What does a Palestinian journalist’s day look like, apart from the daily challenges of a news-gathering process? Under constant bombardment and airstrikes, targeted drone attacks, survival is the greatest challenge. Fighting with starvation, homelessness, dehydration, losing family members one after another, lack of basic necessities, medicines, and disrupted internet access and electricity- a Gaza journalist has to struggle with all these in a warzone before filing their storis.
Salman al-Bashir, a journalist with the Palestinian Authority’s TV channel, threw his protective gear while reporting on his colleague Mohammed Abu Hatab’s death. Bashir was choked with tears and said in anguish, “We are victims on live TV.”
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, as of December 17, 2024, 141 journalists and media workers have been killed in Palestine’s Gaza and West Bank since the escalation of conflict between Israel and Palestine started after October 7, 2023.
Many of the journalists are as young as 18 years old and started reporting for many agencies after Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel that led to the war. As Israel barred the entry of foreign journalists into Gaza, these local journalists played a huge role in getting the truth out of the Gaza Strip. Gaza journalists have continued to report from the warzone even after being homeless and after losing their family members.
A journalist rushes towards the scene of an explosion following an Israeli strike, which reportedly targeted a school in the Zeitoun district on the outskirts of Gaza City, on September 1, 2024.
| Photo Credit:
AFP
Reuters reported in October 2023 that after requests made to the Israel Army by the news agency and Agence France Presse not to target their journalist, the Israel Army replied that it can’t guarantee the safety of their journalists as the IDF “is targeting all Hamas military activity throughout Gaza.”
An investigation done by Forbidden Stories, Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism, Le Monde, and AFP as part of the Gaza Project revealed that the Israeli Army deliberately targeted and bombed Gaza Strip’s Al-Ghefari tower, where many media houses had their offices, including AFP, on November 2. The AFP is one of the foreign news agencies that has an office in the Gaza Strip. This bombing happened even after AFP had communicated with IDF about their location.
Targeting of journalists and Israel’s denial
Al Hassan Hamad, who started reporting after the war began, was just 18 years old when he was killed on October 6, 2024. He was shot dead by the Israeli army in Gaza’s Jabalia camp while reporting. He worked with media outlets such as Al Jazeera and Media Town TV. After an Israeli missile hit him, his body was shredded into pieces. “All that remains of Al Hassan is some of his hair and body parts weighing no more than five kilograms,” Abdul Rahim Hamad, Hassan’s father, told CPJ. His father shared with CPJ how his son was threatened multiple times from Israeli phone numbers. His colleague at Media Town told CJP that they always have expected a bright future for him as a journalist.
Killed Palestinian journalist AlHassan Hamad. (Photo: Courtesy of Abdul Rahim Hamad)
| Photo Credit:
Committee to Protect Journalist
Losing a whole family
Al Jazeera Arabic cameraperson 45-year-old Samer Abu Daqqa and reporter and Gaza bureau chief Wael Al Dahdouh were reporting on an Israeli bombing of a UN school in Khan Yunis, southern Gaza, when they were attacked by an Israeli drone. Citing an Al-Jazeera report, the CPJ mentioned that health workers couldn’t reach Abu Daqqa while he was trapped with other civilians in that school as Israeli forces were surrounding the school. Abu Daqqa bled to death.
Al Jazeera journalist Wael Dahdouh holds the hand of his son Hamza, who also worked for Al Jazeera and who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Rafah, Gaza Strip, Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024. Dahdouh lost his wife, two other children, and a grandson earlier in the war and nearly killed himself.
| Photo Credit:
AP
Al Dahdouh, hit by shrapnel, was later taken to Nasser Hospital in Gaza’s Khan Yunis. In an interview to Al Jazeera, Al Dahdouh said that it’s a difficult moment in the life of Palestinian journalists when they go to cover an incident for the news and find out that the news is their own family. He lost his next son, Hamza Al Dahdouh, a 27-year-old journalist and cameraman for Al-Jazeera. He had already lost his wife, son, daughter, and grandson when an Israeli airstrike hit the Nuseirat refugee camp.
Protesters carry a banner, and posters bearing pictures of slain Palestinian journalists during a rally to condemn their killing, in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank on October 6, 2024.
| Photo Credit:
AFP
CPJ reported that he was in a car with AFP video journalist Mustafa Thuraya when an Israeli drone fired a missile targeting them. CPJ cited a report from the Times of Israel where they accused them of traveling with a terrorist in the car. When CPJ asked IDF for the identity of the terrorist, they didn’t receive a reply.
Journalist humiliated in detention
This is not the only instance; many times journalists have been accused of being a terrorists, but when asked to prove it, they failed to provide any information.
On July 31, 2024, Ismail Al Ghoul, a 27-year-old Palestinian journalist working for the Al Jazeera Arabic TV channel, was killed when he was in a car with his colleague Rami Al Refee as they were leaving Al Shati refugee camp in Gaza City.
Ismail Al Ghoul, a 27-year-old Palestinian journalist who was detained and killed in a later incident by Israeli Army
| Photo Credit:
Committee to Protect Journalist
They were obviously wearing ‘Press’ vests and helmets, but that didn’t save them. In March 2024, while reporting from Al-Shifa hospital, Ismail Al Ghoul and many of his colleagues were made to strip off their clothes in winter, blindfolded and handcuffed for 12 hours, and later released by the Israeli Army.
Mourners and colleagues surround the body of Al-Jazeera Arabic journalist Ismail al-Ghoul, killed along with his cameraman Rami al-Refee in an Israeli strike during their coverage of Gaza’s Al-Shati refugee camp, on July 31, 2024.
| Photo Credit:
AFP
On December 15, Mohammad Balousha, a 38-year-old Palestinian journalist who worked with Dubai-based Al-Mashad media, was killed in an Israeli drone strike. He broke a story on how after the Israeli army’s forced evacuation from al-Nasr Children’s Hospital, four premature babies were left to be decomposed and died. Soon after revealing this, he was attacked by the Israeli army, but he survived the first attack.
Mohammad Balousha, a 38-year-old Palestinian journalist killed by Israeli Army
| Photo Credit:
Committee to Protect Journalist
In a report published earlier in 2024, Reporters Without Borders reported that the Israeli Army is holding 38 journalists in custody. Though Israel has denied all allegations of targeted killing, Women Press Freedom, a women journalist advocacy group, reported that Eman El Shanti, a presenter at Al-Aqsa Radio, was killed in Gaza City’s Sheikh Radwan area along with her husband and three sons. This organisation reported that the death toll of women journalists alone stands at 26 since October 2023.
Reporting colleague’s death
For a Palestinian journalist, reporting on their colleagues’ deaths has become a daily affair. For Hind Khoudary, a 29-year-old journalist reporting from Gaza for Al Jazeera, it is just not the struggle; it just does not end at finding a safe place, finding food, water, or other basic necessities. These journalists are the ones who constantly had to deliver news of their colleagues deaths. She was on live TV when she received the news of the killing of Ismail Al Ghoul, working from the same network.
A colleague kneels in front of the body of local Palestinian journalist Mamduh Qantiya who was killed in an Israeli strike, ahead of his funeral at the al-Maamadani hospital in Gaza city in the northern Gaza Strip on December 1, 2024, amid the ongoing war between Israel and the Hamas militant group.
| Photo Credit:
AFP
Solidarity and resilience
Hind Khoudary has shared in a video interview to Afeef Nessouli, who produced podcast shows with Wall Street Journal, that she lives in a house shared by Motaz Azaiza, another Palestinian journalist who was hosting a group of journalists who were all displaced.
She was telling her colleagues are the only support system she has. After reporting she comes to the house, sits together and watch the sunset. For her this is the only thing that keeps her going.
Palestinian journalist Hind Khoudary inspects a tent at a makeshift camp for displaced people in front of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, after it was hit by Israel bombardment on March 31, 2024, amid the ongoing battles Israel and the Hamas militant group.
| Photo Credit:
AFP
In a post shared in X (formerly Twitter), she wrote, “I chose this battle, even though I knew it wouldn’t be easy… It’s not a choice I regret, but it’s a weight I carry, a daily reminder that some battles are ours to face alone, no matter how hard they may be.
Bisan Owda, a 27-year-old journalist, who recently got the Human Rights Defender Award and also won an Emmy Award for her documentary ‘It’s Bisan from Gaza, I’m Still Alive After Six Months of Bombing’ released on AJ+, has been displaced since the start of the war in October 2023 and now lives in tents like others. She keeps posting her videos on Instagram and has also worked with AJ+. Amid relentless bombings and loss, she tries to portray how Gazans are rebuilding lives, taking care of their community, and teaching children. She says in her video, “Displacement is ugly, but my people know how to survive, and we will make it until the end of this.”
Mahmoud Bassam, another young photojournalist who worked with the BBC, wrote in a post on X, “We, the people of this land, share the truth amidst the destruction of our city to show the world that we were not created to bow… We are the ones crushed within the walls of war, but we are not defeated. We are those who lost land, home, and soul, yet we have not lost our will. We are here to tell the world: we are not numbers; we are faces, names, stories. We are hope that will never die. We will stay until the end, writing until oppression is lifted and living until victory is achieved.”
Published – December 19, 2024 03:33 pm IST