Why is Israel targeting Palestinian journalists in Gaza? Simple. We are the only ones able to document and transmit what is actually happening on the ground. Every image, every testimony, every broadcast we produce pierces through the wall of Israel’s official narrative. That makes us dangerous: by recording the displacement, the starvation, and the relentless bombardment, we expose Israel’s actions to the world.

Testimony of a Palestinian journalist from Gaza, Ruwaida Amer, published in the Israeli digital media outlet Magazine+972 (see article titled “Maryam was my friend. Israel killed her and four other Gaza journalists,” published on August 27, 2025).

Reporting to the world from Gaza and the press: the persistent siege that Israel has been trying to maintain for 23 months, analyzed from an inaudible Costa Rica

Nicolas Boeglin, Professor of Public International Law, Faculty of Law, University of Costa Rica (UCR): contact: nboeglin(a)gmail.com

Introduction

Israel’s deliberate killing of six journalists in Gaza on August 10 sparked condemnation from various countries and international organizations around the world.

The total silence on the part of Costa Rica’s diplomatic apparatus can be compared to Chile’s official statement condemning Israel for killing these media professionals in Gaza (see text), or to Spain’s statement (see official statement) or Norway (see text), among many others.

On September 7, it was 23 months since the afternoon/evening when Israel launched its senseless military offensive against the Palestinian civilian population in Gaza, which we warned about, along with many others, back in October 2023 (Note 1) as it was a true reprisal against civilians in response to the attack suffered by Israel on the same day perpetrated by Hamas, it is more than striking to observe the relentlessness with which Israel has attempted to physically eliminate those who seek to inform the world about what is happening in Gaza.

This relentless pursuit is linked to a deliberate intention: to control at all costs the information coming out of Gaza, so that it does not affect the official narrative of Israeli diplomacy. The latter has a network of active networks around the world, called “Hasbara” in Hebrew (Note 2), which includes political and academic circles, journalists, columnists, various analysts, and “experts.” This network seeks to guide public opinion and discredit criticism of Israel, in an effort to ensure that Israel is always perceived positively abroad. A publication available online entitled “Israel’s Hasbara Toolkit” (75 pages, published in the United Kingdom) details the range of semantic games to be applied: a specialist in international law will immediately recognize the semantic game that has been applied to his discipline in countless articles and columns published in Costa Rica, as well as in many other parts of the world, since October 7, 2023 (pp. 56-58).

Regarding the generous allocation of resources to Hasbara, this note from the Israeli media outlet TimesofIsrael, dated December 29, 2024, indicates that Israel has scheduled a major effort for 2025 to “promote Israel’s image abroad.” >article from the Israeli media outlet TimesofIsrael, dated December 29, 2024, indicates that Israel has planned a rather unusual budgetary effort for 2025, detailing that:

Under the new budget, the Foreign Ministry will receive $150 million, on top of what it gets for its existing activities, for what’s officially known as public diplomacy, or hasbara in Hebrew. That sum is more than 20 times what such efforts have typically been allotted in past years.

On September 5, ahead of the upcoming United Nations General Assembly to be held later this month, a large group of experts and United Nations human rights mechanisms issued a passionate appeal to the international community to intensify pressure on Israel, given the famine spreading across Gaza and the unspeakable suffering of the civilian population of Gaza, which is being bombed day and night.

In their press release (see text), it states that:

The horrors of death by starvation will intensify if Israel is not stopped. Already, half a million people in Gaza are starving. Have State authorities become so numb to these numbers — so desensitised, once again, to the systematic breaches of our collective moral and legal obligations?” the experts said. The famine in Gaza, deliberately engineered and perpetuated by Israel – and enabled by private and security actors – is an affront to humanity, the experts said.“A State responsible for creating genocidal conditions aimed at destroying Palestinians in Gaza as a group by also starving them cannot and shall not be entrusted to control access, distribution, or supervision of humanitarian aid,” they said.

Some of our esteemed readers may discover, upon reading this, the existence of this United Nations press release, which has received very little coverage in the major international media outlets.

Similarly, it is likely that this press release from the United Nations on September 8 and this other press release from the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child on September 9, condemning Israel for using children’s hunger as a weapon of war, will meet with exactly the same fate in terms of their dissemination and coverage by the mainstream media.


Photo of downtown Gaza City, September 8, 2025, taken from article published in Israel, “I’m in Gaza City, my bag is packed, but I refuse to leave my home,” Magazine+972, September 9, 2025 edition, recommended reading.

Maintain the information blockade at all costs

Beyond the exceptional budgetary generosity for 2025 granted to the vast network of influence that Israel maintains throughout the world, it is noteworthy that days before that fateful August 10, it was from the very site of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights that an official statement from this entity pointed out the strategy behind the repeated deaths of Palestinian media professionals in Gaza (see text of its statement of July 31, 2025): to erase the truth at all costs.

In fact, this statement reads as follows:

Killings, attacks, arbitrary detention and harassment of Palestinian journalists and the destruction of press facilities and equipment in Gaza and the West Bank are part of a deliberate strategy of Israel to suppress the truth, obstruct the documentation of international crimes and bury any possibility of future accountability

Since it seems that in Costa Rica some policy makers (and also trade union leaders, as we will see below) do not appear to have much knowledge (interest?) in what the United Nations has repeatedly warned about regarding the repeated and sustained killing of Palestinian journalists in Gaza and the West Bank, it is worth recalling what was read from that same site of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in February 2024. Five United Nations human rights experts (see press release of February 1, 2024) stated very emphatically that:

We have received disturbing reports that, despite being clearly identifiable in jackets and helmets marked “press” or travelling in well-marked press vehicles, journalists have come under attack, which would seem to indicate that the killings, injury, and detention are a deliberate strategy by Israeli forces to obstruct the media and silence critical reporting,” the UN experts said.

In times of conflict, the right to information is a ‘survival right’ on which the very lives of civilians depend, and journalists play an indispensable role as a vital source of information, and as human rights defenders and witnesses to atrocities, reporting on violations and abuses of international humanitarian law and human rights.

Considering the aforementioned lack of interest (knowledge?) among some in Costa Rica, it is worth pointing out to our esteemed readers that, as Israel is preventing the international press from entering Gaza, despite insistent requests made since October 7, 2023, the only ones able to inform the world about what is really happening there are the Palestinian journalists and communicators who live in Gaza.

Six information professionals out of many more

We are talking about six Palestinian media professionals who were deliberately and intentionally killed by Israel, whose names have been added to a long list of journalists who have been repeatedly murdered since the afternoon/evening of October 7, 2023: according to the CPJ, the death toll now stands at 197 (see link to the Committee for the Protection of Journalists’ record of Israeli attacks on journalists in Gaza).

With regard to our esteemed Costa Rican readers, particularly communications professionals, we invite you to compare, by way of example:
  • the content of the text from the National Association of Journalists of Peru / ANP (see press release), or;
  • that of the Guatemalan Journalists’ Association (APG) (see press release) or;
  • that of the Bolivian National Association of Journalists (ANPB) (see press release), or;
  • the Canadian Association of Journalists / CAJ (see statement),

with the text of the statement from the Costa Rican Journalists’ Association (COLPER) (see text): In the latter, the verbs “condemn” or ‘repudiate’ do not appear anywhere, only “call upon.” Strange, isn’t it?

The beginning of the text, which refers to the situation of the press in Mexico, highlights the originality of the text published in Costa Rica, compared to those read in Peru, Bolivia, Guatemala, or Canada. We invite readers from other countries to send us the communiqués that have circulated in their respective states, in order to confirm (or not) the aforementioned strange originality of COLPER (by sending the communiqué from your press association to the email address: [email protected]).

It should also be noted for those reading from other latitudes that since October 7, 2023 (with 197 Palestinian journalists killed in Gaza by the Israeli army), this COLPER statement is the first on Gaza. In other words, 23 months of weekly or near-weekly killings of Palestinian journalists in Gaza have passed without COLPER finding a way to condemn them? We personally found this discovery quite surprising and the question quite valid: it would merit, at the very least, an explanation.

In April 2024, with more than a hundred journalists killed in Gaza, a complaint had been filed with COLPER itself by the organization Red de Solidaridad con Palestina / Costa Rica (Solidarity Network with Palestine / Costa Rica). In a rather brief response (see article published in el Semanario Universidad), COLPER stated, among other things, that:

The Board of Directors does not consider itself competent to comment on a complex political and military conflict with dire and regrettable human consequences.

There is no doubt that the conflict is “complex,” but to ignore the deliberate killing of journalists and the warnings issued by the United Nations about the systematic elimination of Palestinian journalists in Gaza leaves us perplexed. Since November 2023, with the first murders of Palestinian journalists, several groups of communication professionals have denounced Israel’s deadly strategy (see statement of November 2, 2023), which makes the feeling of perplexity even greater.


Photo taken from article published in Israel, entitled “How Israeli drone strikes are killing journalists in Gaza,” Magazine+972, June 25, 2024 edition (recommended reading in its entirety).

The latest report on the situation in Gaza, prepared by the United Nations – see link – (as of September 4, 2025) indicates the extent of the methodical and planned destruction of Gaza, with its daily toll of people killed or seriously injured, stating that:

According to the Ministry of Health (MoH) in Gaza, between 27 August and 3 September, 571 Palestinians were killed, and 2,318 were injured. This brings the casualty toll among Palestinians since 7 October 2023, as reported by MoH, to 63,746 fatalities and 161,245 injuries. According to MoH, the total number includes 280 fatalities who were retroactively added on 30 August 2025 after their identification details were approved by a ministerial committee. MoH further noted that the number of casualties among people trying to access aid supplies has increased to 2,339 fatalities and more than 17,070 injuries since 27 May 2025.

According to the Israeli military, between 27 August and 3 September, as of noon, one Israeli soldier was killed in Gaza.

In this article published in Le Monde (France) on September 6, it is pointed out that the actual number of people killed in Gaza is much lower than the reality, as only the bodies of identified persons are recorded by the Gaza health services: the bodies of unidentified persons are not recorded, nor are the bodies lying under rubble that rescue teams are unable to extract.

The general condemnation around the world of Israel’s attack on Qatar on September 9, with the aim of eliminating Hamas spokespeople in Doha, is worth noting: this is possibly the first time that in international mediation sponsored by states such as Qatar and Egypt, one of the two parties (Israel) has sought to eliminate the negotiating team of the other party (Hamas). Qatar’s official statement condemning the statements heard in Israel about this attack and its consequences confirms this (see Qatar’s official statement of September 11, 2025).

Israel’s mindless cruelty against the civilian population of Gaza for the past 23 months

Beyond the very precise documentation reported week after week from Gaza by various United Nations agencies and humanitarian organizations regarding the level of abuses against the Palestinian civilian population that Israel has been trying to cover up for almost 23 months now, a good indicator of the level of these abuses is the multiple traumas with which many young Israelis have returned to their families, due to the type of instructions they have had to obey in Gaza as soldiers against a totally defenseless civilian population.

These traumas are severe and persistent: shooting at children, women, the elderly, and people with disabilities; dropping explosives on refugee camps; destroying hospital wards; and many other abuses observed in Gaza leave a deep mark on the minds of some of their perpetrators.

The suicide rate within the ranks of the Israeli army is finally beginning to attract the attention of the Israeli press: see this article from the TimesofIsrael in August 2025 on suicide rates and this article from May 2025 on reservists suffering serious trauma who were called up… to put their uniforms back on and sent to Gaza. This article in the Jerusalem Post on August 23 reports on the widespread deterioration in the mental health of many Israeli soldiers who have returned from Gaza (see link).

Of course, Israel sends really young people to Gaza, without much military experience, and a lot of them have died because they’re super easy targets (Note 3): on September 8, 2025, the four soldiers who died when their tank blew up in Gaza were 19, 20, and 21 years old. (see note from the Jerusalem Post). The extreme youth of the Israeli soldiers called up for ground operations in Gaza had already been noted during the Israeli ground offensive in Gaza in July 2014. We had the opportunity to point out, on that occasion, that:

In this July 2015 article from The Jerusalem Post entitled “In Memoriam: The 64 IDF soldiers who gave their lives to protect Israel,” tribute is paid to the 64 Israeli soldiers who died during Operation Protective Edge. It states that of these 64 soldiers, 17 were 20 years old, 15 were 21, 8 were 22, 5 were 19, 4 were 23, and 2 were 18 (Note 4).

In 2014 (and prior to that military offensive in Gaza in 2009), certain things had become apparent that should have alerted some of Israel’s allies. In 2015, following two United Nations reports on both deadly Israeli military operations in Gaza, we pointed out that:

A comparison of the two reports likely highlights more clearly the dangerous drift Israel has taken in conducting its hostilities in Gaza, and which is evidenced (at least in part) by the fact that 43 officers from Unit 8200 of the Israeli Army have issued a public letter denouncing the use of the Israeli intelligence system for highly questionable purposes against the Palestinian civilian population (see Haaretz article dated September 12, 2014). (Note 5).

Regarding the suicide rate within the Israeli army, this article published in 2017 by the Israeli digital media outlet Magazine+972 (which we recommend reading in its entirety) states that the mental health of Israeli soldiers has been deteriorating, leading to an increase in the rate of suicide attempts and suicides:

According to a study conducted by Major Leah Shelef, who heads the Israeli Air Force’s Mental Health Clinic, 2009 saw 188 suicide attempts — a third of them by women. Am I included in those 188 attempts? According to statistics published in Haaretz, from 2007 until 2013, 124 soldiers committed suicide during their army service, while 237 soldiers committed suicide between 2002-2012. Even worse, between 2009 and 2011, the main cause of death among soldiers was suicide.

Once back from Gaza, some of these soldiers who committed war crimes and other types of abuses observed since the afternoon/evening of October 7, 2023, face other types of situations: if they are identified (and several of them have made this easier by posing proudly after committing all kinds of abuses in Gaza), they are tracked down on their travels abroad, as recently happened to one of them in Nepal (see note from the Hind Rajab Foundation) and another in Peru (see note from the same foundation). In Belgium, the courts arrested two of them a few weeks ago (see note from Middle East Eyes). It is possible that some of these Israeli soldiers are in Costa Rica on some of the beaches that are traditionally very popular with tourists from Israel: this interesting report by a Costa Rican television station in March 2024 mentions the following fact, which raises some questions about what happens in the opposite direction: from surfing and sightseeing on one of these beaches, Israeli reservists go on to wear uniforms in combat units in Gaza within a few days.

By January 2025, New Zealand had established a questionnaire for Israeli citizens wishing to visit the country, regarding their participation in military actions in Gaza (see note in the Times of Israel on January 28, 2025).

About the work of the Hind Rajab Foundation (see website), named after a six-year-old Palestinian girl killed in Gaza by the Israeli army in January 2024, this article from MondoWeiss explains how it operates in the search for Israeli war criminals. In the case of the murder of Palestinian journalists on August 10, the Hind Rajab Foundation has already identified the chain of command responsible for this murder, which is now available at this link.

Finally, the extreme severity of Israel’s abuses in Gaza also explains the unprecedented (and unusual) deployment of US sanctions against United Nations bodies that document, investigate, and systematize these abuses:

  • In July 2025, these sanctions were directed against the United Nations Special Rapporteur, Italian lawyer Francesca Albanese (Note 6).
  • on August 1, new sanctions were imposed on the staff of the International Criminal Court (Note 7).

Along with these sanctions, in early September 2025, the witty occupant of the White House could think of nothing better than to sanction three Palestinian organizations that submit their findings to the ICC and document cases that may be of interest to the International Criminal Court in The Hague (see CNN’s note of September 4, 2025).

A press in Gaza eliminated, while Israel prevents international press access to Gaza

Significantly, on August 21, a coalition of states condemned Israel’s deliberate killing of journalists in Gaza and demanded that the international press be allowed into Gaza to document and report to the world on what is happening there.

Among the 29 signatories to the statement entitled “Media Freedom Coalition Statement on Foreign Media Access to Gaza,” which includes Canada and Costa Rica (see link), it states that:

We call on the Israeli authorities and all other parties to make every effort to ensure that media workers in Gaza, Israel, the West Bank and East Jerusalem – local and foreign alike – can conduct their work freely and safely. Deliberate targeting of journalists is unacceptable. International humanitarian law offers protection to civilian journalists during armed conflict.

For some reason, this joint statement has been posted on the official websites of the diplomatic services of Australia (see link) and Italy (see link), but not on that of Costa Rica. Strange, isn’t it?

On August 25, Israel once again killed five journalists when it fired on a hospital in Gaza (see BBC report). Costa Rica did not issue or disseminate a statement similar to that of Chile (see official statement of August 26) or Spain (see statement), among many others.

The organization Reporters Without Borders (RSF) began September with a massive campaign, making a passionate appeal for an end to the elimination of the only Palestinian professionals able to report to the world from Gaza (see press release).

In a statement released on September 5, the Associated Press international news agency refuted Israel’s claims about the alleged “threat” detected by the presence of a camera at the top of the building: see AP video with irrefutable evidence of the ”double tap strike,” ,” a technique used by the Israeli army that consists of firing at a specific point on a building, waiting several minutes for first responders and journalists to arrive, as well as locals who are still able to move, and then firing a second time with a more powerful projectile than the first (according to a BBC investigation – see article – there were four shots fired at two specific points on the same building at intervals of 8-9 minutes in this attack on August 25). This despicable “technique” had already been detected by the Israeli army in Gaza in July 2014 (Note 8).

Concerning the COLPER, its silence on this latest deliberate murder of five journalists raises very valid questions about its understanding and comprehension of Israel’s deliberate strategy to physically eliminate media professionals in Gaza who report to the world on what is happening there.

More recently (September 4, 2025), an official press release from the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights reported on the alert issued to the rest of the international community by two United Nations human rights experts (see full text) warning that:

On the one hand, Israel continues to deny access to any international media and on the other, it kills with impunity local journalists who are the world’s only professional lens into the agony of genocide and famine unfolding in Gaza,” the experts said. Even as the journalists starve, lose family members, sleep in tents and get targeted by the Israeli military like the rest of Gaza’s population, they have continued to courageously bear witness to atrocities committed by the Israeli military,” they said.

A remarkable effort by Israeli journalists

A report by an Israeli media outlet in March 2025 revealed that Israel also considered Palestinian communications personnel responsible for operating drones to be military targets: in an extensive report (which is recommended reading) entitled “How operating drones became a death sentence for Gaza’s journalists,” we read, among other things of enormous interest, that:

The Israeli army claimed that these strikes were aimed at “terrorists” — two of whom were operating a drone — and issued an error-filled list of names and photos of the people it alleged were killed in the attack. Al-Basos is neither mentioned nor pictured in the list of “terrorists,” but it does include a name that resembles his, belonging to an individual described by the Israeli army as “a Hamas terrorist operating under journalistic cover.” Based on our research, the individual named by the army has no direct link with Al-Basos and was not killed in the strike.

Reminder: on August 14, this same well-informed Israeli media outlet revealed the existence of a unit within the Israeli army tasked with “fabricating” cell phone conversations that ‘serve’ Israel’s official narrative and make Palestinian journalists appear to be members of Hamas: see the article published by Magazine+972 entitled “ ‘Legitimizing’ Hamas: How the Israeli Army Fabricates Phone Conversations” https://www.972mag.com/israel-gaza-journalists-hamas-hasbara/“https://www.972mag.com/israel-gaza-journalists-hamas-hasbara/”>article published by Magazine+972 entitled “ ‘Legitimisation cell’: Israeli unit tasked with linking Gaza journalists to Hamas.”

According to the article, the program was developed by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and was used to monitor the activities of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Palestinian resistance. The program was designed to collect information on the PA’s activities, including the location of its leaders and the movements of its members. “: see its article entitled ” ´Lavender´: The AI machine directing Israel´s bombing spree in Gaza” (April 3, 2024 edition).

With regard to an international court that is a source of concern in various political circles, both in Israel and in the United States, it was this same Israeli media outlet that, in May 2024, revealed the existence of a permanent Israeli monitoring program, in place for several years, on the staff and computers of the International Criminal Court (ICC): see article , published on May 28, 2024, entitled “Surveillance and interference: Israel’s covert war on the ICC exposed,” which is recommended reading (and rereading) in its entirety.

Reading it brings to mind countless omissions, contradictions, and hesitations from a procedural standpoint, particularly on the part of the first ICC Prosecutor, when his office was approached by Palestine in 2009 (after Palestine recognized the jurisdiction of the ICC: see document dated January 21, 2009).

In conclusion

Here’s hoping that the brave efforts of these Israeli investigative journalists to tell the world what Israel has done and continues to do in Gaza, as well as the journalistic work carried out by reporters from Gaza itself under conditions that are extremely dangerous for their lives and those of their loved ones, will be widely disseminated and known by international public opinion.

As for Costa Rica, the silence of its diplomatic apparatus raises a number of questions, as does the inability of a professional trade association such as COLPER to express its solidarity with its Palestinian counterparts in Gaza and condemn a state that desperately seeks to have a monopoly on the truth about what is happening in Gaza.

On September 8, 2025, Spain announced a series of measures aimed at preventing its territory, airports, and ports from being used for products destined for Israel at all costs (see the details of the measures contained in this official statement from the Moncloa Palace): this is an initiative that may inspire other European and African coastal states in the Mediterranean Sea in the very near future, with a view to disrupting the trade routes through which Israel obtains weapons, ammunition, hydrocarbons, and many other products. As expected, Israel could find nothing better than to label Spain “anti-Semitic,” whose diplomatic authorities issued a vehement statement rejecting these accusations (see official statement posted by its diplomatic apparatus).

Costa Rica’s repeated omissions observed so far in 2025 and long before were explained in a recent virtual forum sponsored by SurcosDigital and Alianza por una Vida Digna held on August 13 in Costa Rica (see poster and link on YouTube), on another rather unusual government initiative being pursued by the current Costa Rican authorities: the negotiation and signing of a free trade agreement with Israel (Note 9). The unusual nature of the Costa Rican authorities’ position is significantly heightened when one considers that on September 10, it was the President of the European Commission herself who requested the suspension of the current association agreement with Israel (see press release from The Guardian).

– – Notes – –

Note 1: See our note published at the end of October 2023: BOEGLIN N., “Hamas attack from Gaza and the ‘total siege’ of Gaza announced as Israel’s response. Some notes from the perspective of public international law,” Expert Voice Section, University of Costa Rica (UCR) Portal, published on October 30, 2023. Full text available here.

Note 2: For those unfamiliar with this Hebrew term, the word Hasbara refers to a set of networks that, through Israeli diplomacy, seek to guide public opinion and discredit criticism of Israel, all in an effort to ensure that Israel’s actions are always viewed positively abroad. For more on Hasbara, see this article published in France in the newspaper Libération. -20231102_2RVQVSYCEVHYNF3NLN7AKELXRY/“>article published in France in the newspaper Libération on this subject, as well as this article in Spanish published by a university in Colombia, and this similar analysis written in English. For more academic articles, we refer you to this very detailed one, which was published in 2016: AOURAGH M.>, “Hasbara 2.0 Israel’s Public Diplomacy in the Digital Era,” University of Westminster, 2016, 28 pages. Full text available here; as well as, more recently (2020) JEDRZEJEWESKA. K., “Hasbara: public diplomacy with Israeli characteristics,” Torun International Studies, Vol. 13, 2020, No. 1, pp. 105-118. Full text available here.

Note 3: On June 25, 2025, Israel announced the death of seven young soldiers in Gaza, aged between 19 and 21 (see article in the Times of Israel): an issue that should concern many in Israel, as it highlights, as on previous occasions, the lack of experience and preparation of the soldiers sent to fight in Gaza. In mid-June, eight very young Israelis were killed in a single day (see article in the Times of Israel on June 15). At the beginning of June, this article in the TimesofIsrael also referred to three very young soldiers who lost their lives in Gaza. On July 8, 2025, five young soldiers, four of whom were under the age of 21, died in Gaza (see article in the TimesofIsrael). On July 14, three more young Israeli soldiers died in Gaza (see note from the TimesofIsrael): After more than 22 months of a senseless military offensive in Gaza, Israeli society must now watch as young people with little military training fall in Gaza due to their lack of experience.

Note 4: See BOEGLIN N., “One year after Operation Protective Edge: brief notes from the perspective of international law,” CURI Study (Uruguay), August 18, 2015 edition, page 3. Full text available here.

Note 5: See BOEGLIN N., “Report by the Commission of Inquiry on Israel’s latest offensive in Gaza in 2014 presented”, Derechoaldia, June 24, 2015. Full text available here.

Note 6: See BOEGLIN N.>, “Gaza/Israel: analysis, 22 months after October 7, 2023, from a silent Costa Rica, of the sanctions imposed by the United States against Francesca Albanese,” July 11, 2025. Full text available here.

Note 7: See BOEGLIN N. “Gaza/Israel: Recent US sanctions against the ICC, analyzed from an inaudible Costa Rica,” August 20, 2025. Full text available here.

Note 8: In the United Nations report (document A/HRC/29/CRP.4) produced by an international commission of inquiry into Israel’s military offensive in Gaza in July 2014 (see link, with access to the detailed report in second position), it states (paragraphs 378-379) that:

“378. The IDF fired another round of shells at the market neighbourhood, about 10 minutes after the shells hit the Al Selek family home, just as three ambulances and the paramedics arrived at the scene.Many of the people who had gathered around the Al Selek house to try and help survivors came under attack by the second round of shelling. One journalist who witnessed the attack said that what stunned him was the apparent targeting of ambulances and journalists who had rushed to provide assistance to the injured and cover the incident.One of the survivors said that he saw an ambulance being hit by a shell, which killed one paramedic and one journalist, and killed and injured others who were in the vicinity of the house. The events at Shuja’iya market were further corroborated by a statement from a man who was injured in this incident and transferred to a hospital in Cairo.

379. These allegations are corroborated by two video recordings.. The videos show bystanders and journalists gathering in the street after the attack on the house and three ambulances and a fire truck arriving at the scene, with the sirens clearly audible. A few seconds later a large explosion is heard, the cameraman falls to the ground and dust covers the camera. One of the videos shows the dying cameraman continuing to film after the incident, and the ambulances being hit by a rocket. There are persons on the ground asking for God’s help. At least eleven explosions are heard, one every few seconds, following which dozens of injured persons can be seen in the street and three persons not moving any more”.

Note 9: On the inappropriateness of signing any type of bilateral treaty with Israel in 2025, see BOEGLIN N., “Will it really be appropriate and convenient for Costa Rica … to sign an FTA with Israel?”, August 10, 2025. Text available here. In relation to the forum held on August 13, 2025, sponsored by SurcosDigital and the citizen organization Alianza por una Vida Digna (Alliance for a Dignified Life), a similar forum held on November 30, 2023, attended by the Palestinian representative in Costa Rica, already anticipated in a very precise and detailed manner what awaited Gaza if the United States did not curb Israel’s thirst for revenge and the “total siege” against all of Gaza, including the civilian population (see link on YouTube).