Here we are again, staring into the abyss of the news cycle, only to find the abyss staring back and shrugging. It is another Wednesday in the Levant, which means the grim reaper is clocking in for double overtime while the rest of the world debates interest rates or which celebrity is sleeping with whom. The latest ticker tape from the Gaza Strip informs us—with all the emotional weight of a weather report—that an Israeli strike has obliterated three journalists. Just like that. Three people whose job description was ostensibly to stand in front of the apocalypse and take notes have been erased by the very story they were covering.

First responders, those poor, doomed souls whose job security is the only thing guaranteed in this hellscape, confirmed the deaths. But let’s be honest, does it matter who confirms it? In the modern theater of war, truth is the first casualty, usually followed closely by the people trying to broadcast it. The concept of the 'Press' vest, that bright blue talisman meant to signal 'I am an observer, not a combatant,' has officially been downgraded from a shield to a bullseye. Or perhaps, more accurately, it has become irrelevant. High-velocity artillery shells and precision-guided munitions do not possess optical sensors capable of reading English text on a flak jacket. They simply do what they are designed to do: turn biology into physics.

Alongside these three chroniclers of doom, another eight Palestinians were dispatched into the hereafter by a combination of artillery and gunfire across the strip. It is a testament to our collective desensitization that these eight human beings are relegated to the status of a footnote, a statistical rounding error in the grand calculus of the conflict. 'And eight others.' That is how we quantify human life now. They are the background extras in a tragedy where nobody knows their lines and the director walked off the set forty years ago.

One has to marvel at the sheer, unadulterated futility of it all. The Israeli military machine, grinding forward with the inexorable logic of a hydraulic press, claims it targets combatants. The reality on the ground, however, suggests that the definition of 'combatant' has become so fluid it encompasses anyone standing within a specific zip code when the trigger is pulled. Meanwhile, the journalists—the ones stupid or brave enough to remain in a zone designated for total demolition—continue to die at a rate that would make a World War II infantryman wince. What are they dying for? To send a dispatch to a world that has largely decided to scroll past the carnage? To provide footage for cable news networks that will sanitize the blood so as not to upset the pharmaceutical advertisers?

There is a grotesque irony in the fact that we have more information technology than any civilization in history, yet we are watching people die in 4K resolution while understanding absolutely nothing. The death of a journalist is supposed to be a red line, a violation of the sacred rules of engagement. But those rules were written by diplomats in air-conditioned rooms in Geneva, not by conscripts sweating in a tank in Khan Younis or militants hiding in a tunnel network. In the real world—the wet, loud, bloody world—there are no rules. There are only trajectories and blast radii.

So, let us pour one out for the three scribes who thought their cameras were shields. They were wrong. In the grand, stupid narrative of the Middle East, there are no observers. Everyone is a participant, whether they want to be or not. If you are breathing air in Gaza, you are part of the game, and the game is rigged. The international community will issue a statement. The UN will express 'deep concern,' a phrase that has lost all semantic meaning and now serves only as a placeholder for impotence. And tomorrow, another strike will hit, another medic will count the bodies, and the rest of us will go back to arguing about tax brackets. The machine keeps grinding, and the ink—much like the blood—never seems to dry.