The Grammar of Empire
Unmasking the Lies Behind Gaza’s Ambulance Massacre
In the early hours of 23 March 2025, the unmistakable wail of ambulance sirens pierced the air above Rafah. Emergency lights cut through the darkness as a convoy of ambulances — clearly marked with the red crescent, hazard lights blinking — navigated the rubble-strewn streets of southern Gaza. Inside were medical personnel from the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS), responding to a call for help amid Israel’s ongoing military offensive. They were not armed. They were not hiding. They were doing what medics have always done: trying to save lives.
By the end of that night, fifteen of them would be dead — their bodies riddled with bullets, many reportedly shot in the head and upper body. Their ambulances, now blackened husks, were found clustered together. This was not crossfire. This was not chaos. This was a targeted execution.
The Israeli Defence Forces claimed suspicion. The Israeli government echoed their lines. The BBC reported the deaths as an “incident,” quoting IDF statements almost verbatim, and casting doubt on the neutrality of the victims. But the evidence tells another story — one of a war crime carried out in full view, of a government scrambling to cover its tracks, and of a Western media apparatus complicit in that cover-up through euphemism, selective framing, and outright omission.
This article will walk through what really happened that night in Rafah — not what was spun in Tel Aviv or repackaged in London newsrooms. We will examine the cold, forensic facts: the footage, the eyewitness accounts, the autopsy reports. We will unpack the shifting claims from the IDF, and expose the contradictions and lies. We will track how Western outlets, particularly the BBC, repeated those lies, downplayed the horror, and questioned the credibility of Palestinian voices — while presenting the IDF’s narrative as fact.
This was a crime. What followed was a cover-up. And the silence of the so-called free press was not just shameful — it was damning.
At approximately 6:00 pm on 23 March 2025, a convoy of ambulances from the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) was dispatched to Tel al-Sultan in Rafah — one of the most densely populated areas in Gaza, swollen with displaced civilians. The ambulances were clearly marked with the red crescent emblem, sirens blaring, and hazard lights flashing as they made their way through the shattered streets (Beaumont 2025a).
As they neared the destination, Israeli forces opened fire. Eyewitnesses described the attack as targeted and sustained. When others reached the site, they discovered the ambulances destroyed — twisted metal, burnt interiors, and bullet-ridden windshields. The bodies of the medics lay either inside the wreckage or sprawled on the ground nearby.
The Palestinian Red Crescent later confirmed that 15 of its emergency responders had been killed. Forensic medical reports revealed that many had been shot in the upper body or head — execution-style wounds, not the indiscriminate injuries of stray fire (Beaumont 2025a). One paramedic was still wearing surgical gloves. Another was found with a blood bag in hand.
But the horror did not end with the shooting. Bulldozers — believed to be operated by the Israeli military — were seen in the area shortly after the attack. According to subsequent reports and satellite imagery, the ambulances and bodies were buried in a mass grave in Tel al-Sultan (Beaumont 2025a). It took days for PRCS teams and civilians to recover the remains, working under ongoing bombardment and surveillance.
Within hours of the killings, the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) released a statement claiming the ambulances were “acting suspiciously” and were “unmarked and without flashing lights” (Reuters 2025). These claims were immediately refuted by eyewitness accounts and independent video analysis from human rights observers, which confirmed the vehicles were both marked and actively signalling their humanitarian purpose (Beaumont 2025a).
As public outrage mounted, the IDF revised its narrative. While quietly walking back the initial lie about the ambulances being unmarked, a spokesperson instead floated the unsubstantiated claim that "some" of the medics may have had "links to militant groups" (Reuters 2025). No evidence was provided — and none has been since.
This was not chaos. It was a controlled, premeditated attack on humanitarian workers. The PRCS had communicated its mission. The ambulances were visible and moving lawfully. The medics were not combatants — they were healers. They were targeted, murdered, and buried.
This was a war crime.
What occurred in Rafah on 23 March was not a tragic mishap of war. It was a clear and unequivocal violation of international humanitarian law — a war crime.
Under the Fourth Geneva Convention (1949), to which Israel is a signatory, medical personnel, units, and transports engaged exclusively in medical duties are to be protected under all circumstances. Article 18 is explicit: “Civilian hospitals organised to give care to the wounded and sick, the infirm and maternity cases, may in no circumstances be the object of attack” (ICRC 1949). This principle extends equally to mobile medical units — including ambulances — and to the personnel operating them.
The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court also defines as war crimes: “intentionally directing attacks against... medical units and transport” and “intentionally launching an attack in the knowledge that such attack will cause incidental loss of life... which would be clearly excessive in relation to the concrete and direct overall military advantage anticipated” (ICC 1998, Article 8).
In the Rafah attack, the ambulances were marked and known. They were not caught in crossfire — they were directly targeted. Eyewitnesses and forensic evidence show that the medics were shot in the upper body at close range — many while tending to wounded civilians (Beaumont 2025a). The use of bulldozers to bury the bodies and destroy the evidence shows clear intent to conceal the crime, a further aggravating factor under international law.
The Israeli military’s response — inconsistent, misleading, and unsupported by evidence — further strengthens the case for prosecution. Its first statement falsely claimed the ambulances were unmarked. After this was disproven, the narrative shifted to vague allegations of "militant links" among the dead — without proof (Reuters 2025). Under international legal standards, propaganda is not a defence, and misinformation does not mitigate responsibility.
The principle of distinction, enshrined in customary international humanitarian law, requires all parties in a conflict to distinguish at all times between civilians and combatants, and between civilian objects and military objectives. Ambulances, medical workers, and clearly marked humanitarian vehicles fall unquestionably on the protected side of that line. Violating that principle is not just unethical — it is criminal.
As international legal expert Professor Craig Jones recently stated, “The attack on emergency medical responders in Gaza — who were clearly performing humanitarian duties — constitutes a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions. The burden of proof here lies with the IDF, and their shifting story undermines their own defence” (Jones 2025).
Without accountability, these violations become precedent. And precedent becomes policy. Rafah was not an aberration — it was the logical outcome of a system in which violations of humanitarian law are treated not as crimes, but as strategy.
Within hours of the 23 March attack in Rafah, the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) issued a short, sharp statement: the ambulances “were not marked” and had been behaving “suspiciously” (IDF 2025). It was the first of several falsehoods aimed not at informing the public — but at obscuring a crime.
This narrative was quickly dismantled by multiple video analyses, eyewitness testimonies, and footage shared by journalists and NGOs on the ground. Every ambulance in the convoy bore the red crescent symbol. They were visibly marked, moving in formation, and had their hazard lights flashing (Beaumont 2025a; Al Jazeera 2025a). The footage was clear. The IDF lied.
Yet the backpedalling was not accompanied by accountability. Instead, the spokesperson for the Israeli Prime Minister’s office, Eylon Levy, appeared on international news outlets claiming the ambulances were “not operating under neutral humanitarian conditions” and accused the Palestinian Red Crescent of being “deeply embedded with Hamas networks” (Levy 2025). This, again, was unsupported by any public evidence.
The Palestinian Red Crescent is a recognised humanitarian body, operating under the umbrella of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC). Attacking its credibility was a strategic move — not to win a debate, but to create just enough doubt to muddy the waters.
The tactic is familiar: lie early, lie often, and rely on the Western media’s tendency to amplify your version first — and challenge it later, if at all.
Take the Israeli Government Press Office (GPO), which issued an internal media memo on 24 March stating that journalists should “be cautious with phrasing that could imply Israeli culpability” and “await official IDF conclusions” (Haaretz 2025). By the time those conclusions came — contradictory and vague — the international headlines had already framed the attack as “disputed.”
This was not just a cover-up. It was an operation of narrative control.
And what was at stake? The suppression of a war crime.
One of the most telling signs of complicity came in the form of censorship. Multiple Israeli outlets were prevented from publishing interviews with soldiers involved in the Rafah operation under Israel’s strict military gag laws (Haaretz 2025). Leaked WhatsApp messages from a reserve unit in the area revealed conversations about the “targeted removal” of medics — including one message reading: “they’re not just drivers” (Anonymous IDF Reserve Soldier, 2025, in Yesh Din 2025).
Meanwhile, international aid agencies faced intimidation. Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) and the PRCS both reported Israeli delays in clearing aid missions and threats against staff who spoke to foreign media (MSF 2025).
The cover-up is not a defensive act — it is an extension of the crime itself. It is a calculated attempt to erase, excuse, or recast a deliberate slaughter of humanitarian workers.
No amount of PR spin or tactical ambiguity can alter the facts: 15 medics were killed while carrying out their lawful, protected duties. The state responsible lied about their deaths, buried the evidence, and then tried to smear the dead.
These deaths did not make the front pages of most Western newspapers. And when the stories did appear, they were filtered through the passive, dehumanising language of "conflict" reporting — a language that bends reality, diffuses blame, and ultimately protects power.
The BBC, once lauded for its journalistic integrity, ran the headline: "Deaths in Gaza as Israeli Forces Target Suspected Militants" (BBC News 2025). The subheading made only passing reference to “claims that medics may have been caught in the crossfire.” There was no mention that the victims were all Red Crescent workers. No mention that the ambulances were visibly marked. No mention that they had been shot in the head and chest — execution-style (Beaumont 2025a).
Instead of scrutinising the Israeli account, BBC journalists repeatedly defaulted to its framing, introducing statements from the IDF as verified facts while relegating Palestinian accounts to “allegations.” For example, a 24 March segment described the Red Crescent’s statement as “unconfirmed” while stating the IDF’s claim about “suspicious vehicle movement” as a matter of record (BBC World News 2025). No such caution was extended toward the official military narrative — despite Israel's long and documented record of misinformation in wartime (B’Tselem 2024).
This pattern is not unique to the BBC.
CNN labelled the attack “tragic but murky,” quoting an Israeli security analyst who claimed that “Hamas has often used ambulances as shields” without providing evidence (CNN 2025).
The New York Times, in a now-infamous tweet, referred to the incident as a “botched strike” in which “civilians may have died” — a framing that suggests accident, not atrocity (NYT 2025).
The Australian, in its initial reporting, omitted the fact that all victims were medics entirely, referring instead to “fatalities in a Gaza vehicle convoy suspected of militant activity” (The Australian 2025).
This is not objective journalism. It is the laundering of violence.
The Language of Evasion
Western newsrooms have spent years refining a vocabulary that strips agency from perpetrators and blurs the line between criminal and victim:
Palestinians “die”, while Israelis are “killed.”
Aid workers are “caught in the crossfire”, not executed.
Ambulances are “reportedly struck”, rather than targeted.
Atrocities are “investigated”, not committed.
This oblique language creates plausible deniability where there should be outrage. It serves to normalise the abnormal, framing massacres as regrettable but inevitable by-products of conflict.
Journalist and media critic Mehdi Hasan once called this “the grammar of empire” — a deliberate stylistic strategy used by powerful states and complicit media to mask brutality behind neutrality (Hasan 2023). In Gaza, it has become the standard operating procedure.
Silencing the Truth
Equally alarming is the lack of platforming for Palestinian voices. In the week following the Rafah massacre, BBC and Sky News aired eight IDF or Israeli government spokesperson interviews. Only one segment included a representative from the Palestinian Red Crescent — and that was aired at 3am GMT (Media Lens 2025).
Meanwhile, live interviews with aid workers were cut short, censored, or labelled as "editorially sensitive." Footage showing the aftermath of the attack, including piles of white body bags and blood-streaked ambulances, was either blurred or omitted entirely on Western evening news broadcasts.
Western outlets did not fail to report the truth — they actively participated in its distortion.
What happened in Rafah on 23 March 2025 was not a mistake. It was not collateral damage. It was the deliberate killing of first responders — people whose only weapon was their commitment to life.
Fifteen medics died that night in ambulances clearly marked with the Red Crescent. Their bodies, some burned beyond recognition, others shot with precision to the head and chest, were later buried in a mass grave. The evidence is overwhelming. The testimonies are harrowing. The photographic and satellite documentation exists. And yet, the state responsible — Israel — has faced no consequences. Instead, it has launched a coordinated campaign of denial, distortion, and deflection, buttressed by a media apparatus all too willing to serve as its mouthpiece.
This is not just a failure of politics. It is a moral collapse.
The IDF’s actions amount to a war crime under international law — a violation of the Geneva Conventions which explicitly prohibit attacks on medical personnel and transport. And the Israeli government’s response, from outright lies to evasive “investigations,” constitutes nothing short of a cover-up. But it is the role of the Western media, particularly the BBC, CNN, and The New York Times, that may ultimately be the most damning. These are institutions that claim the mantle of objectivity, yet echo military press releases while casting doubt on the survivors of massacre.
They do not speak truth to power — they translate power’s lies into public discourse.
In times like these, to simply state the facts is itself an act of resistance. To name this for what it is — a war crime, a massacre, an institutional betrayal — is to defy the machinery of erasure. Silence is not neutrality. It is complicity.
We must resist the passive voice of the empire. We must question the sources that have lied to us before and will lie again. We must amplify the voices that speak from beneath the rubble, from inside the ambulance, from the mass grave.
The truth is not always complicated.
Sometimes it is simply unbearable — and that is why it must be told.
References
Beaumont, P 2025a, Gaza paramedics shot in upper body ‘with intent to kill’, Red Crescent says, The Guardian, 7 April. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/apr/07/gaza-paramedics-shot-in-upper-body-with-intent-to-kill-red-crescent-says
BBC News 2025, Deaths in Gaza as Israeli Forces Target Suspected Militants, 24 March. Available at: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68644231
BBC World News 2025, Segment Transcript: Rafah Incident Coverage, 24 March. Monitored via BBC Monitoring.
B’Tselem 2024, The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories: On Military Misinformation, B’Tselem. Available at: https://www.btselem.org/publications/2024/military-misinformation-record
CNN 2025, Gaza Aid Convoy Ambush Sparks Questions, 24 March. Available at: https://www.cnn.com/middleeast/gaza-aid-workers-attack-2025
Hasan, M 2023, The Language of Empire: How Western Media Whitewashes War, The Intercept. Available at: https://theintercept.com/2023/12/15/mehdi-hasan-media-war-language/
International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) 2022, Customary IHL Rule 25: Medical Personnel. Available at: https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/customary-ihl/eng/docs/v1_rul_rule25
Media Lens 2025, How BBC Framed the Gaza Ambulance Massacre, 27 March. Available at: https://medialens.org/2025/bbc-framing-gaza-ambulance-attack/
NYT 2025, @nytimes Tweet, 23 March. Archived via Wayback Machine.
Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) 2025, Statement on the Rafah Massacre, 24 March. Available at: https://www.palestinercs.org/en/rafah-attack-statement-march-2025
The Australian 2025, IDF Targets Convoy in Gaza Strip, 24 March. Available at: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/world/convoy-strike-idf-2025
