{"id":279227,"date":"2025-10-05T09:52:15","date_gmt":"2025-10-05T09:52:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/279227\/"},"modified":"2025-10-05T09:52:15","modified_gmt":"2025-10-05T09:52:15","slug":"journalists-work-in-dire-conditions-to-tell-gazas-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/279227\/","title":{"rendered":"Journalists work in dire conditions to tell Gaza’s story"},"content":{"rendered":"

BEIRUT (AP) \u2014 Minutes after journalists gathered outside a Gaza hospital to survey the damage of an Israeli strike, Ibrahim Qannan pointed his camera up at the battered building as the others climbed its external stairs. Then Qannan watched in horror \u2014 while broadcasting live \u2014 as a second strike killed<\/a> the friends and colleagues he knew so well.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe live side by side with death,\u201d Qannan, a correspondent for the Cairo-based Al-Ghad TV said in an interview.<\/p>\n

\u201cI still cannot believe that five of our colleagues were struck in front of me on camera and I try to hold up and look strong to carry the message. May no one feel such feelings. They are painful feelings.\u201d<\/p>\n

The deaths of the five journalists<\/a> in the Aug. 25 strikes on Nasser Hospital add to a toll of nearly 200 news workers killed by Israeli forces while working to bring Gaza\u2019s story to the world. Those killed in the attack, which left a total of 22 people dead, included Mariam Dagga, 33, a visual journalist<\/a> who freelanced for The Associated Press<\/a> and other outlets.<\/p>\n

Like the vast majority of Gaza\u2019s population, most of its journalists have seen their homes destroyed or damaged during the war and have been repeatedly displaced after evacuation orders by Israel\u2019s military. Many have mourned the deaths of family members.<\/p>\n

But journalists and advocates say the trials go well beyond. Every workday, they say, is shadowed by an awareness that covering the news in Gaza makes them singularly visible in the conflict, putting them at extraordinary risk.<\/p>\n

For journalists in Gaza, \u201cit\u2019s about dying or living, escaping violence or not. It\u2019s something we cannot compare (to other wartime journalism) at any level,\u201d said Mohamed Salama, a former reporter in Egypt who is now an academic, researching the life of news workers in the Strip.<\/p>\n

Israel calls strikes \u2018a tragic mishap\u2019 but also levels accusations<\/p>\n

After the August strikes, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisted that the military was not deliberately targeting journalists and called the killings a \u201ctragic mishap.\u201d After a preliminary review, the military said the attack had targeted what it believed to be a Hamas surveillance camera and that six of the people killed were militants, but offered no evidence.<\/p>\n

Late last month, the AP and Reuters \u2014 which lost a cameraman and a freelancer in the attack on the hospital \u2014 demanded that Israel provide a full account<\/a> of what happened and \u201ctake every step to protect those who continue to cover this conflict.\u201d The news organizations issued their statement on the one-month anniversary of the strikes.<\/p>\n

Israeli officials have previously accused some journalists in Gaza of being current or former militants. They include Anas al-Sharif<\/a>, a well-known correspondent for Al Jazeera who was killed in an early August strike on a media tent outside another Gaza hospital. Four other journalists were also killed in the attack.<\/p>\n

The Israeli military, citing documents it purportedly found in Gaza, as well as other intelligence, had long claimed that<\/a> al-Sharif was a member of Hamas. He was killed after what press advocates said was an Israeli \u201csmear campaign\u201d stepped up when al-Sharif cried on air over starvation in the territory.<\/p>\n

There is a long, sometimes tragic history of journalists risking personal safety to cover conflicts. But the risks, trials and toll of doing so have never been higher than they are in Gaza right now, experts say.<\/p>\n

Since the war was ignited<\/a> by the Hamas attack on Israel nearly two years ago, 195 Palestinian media workers have been killed by Israeli forces in Gaza, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. <\/p>\n

The toll recently prompted Brown University\u2019s Costs of War project to label Gaza a \u201cnews graveyard.\u201d Journalist deaths in Gaza have now surpassed the combined number killed during the U.S. Civil War, World Wars I and II, the Vietnam and Korean wars, the war in Yugoslavia that ended in 2001 and the Afghanistan War, the project said in a report issued earlier this year.<\/p>\n

In a separate survey of Gaza news workers last year by Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism, nine in 10 said their homes had been destroyed in the war. About one in five said they had been injured and about the same number had lost family members. That was before Israel resumed fighting in March after a brief ceasefire.<\/p>\n

One Gaza journalist, Nour Swirki, told the AP in an interview that since her home was destroyed early in the war she has been displaced seven times. Swirki and her husband, who is also a journalist, arranged for their son and daughter to exit Gaza in 2024 and stay with family in Egypt while the couple continued to work.<\/p>\n

\u201cI preferred their safety to my motherhood,\u201d said Swirki, who works for the Saudi-based Asharq News and was a friend of Dagga\u2019s.<\/p>\n

\u201cDeath is there (in Gaza) every moment, every second and everywhere,\u201d Swirki said. She is reminded of that reality whenever she skims through photos and videos stored on her phone and is met by the faces and voices of the many colleagues and friends who have been killed in the war.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe get afraid and terrified and we work under the harshest conditions,\u201d she said, \u201cbut we still stand up and work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Journalists are pressured by violence, hunger<\/p>\n

Qannan, who saw his colleagues killed in the August strike, said Israel\u2019s refusal to let foreign reporters enter Gaza puts tremendous pressure on local journalists, many of whom see their work as a duty to their fellow Palestinians.<\/p>\n

He recounted working without a break since the war\u2019s start, grabbing sleep between live broadcasts. His family has been displaced seven times. Now he and other journalists struggle to find food. In a recent social media post, he and fellow journalists gathered to cook a kilogram (2.2 pounds) of pasta that had cost them the equivalent of $60.<\/p>\n

Yet when he goes on camera, Qannan said he makes an effort to appear strong in hopes of reassuring viewers. In fact, he and others journalists are exhausted and scared, he said. <\/p>\n

Qannan says his fears have increased since he aired video of his colleagues being killed in the hospital attack, because it could draw the attention of the Israeli military. \u201cThe situation is terrifying more than the human brain can imagine,\u201d he said. \u201cThe fear that we are living and fear of being targeted are worse than is being described.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another Gaza journalist, Mohammed Subeh, said the Israeli strike that killed the Al Jazeera reporter earlier in August left him with shrapnel lodged in his back and an injury to his foot. But hospitals are so overwhelmed with critical cases that he\u2019s been unable to get treatment.<\/p>\n

\u201cA journalist in Gaza lives between covering the war on the ground, following the news and at the same time trying to take care of his safety and the safety of his family,\u201d said Subeh, who reports for Al-Ekhbariya, a Saudi Arabian news channel.<\/p>\n

Salama, who together with colleagues interviewed more than 20 Gaza journalists for their academic research, said that unlike foreign correspondents covering a war, Palestinian reporters have experienced decades of conflict firsthand. That experience makes them uniquely capable of telling Gaza\u2019s story, he said \u2014 but they can never step away from it.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t have the luxury to break your soul away from what is happening on the ground,\u201d said Salama, now a doctoral student at the University of Maryland.<\/p>\n

Subeh, who works for the Saudi news channel, said he\u2019d thought repeatedly of quitting and trying to flee. But, despite the extreme difficulties and dangers, he can\u2019t bring himself to do it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel that my presence here is important and that the voice of Gaza should be sent to the world from its own residents,\u201d he said. \u201cJournalism is not only a job for me, but a mission.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Mroue reported from Beirut and Geller from New York.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BEIRUT (AP) \u2014 Minutes after journalists gathered outside a Gaza hospital to survey the damage of an Israeli…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":279228,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[97,82056,3881,372,64,171,70,4526,57,4527,111951,23515,144358,144360,144359,50,15529,103,107],"class_list":{"0":"post-279227","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-2024-2025-mideast-wars","9":"tag-anas-al-sharif","10":"tag-ap-top-news","11":"tag-benjamin-netanyahu","12":"tag-business","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-gaza","15":"tag-gaza-strip","16":"tag-general-news","17":"tag-hamas","18":"tag-ibrahim-qannan","19":"tag-journalism","20":"tag-mariam-dagga","21":"tag-mohamed-salama","22":"tag-mohammed-subeh","23":"tag-news","24":"tag-news-media","25":"tag-world","26":"tag-world-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115320949696270919","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279227"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279227\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/279228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}