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More journalists have been killed in Gaza since October 7, 2023 than in any other conflict since the Committee to Protect Journalists began collecting data on journalist fatalities in 1992. According to the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, Israel’s onslaught has killed 250 journalists and media workers to date.
Where Israeli leaders once feigned embarrassment over such flagrant violations of international law, today they assassinate Palestinian journalists openly: tracking their movements, issuing threats, and even striking their families. In early August, an Israeli airstrike killed Al Jazeera journalist Anas Al-Sharif along with five other journalists in a tent near Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. Two weeks later, Israel carried out a double tap strike at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, killing 22 people including five more journalists — apparently in order to take out a camera filming for Reuters.
Yet despite facing conditions without parallel in the history of modern warfare, journalists in Gaza continue to bear witness. With Israel barring foreign reporters from entering the Strip for nearly two years now, Palestinian journalists have shouldered the entire burden of informing the world about the ongoing genocide, reporting on a story that is also their own.
Before the war, Ruwaida Amer was a science teacher and part-time video journalist. Since October 7, she has worked full-time as a journalist, regularly contributing to +972.
In this episode of The +972 Podcast, Ruwaida, who reported from Gaza for nearly two years, reflects on the dangers and hardships of reporting from a warzone, where the atrocities she documented — massacres, destruction, displacement, and starvation — were inseparable from her own lived experience. Beyond her enduring dedication to her students, many of whom have been killed, she speaks about the daily struggle of surviving while trying to write, film, and mourn the loss of family, friends, and colleagues, including Maryam Abu Daqqa, one of the five journalists killed in Israel’s strikes on Nasser Hospital.
