The video footage was from a month and a half ago, which means Al Jazeera should’ve been able to find out the identity of the men that were killed. They could definitely have gotten a comment from the IDF in that time frame.
Why didn’t they do that? Then we’d have confirmation that they’re civilian, or at the very least some explanation from the IDF. Whether someone is willing to believe what the IDF says is up to the viewer, but it should be included with the story. But they didn’t do that, and considered it unfit to air on their English language channels where it would face more scrutiny. Their Arabic channels are very different than their English language sites, and more willing to air straight up propaganda. The internet is also willing to share propaganda with no effort to verify they were civilians just an emphatic “there’s no way they can’t be cilivilians!!!” Most news organizations understand that Hamas routinely caches weapons and wear civilian clothing when thy move to other locations, but this isn’t given any consideration in this write-up.
Are they civilians? We simply can’t know because of the shoddy journalism at work here. But the point just seems to be to maintain outrage, and a lot of people aren’t looking for the normal information that should be there in a properly researched news story.