I’m not a politician, a diplomat, or a media analyst. I’m just an everyday retired American who’s lived long enough to recognize patterns when I see them. Yes, I’ve lived that long—and I’m fed up.
What happened to RT correspondent Steve Sweeney and his cameraman, Ali Rida, in southern Lebanon should anger anyone who still believes in basic human decency. They were clearly identifiable as press. They were doing their job. And yet, they were hit by an Israeli strike while filming. You don’t have to agree with where someone works to understand that journalists are not targets. If people wearing press markings can be hit like this, then the idea of a “free press” in war zones becomes meaningless.
And here’s the part that really gets me: we keep being told these actions are carried out under “self-defense.” That phrase gets repeated so often it’s supposed to shut down all questions. But after years of watching conflicts unfold—from Palestine to Lebanon and now into Iran—those claims have repeatedly collapsed under scrutiny.
We’ve seen it before. Civilian areas hit. Infrastructure destroyed. Journalists killed. Then the same explanations roll out: it was a mistake, or there was a target nearby, or it was necessary. And then nothing ever changes. Ever. Just the same bullshit from the Washington swamp.
Look at Palestine. For decades now, people there have lived under constant pressure—bombings, blockades, raids. Journalists trying to document it have paid with their lives. Shireen Abu Akleh was shot and killed while reporting, and even that didn’t lead to real accountability. More recently, we’ve seen an unprecedented number of Palestinian journalists killed in Gaza. Not one or two—hundreds.
Look at Lebanon. Journalists covering cross-border tensions have been struck and killed, including clearly marked press crews. And now we have yet another incident, where a missile lands just meters away from reporters actively filming.
And now Iran is being pulled into the same cycle. Once again, we’re hearing the language of necessity, escalation, and defense. Once again, the consequences are human lives, including people whose only job is to tell the world what’s happening.
What makes this even harder to accept is that my own country—the United States—is tied up in all of this. We start wars-for-profit and expect our military to die in order to make the rich richer and to install Israel as the King of the Middle East! And as an American, I have to ask: at what point do we stop pretending we don’t see what’s happening?
This isn’t about being “for” or “against” one country or another. It’s about whether we’re willing to accept a world where journalists and innocent unarmed civilians and their children are routinely killed and brushed aside as collateral damage. It’s about whether we keep accepting explanations that don’t hold up, just because they’re repeated often enough.
I’m tired of it. I’m tired of watching the same justifications used over and over again while the body count rises. I’m tired of seeing outrage come and go without consequences. And I’m tired of being told this is all just the way things are.
It doesn’t have to be this way. It never had to be this way.
I would like to send a heartfelt “shout out” to both the UN for its futility, and to its enforcement arm, the UNSC, for its impotence—congratulating them for their cowardice and for issuing misleading “both sides are wrong” statements and other deluded misinformation under the thumb of the US, effectively acting as its spokesperson and functioning as a US–Israel propaganda machine.
Attacks on Journalist who risk their lives to cover conflict on the group to break through the propaganda and lies.
At the very least, incidents like the attack on Sweeney and Rida should trigger real, independent investigations. Not statements. Not deflections. Actual accountability. That is how societies across the globe should go about seeking real, actionable, consequential accountability.
Instead, in the U.S. Our forced-choice elected officials put on dog-and-pony shows, presenting Americans with their manufactured outrage and staged condemnations. Then, once the media packs up and leaves, they go right back to spreading more misinformation and propaganda, as dictated by those who own them. These compromised officials walk away patting themselves on the back—both sides quietly agreeing this will make great talking points for their next re-election campaigns.
When journalists and civilians are targeted—or even just treated as expendable—we all lose. We lose the ability to know what’s really happening.
And we should stop accepting “self-defense” as a blanket excuse—especially when that claim keeps collapsing under scrutiny.
Journalists killed in recent years (partial list):
Shireen Abu Akleh
Issam Abdallah
Hamza Al Dahdouh
Mustafa Thuraya
Ismail Al Ghoul
Rami Al Refee
Hossam Shabat
Mohammed Mansour
Anas al-Sharif
Ahmed Mansour
Mahmoud Islim Al-Basos
Mariam Abu Dagga
Hussam Al-Masri
Mohammed Salama
Ahmed Abu Aziz
Moaz Abu Taha
Nima Rajabpour
Mohamed al-Maqri
Mohamed Qeshta
Mahmoud Wadi
Anas Ghnaim
Abed Shaat
Ahmad Qalaja
Ayman Al Gedi
Fadi Hassouna
Faisal Abu Al Qumsan
Ghassan Najjar
Hilmi al-Faqaawi
Ibrahim Zaher
Ismail Baddah
Moamen Aliwa
Mohammad al-Khaldi
Mohammed Al-Ladaa
Mohammed Noufal
Mohammed Qreiqeh
Suleiman Hajjaj
Wissam Kassem
Abdulaziz Al-Sheikh
Abbas al-Dailami
Youssef Shams al-Din al-Bahri
Mohammed al-Omeisi
Abdullah al-Harazi
Jamal al-Adhi
Bashir Hussein Ahsan Dablan
Abdulqawi Mohammed Saleh al-Asfour
Abdo Taher Musleh al-Saadi
Lutf Ahmed Nasser Hadiyan
Qais Abdo Ahmed al-Naqeeb
Mohammed Ali Hamoud al-Dawi
Faris Abdo Ali al-Rumaisa
Abdulrahman Mohammed Mohammed Jaman
Amal Mohammed Ghaleb al-Manakhi
Abdullah Mahdi Abdullah al-Bahri
Sami Mohammed Hussein al-ZaidiIf
