Cellphones, Gaza and the IDF

By Cory Franklin

August 29th, 2025

Among international agencies, news outlets and influential commentators, it has become an article of faith that Israel Defense Forces are deliberately shooting innocent civilians who are waiting in food lines in Gaza – an extreme violation of international law.

Despite IDF denials of firing on innocents, the UN Human Rights Office, Reuters, The Guardian, Al-Jazeera, the BBC, National Public Radio (NPR), The New York Times and CNN, among others, are all reporting that the IDF has intentionally killed hundreds, possibly more than a thousand Gazan civilians queued up for food. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz, along with influential commentators Piers Morgan and Andrew Sullivan, all make similar claims.

Only one problem: there is no verified video footage of the IDF actually shooting at or killing Gaza civilians in the food lines. Even though there are thousands of potential victims lining up for food, none of the reporting sources has shown film of the IDF actually firing on innocents with intent to kill.

On the face of it, it makes little strategic sense for the IDF to help provide food and then kill the people who are desperately trying to feed themselves and their families.

Go to You Tube and type in, “IDF soldiers firing on Gaza civilians in food lines” and there will be “eyewitness accounts” from Gaza civilians and at least one former Green Beret. Videos show shooting victims on stretchers, but not one instance of a uniformed soldier deliberately firing into a crowd or firing at a specific person. With dramatic claims of hundreds being killed, it should not be difficult to document at least one purported transgression on film.

So why is there no film actually documenting IDF shootings?

The standard reason given for the lack of video confirmation is that the IDF has prevented journalists and photographers from entering the war zone to report.  This is a tactical decision, and the wisdom or ethics of such a policy are debatable, but it should be noted that explanation of why there is no video simply doesn’t wash.

Because of cell phones.

Cell phones are ubiquitous in Gaza. For the last two years, the pictures coming out of the war zone show many civilians with mobile phones. During the October 7 massacre, terrorists in Gaza reported their heinous activities to friends and relatives on mobile phones.

It is pretty much established there are plenty of available cell phones that can film video circulating among the populace. And if there weren’t, it is certain that it would be a top priority of Hamas to smuggle in mobile phones to record video of alleged atrocities in its efforts to mobilize world opinion against Israel. Still, for whatever reason, there is still no video being released of the IDF shooting victims waiting for food.

This is as much a propaganda war as it is a shooting conflict and one presumes that if there were such video, it would have gone viral by now. It should give pause.

Here in Chicago, people are familiar with what video can do. Several years ago, the video of the shooting of Laquon Macdonald, a young man carrying a knife but walking away from police, was released to the public. It undermined the police narrative, led to a detailed investigation and procedural reforms, and did much to ruin the reputations of then mayor Rahm Emanuel and States Attorney Anita Alvarez.  Such is the power of video.

Absence of proof is not proof of absence. The fact there is no video of the IDF actually shooting at Gazans in the food lines does not prove they are not deliberately killing civilians. Israel can perhaps be faulted for restricting journalists’ access; this strategy might be counterproductive because wider reporting might support the IDF contention that they are not firing into food lines.  Conversely, it might support the contrary claims of the UN agencies and news outlets. The absence of video certainly proves one thing, though: as the Greek playwright Aeschylus observed centuries ago, in war truth is the first casualty.

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Dr. Cory Franklin

Cory Franklin, physician and writer, is a frequent contributor to johnkassnews.com. Director of Medical Intensive Care at Cook County (Illinois) Hospital for 25 years, before retiring he wrote over 80 medical articles, chapters, abstracts, and correspondences in books and professional journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine and JAMA. In 1999, he was awarded the Shubin-Weil Award, one of only fifty people ever honored as a national role model for the practice and teaching of intensive care medicine. 

Since retirement, Dr. Franklin has been a contributor to the Chicago Tribune op-ed page. His work has been published in the New York Times, New York Post, Washington Post, Chicago Sun-Times and excerpted in the New York Review of Books. Internationally, his work has appeared internationally in Spiked, The Guardian and The Jerusalem Post. For nine years he hosted a weekly audio podcast, Rememberingthepassed, which discusses the obituaries of notable people who have died recently. His 2015 book “Cook County ICU: 30 Years Of Unforgettable Patients and Odd Cases” was a medical history best-seller. In 2024, he co-authored The COVID Diaries: Anatomy of a Contagion As it Happened.

In 1993, he worked as a technical advisor to Harrison Ford and was a role model for the physician character Ford played in the film, The Fugitive.

Comments 16

  1. To refer to Hamas as animals, insults animals. If people chanting “free Palestine ” were serious about freeing Palestine, they would point to Hamas.

    If anyone is shooting at civilians in food lines, it’s those who are against Israel. When Israel destroys Hamas they will have freed Palestine

    1. Fun Fact: Hamas was created by the Israeli Mossad to counter the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), in order to diminish their infuence.

  2. I always get a sick kick out of the aforementioned legacy print media and their other mentioned media pawns who give credit to Hamas and its allies as the sources for the alleged IDF atrocities, talked about lack of credibility. Since October 7, before and beyond, Hamas has engaged in propaganda war on the truth of events taking place in Israel and Gaza. What video there is is Hamas stealing and preventing food from getting to the people of Gaza. Hamas are people of the Lie, cohorts of the Father of all lies.

  3. many , if not all , journalists in Gaza are Hamas operatives. They report on IDF movements and inform Hamas . The Al Jazeera ones are arguably Hamas themselves , as were many UNRWA workers.Israel as an enormous task to win the propaganda war against the forces aligned against it . Afre winning the shooting war and the propaganda war , Israel must win the peace . It will take at least two generations to persuade the Gazans that every time they go up Israel lose and each time the loss is worse . But reason is in short supply in the Islamic world.

  4. Israel will not stop until they have ALL of their people back. Simple. For all of the posturing by the media and “celebrities” for a cease fire, not one has ever called out Hamas for still having Israeli hostages. The day after the attack I remember seeing footage of Palestinians celebrating in the streets of their city. I thought, by tomorrow they’ll be sitting in rubble. This was correct. All of this carnage, the death, starvation was started by one group of people: HAMAS. And it continues due to the actions of these same people.

  6. Even in the picture accompanying this article you can see that everyone has a cell phone recording. Strange that no one has one at the food distribution points.

  7. This past Monday, 20 people (including 5 journalists) were killed when the IDF launched a double strike (about 20 mins. apart) on Nasser Hospital in Gaza. Netanyahu called this a “tragic mistake”. And on 26 Jul 25 an IDF strike on Gaza’s only Catholic Church, killed 3. Israel said it “deeply regrets” this incident, which they blamed on “stray ammunition”. 14 Jul 25: 7 Gaza children killed by Israeli strike while waiting in line to get water, the IDF blamed this on an “error”. 23 Mar 25: IDF attack kills 15 Palestinian medics. The IDF blamed this on “professional failures’. There are many more similar incidents. For such a professional and modern military, that is sure a lot of “errors” and “mishaps”. More like a pattern of indiscrimate killings of non-combatants.

    1. Everything goes well with war and ****! At least IDF admits errors and you know You can’t avoid them in any war, if you ever handled a rifle, at least a 0.002!

    2. At least Israel will admit to mistakes and make apologies unlike the barbarian Palestinians and Hamas. As far as the so-called journalists and medics, chances are theses Palestinians were disguised Hamas, and the Palestinian hospitals have always been covers for storing arms, ammunition, and terrorists. Like the “female” Arab who was recently in the news unmasked of her/his hijab and turned out to be a bearded male, I would not be surprised if the priest in the Gaza church turned out to be an armed terrorist mullah. Palestinian civilians joined the Hamas terrorists on October 7 in slaughtering and raping innocent Israeli civilian babies, children and women and men. Hey pal, there are no “innocent” Palestinians, they all have blood on their hands.

  9. The Hamas butchering , raping and killing babies was well documented on cell phone video (sometimes sent on their victims’ phones to their families. I know that Hamas is capable of documenting phony narratives and even using props. The lies about hospitals being bombed, babies starving who actually were suffering from unrelated illnesses, etc are however well documented.

  10. Excellent Doc. Again we see the main stream media “white washing the massacre and torcher of Oct 7th.” In reality if a video of any type of Israeli aggression against innocents seeking food in Gaza it would be not stop on every tv news station in the world.

  11. Well said , “Absence of proof is not proof of absence”! But in this case, no sensible person will believe Palestinians. For one, I have had some interactions with a professional Palestinian student as his room mate, more than 50 years ago in Chicago !

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