lot, if the pictures offered are any indication], the blood bank, and the chemistry lab…Everything is destroyed and out of order. Now we’re picking up the pieces’, says Attar [we’re back at the quotes given in Norwegian (Nynorsk)].

The IDF’s position is that Hamas had a command centre run out of the hospital.

I haven’t seen any evidence for that claim. I only see a hospital working as ever, that is, as normal as it can be to run a hospital in Gaza [adds Dr. Attar].

Major Destruction

This is the fifth air strike against Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital since the war started [note that a war is a relatively clearly defined legal status (overview); it requires both a declaration of such a state to exist and comes with several limitations, such as the requirement to carry arms openly and fight from clearly marked positions]

Before the war (sic), the hospital was a small emergency clinic for children, with no acute emergency ward.

Once Al-Shifa and the other big hospitals in Gaza were completely or partially damaged, Al-Ahli has opened an acute emergency and is the best-functioning hospital in [Gaza] city.

This remains a question mark over Israel’s attack on the area that occurred earlier this week.

Now, the Palestinians in the northern part of the Gaza Strip have no hospital left to go to if they need medical help, says Al Jazeera journalist Hani Mahmoud, who was in the hospital on the morning [after the attack].

[here, NRK inserts a graph showing the number of ‘50,993 (Palestinian) fatalities since 7 Oct. 2023’, of whom ‘191 were killed this week’; by contrast, Israel is said to have lost 1,607 dead]

However, the surgeon at the hospital, Fadel Naim [same Twitter/X user as noted above], writes on X [sic] that the hospital is largely destroyed, including the emergency ward.

‘This affected over 100 patients and many healthcare workers’, he said [this is also a Norwegian second-hand quote; here’s the original from Dr. Naim’s posting:

In yet another crime added to the long list of infractions by the occupation, the Baptist Ahli Hospital has once again been targeted tonight. The emergency room, pharmacy, and surrounding buildings were severely damaged in this most recent attack, which terrified and alarmed more than a hundred patients as well as dozens of medical personnel. We give thanks to God Almighty that there were no reported casualties. This heinous attack is blatantly against international agreements and rules that ensure hospitals and people are protected.]

Church Condems Attack

Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital is run by the Anglican Church in Jerusalem.

The Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem issued a statement [on Facebook] that he is ‘appalled’ by the attack that occurred on Palm Sunday, that is, at the beginning of what in the Christian faith is the opening of the Holy Week.

‘The Episcopal Diocese condemns in the strongest terms today’s missile attacks on the Ahli Arab Hospital’, the statement issued on Sunday morning.

Apart from the hospital, there was also a church that was damaged during the attack [that church is nearby St. Philip’s, according to the statement].

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Shitty Reporting™, Done by Activists

This is about anything that can be said about the piece.

Despite having three journos™ in the by-line, this is at-best second or third-hand reporting™ grafted off one (!) X/Twitter account and one Facebook posting.

Nowhere is the decline of mainstream media journalism more obvious than in articles™ such as the one above.

While I’m in no way [edit plus kudos to

WJM

] not decrying the attack on a hospital—which, incidentally, came in the wake of many such attacks since 7 Oct. 2023—it’s hard, if not outright impossible, to discern who’s saying the truth. My ‘guess’ is that neither side is doing so.

Hamas is known to set up shop in civilian buildings, including UN-run institutions (e.g., kindergartens, schools) while Israeli forces have a documented disregard for the separation of civilian from military targets. I’m not claiming any special insights or wisdoms here, and I’m in no way intending this comment as something akin to claims of equanimity between both sides. I do have some opinions about the conflict, but they don’t matter here, hence we’ll look at who’s doing the reporting™ here.

And once we do that, many things listed above will make some more ‘sense’.

To gain an understanding of the prevailing mood among the educated classes in Norway, I’ll delimit myself to brief notes about the three NRK journos™ in the by-line:

• Tora Carlsen Haaland, the lead journo™ of the piece, has been a ‘journalist’ for 1 year and 4 months, according to her public LinkedIn profile: Ms. Haaland began as an intern with NRK’s Vestland regional outfit in Førde (Jan.-April 2024) before moving to Oslo where she completed another 2 months (May-June 2024); she then worked full-time as an employee (at the foreign reporting desk) in Oslo (July-Aug. 2024) before, from Sept. 2024 onwards, she’s a ‘part-time journalist’. Ms. Haaland worked for a publisher (Skald, Jan.-Dec. 2023) and several local newspapers (3 months for Stavanger Aftenblad and 11 months for Bergens Tidende), writing pieces about overflowing ER rooms. She holds an undergraduate degree in Comparative Politics from the U of Bergen (2019-22) and a master’s degree in Middle Eastern Studies with a specialisation in Syrian Arabic from the U of Oslo (awarded in Aug. 2024). As far as I was able to determine, she’s never been to the Middle East (see her LinkedIn profile as the source of the information here).

• Milana Knežević has been with Norwegian state broadcaster NRK since 2015, and on her LinkedIn profile, she self-identifies as follows: ‘I report on our changing climate. What causes it. How it affects people, animals and nature. And what can be done to fix it.’ She has more work experience in the field and holds, according to her LinkedIn profile, a BA degree in Politics in Int’l Relations from York University (2009-12); judging from that information, she must be in her late thirties and has no relevant linguistic competences for the Middle East. According to this (paywalled) piece from 2017, she was among those inductees offered a permanent job at NRK, which noted, as a problem, that ‘the average age of the new hires is 28’, that ‘none is older than 35’, and that this was ‘the most difficult recruitment ever’, according to NRK editor Christian Fougner.

• Ingrid Bjørndal Farestvedt, the last of the three, is perhaps the most tellingly problematic journos™—she’s been with NRK for 2 months, according to her LinkedIn profile, with some experience working for VG (one of Norway’s main private tabloids), yet she merely graduated from the University of Oslo in spring 2023. Her MA thesis on the Palestinian refugee problem after 1967 is available online, and it contains the following gem:

  Any academic endeavor comes second to the friendship I have earned at Blindern [campus]. Kaja, Ingrid and Regine: Your endless support and commitment to Friday night beer pitchers could carry me through any hardship, as it has this one. I am in awe of your compassion and care.

  We note, in passing, that the thesis is 46 pages ‘long’, quotes extensively from published sources (such as the official Foreign Relations of the US) and less than four pages of secondary literature, all but two in English (these two were textbooks in Norwegian).

  While Ms. Bjørndal lacks any discernible experience, she’s at least worked as an intern in a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon in 2019, according to this ‘old’ web profile, which also sports this picture:

  

  Here’s how she’s introduced (see if you can spot any critical distance in her above journalistic work):

  With firm, determined steps and a smile on her face, Ingrid Bjørndal Farestvedt arrives. Dressed in black from head to toe, the white Palestine scarf around her neck stands out even more clearly.

  As a solidarity worker for the Palestine Committee in the Rashedieh refugee camp in Lebanon, she has seen the consequences of the conflict with her own eyes.

  ‘After three months in the camp, it’s unreal to be back in Bergen now. I have a lot of impressions and emotions to process’, she says, returning home just in time to celebrate Christmas and New Year with her family.

  ‘It feels strange and unfair that it was so easy for me to go home, with my red passport in my backpack. Home to my freedom, my rights, and my security, when it’s so difficult to achieve and maintain exactly these things for all those I’ve lived with in recent months. After all, we are entitled to the same rights and conditions in life.’

  A bit further down, my own point—which I’ve been pointing to repeatedly—is also mentioned by her:

  Palestinians in Lebanon are subjected to structural discrimination by the Lebanese authorities. Among all the neighbouring countries that together house millions of refugees, Lebanon is said to be the worst place to be a Palestinian. Here they lack basic civil and political rights.

  For example, Palestinians are barred from working in more than 70 professions, including the public sector, doctors, teachers, lawyers, taxi drivers, fishermen and so on. These bans were further tightened this summer. The changes to the law were met with large demonstrations around Lebanon’s twelve Palestinian refugee camps. It’s a good example of how Palestinians still have to fight for their rights.

  It’s 2020, the Palestinian refugees have lived in Lebanon for an incredibly long time, but it doesn’t seem to stop. More than 70 years after they were forced to flee. Many people I’ve met have talked a lot about how they’ve never felt at home or welcome in this country they were born in, or even lived their entire lives in.

  And there you have it: Arabic countries dislike the Palestinian refugees at about the same level as does the Israeli gov’t (and many Israeli citizens).

  This isn’t fair or nice or anything, but it’s the reality.

As this brief survey of the three journos™ shows, two of them hold distinct biases while the third has no knowledge of the topic.

And that brings us to the notion of where these three got their information from.

My money would be on other legacy media pieces, such as this one by CNN (of all places), which is qualitatively way better (which is telling you something else) as it contains the following lines:

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said that they had struck “a command-and-control center used by Hamas” in attack, without offering proof. They said steps had been taken ahead of the strike to mitigate harm to civilians. Hamas denied the allegation the hospital was being used for military purposes.

The Israeli military is extending its ground operations deep into Gaza, creating a large buffer zone between the Strip and Israeli territory and pushing hundreds of thousands of civilians into an ever-smaller area on the Mediterranean coast. In the south, the military announced it seized the Morag corridor, cutting off Rafah from the rest of Gaza. On Sunday night the defense ministry said the IDF had “completed the occupation of the Morag axis” making the area “part of the Israeli security zone,” adding that the northern border area in Gaza was also being expanded as part of the “security zone.”

“Tens of percentages of Gaza’s territory have become part of Israel’s security zones,” Defense Minister Israel Katz said.

There are also reports of additional Israeli strikes.

Curiously enough, Dr. Samer Attar, the US physician, has been quite a prominent voice in legacy media reporting before, including this BBC piece from April 2024.

Then there is US News piece about the destroyed St. Philip’s Church, which, back in Feb. 2024 (archived link, if the other one won’t work), helped out as a makeshift hospital ward (which, to me, suggests that the IDF strike could have been intentional):

St. Philip's church once offered a haven of devotion to Gaza's small Christian community. After nine months of Israeli military action that has devastated the Palestinian enclave's health system, priests have turned it into a hospital.

Beds line the pale stone walls under a vaulted roof as doctors tend to patients unable to find a space at the Anglican-run Al-Ahli al-Arabi hospital, which like Gaza's other remaining medical facilities is straining under high demand.

"The space designated for prayers was converted into a clinic due to the lack of available places. Today, our priority is to save the life of every human being that we can," said priest Munther Isaac, wearing a black shirt and clerical collar…

"In this church, which is no longer a house of worship but has been turned into a nursing facility, we are getting some basic medical services," said Abu Mohammed Abu Samra, who was accompanying his sick mother being treated at St. Philip's.

"It shows the solidarity between Muslims and Christians in northern Gaza," he added.

While there is a significant Palestinian Christian population in the West Bank, the Christian community is very small in Gaza, which since 2006 has been controlled by the Islamist group Hamas.

So, we do need to remember—that the end goal re Gaza is to get rid of both the Moslem Palestinians and the Palestinian Christians.

The End of Christianity in the Middle East

For better or worse, this future is clearly visible to anyone who pays attention.

Bottom Lines

The NRK piece was pretty bad, and my little enquiry into the backgrounds of these journos™ showed the state of mainstream journalism being actually way worse than I thought.

Their MO, however, is clearly visible: read some legacy media reporting™ from trusted sources™, such as AFP, Reuters, and the like, sprinkle in some second-hand quotes gleaned from linked social media content in, say, CNN pieces, and voilà—even very inexperienced journos™ with very limited work (or other) experience get a platform with a mainstream outlet, such as NRK.

If this is done with respect to one of the most controversial topics since 1945, well, what would you expect the quality (sic) of the ‘other’ reporting™ to be?

Exactly my thoughts.