The Israeli military announced Wednesday that it killed Momen Ahmad Salameh Ay in an airstrike on Gaza City on Tuesday. That’s the claim. The army that dropped the bomb supplied it, through the same chain of command that chose the target, approved the strike and wrote the press release afterward. No independent confirmation of Ay’s role appears in the account.
The military described Ay as an aide to commanders of Hamas’ Gaza Brigade. It alleged he helped hold Israeli hostages captive during the war. It also alleged he had recently advanced attacks on Israeli troops and civilians and sought to restore the group’s capabilities in violation of the cease-fire.
The State’s Monopoly
Read that last allegation again. The strike happened during a cease-fire. The army justified it by accusing the dead man of violating that cease-fire. It acts as judge, prosecutor and executioner, delivering the verdict after the sentence. There’s no trial and no evidence in the military’s statement as reported that anyone outside the apparatus can examine. Just a name, a title and an airstrike in a city full of people who didn’t get a vote on any of it.
The hostages named in the allegation are the reason this kind of claim lands so easily. Nobody should minimize what it means to be held captive, and the account says Ay allegedly took part in exactly that. But an accusation that he held people captive is not the same as a verified, adjudicated fact. The army leans on the first to make the second feel unnecessary.
Both Sides of the Same Coin
The military says Ay worked for the Gaza Brigade, Hamas’ armed wing, an organization that rules Gaza by monopolizing the guns, as every ruling organization does. The army alleges he was working to rebuild the group’s capabilities during a truce. Whatever the truth, two competing hierarchies stand in the picture, each with commanders, aides and a chain of command, each claiming a monopoly on legitimate force over the same strip of land. Gaza’s civilians sit beneath both. They have no seat at either table.
The cease-fire itself tells the story. It’s an agreement between armed hierarchies about when they’ll kill each other and who counts as a violator. Each side’s accusations of breach become a license for its next strike. Here, the Israeli military cites an alleged Hamas violation to explain an Israeli airstrike on a city center. The loop closes neatly enough that nobody inside it has to ask who else lives on that street.
Who Gets Crushed
The military’s statement names one target. In the account provided, it says nothing about who else was in Gaza City on Tuesday, what the strike cost beyond its stated objective, or what recourse bystanders have after a targeted killing. That silence is typical of these announcements: the dead man gets a name and a résumé, while everyone else in the blast radius gets a footnote—or nothing at all.
The press release format does the rest. A named commander, a list of alleged crimes, a cease-fire violation, a strike framed as enforcement. It reads like law enforcement without a law, a court or a defendant. Haaretz carried the announcement as the army delivered it.
No grassroots voices, mutual-aid organizers or neighbors appear in the account of the strike. Instead, the military tells the story, and that’s the only version the public has been handed. The people who live where the bomb landed haven’t been asked.