A few minutes after the journalists gather outside Gaza Hospital to survey the loss of one Israel Strike, Ibrahim Qannan pointed his camera on the battered building as other people climbed its exterior stairs. Then Qannan saw in the horror – while broadcasting live – killed friends and colleagues as a second strike, whom he knew well.
“We live shoulder to shoulder with death,” Qannan said in an interview, Qannan in Cairo, Cairo-based Al-Gad TV.
“I still can’t believe that our five colleagues were hit in front of me and I try to catch and look strong to carry the message. No one can feel such feelings. They are painful feelings.”
The deaths of five journalists in Nasir Hospital on August 25, working to bring the story of Gaza to the world, connect a toll of about 200 news employees killed by the Israeli army. Those killed in the attack, including a total of 22 people killed, consisted of 33 -year -old Maryam Dagga, a visual journalist who had independent for Associated Press and other outlets.
Like the vast majority of the Gaza population, most of its journalists have seen their homes destroyed or damaged during the war and have been displaced repeatedly after the order of withdrawal by the Israeli army. Many people have mourned the death of family members.
But journalists and advocates say the tests are well beyond. Every working day, they say, is covered with an awareness that covering the news in Gaza shows them uniquely in the struggle, causing them an extraordinary risk.
For journalists in Gaza, “whether it is about dying or living, avoiding violence. It’s something that we can’t compare at any level (for other War -Year Journalism),” said Mohammad Salama, a former Egyptian reporter Mohammad Salama, who is now an academic, who is now researching the lives of news workers in strips.
Israel called an ‘tragic accident’, but is also a level of allegations
After the August attacks, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stressed that the army was not deliberately targeting journalists and called the murders a “tragic accident”. After the initial review, the army said the attack had targeted that it was considered a Hamas monitoring camera and six people killed were terrorists, but did not provide any evidence.
At the end of last month, AP and Reuters – who lost a cameraman and a freelancer in the hospital attack – demanded that Israel provide a full details of what happened and “take every step to protect those who continue to cover this struggle.” News organizations released their statement on a one -month anniversary of the strike.
Israeli officials have earlier accused some journalists of being the current or former terrorist in Gaza. These include Anas Al-Sherif, a famous correspondent for Al Jazeera, who was killed on a media tent outside Gaza Hospital in early August. Four other journalists were also killed in the attack.
The Israeli army, citing the documents found in Gaza, also claimed other intelligence, claiming that Al-Sharif was a member of Hamas. He was killed after what the press advocates had said, when an Israeli was a “smear campaign”, when Al-Sharif cried in the air from starvation in the area.
Journalists who risk personal security to cover struggles have a long, sometimes tragic history. Experts say that the risk of doing so, testing and toll of doing so are never more, as they are in Gaza right now.
Since the war was ignited by the Hamas attack on Israel about two years ago, the 195 Palestinian media activists have been killed by Israeli forces in Gaza, according to the committee to protect journalists.
Toll recently inspired Gaza the costs of the brown university war project to label the “news cemetery”. The death of a journalist in Gaza has now crossed the joint number killed during the US Civil War, World War I and II, Vietnam and Korean wars, the War in Egoslavia ending 2001 and the Afghanistan War, earlier this year, said in a report.
Last year to search by Arab reporters in a separate survey by Gaza news workers JournalismNine out of 10 said that their houses were destroyed in the war. One in five said that he was injured and lost family members about the same number. Before Israel resumed the fight in March after a brief ceasefire.
A Gaza journalist, Noor Swirki, in an interview, told AP that since his house was destroyed quickly in the war, he was displaced seven times. Swirki and her husband, who are also a journalist, arranged for their son and daughter to get out of Gaza in 2024 and live with family in Egypt, while the couple continued to work.
“I liked my mother -in -law’s safety,” Swirki said, who works for Saudi -based Ashk news and was a friend of Dagga.
“Death (in Gaza) is every moment, every second and everywhere,” said Swirky. Whenever she skims through photos and videos stored on her phone, she is reminiscent of that reality and meeting with the faces and voice of many colleagues and friends killed in war.
“We are afraid and frightened and we work in harsh conditions,” he said, “but we still stand and work.”
Journalists are pressured by violence, hunger
Qannan, who saw his colleagues hitting them in the August strike, said that foreign journalists have been refused to enter Gaza, putting tremendous pressure on local journalists, many of whom see their work as a duty for their fellow Palestinians.
He asked to grab sleep amid live broadcasting, while working without a brake since the onset of the war. His family has been displaced seven times. Now he and other journalists struggle to find food. Recently in a social media post, he and fellow journalist gathered to cook a kilogram (2.2 pounds) of pasta, which cost him $ 60.
Still when he goes on camera, Qannan said that he tries to look strong in the hope of assuring the audience. In fact, he and other journalists are tired and scared, he said.
Qannan says his fear has increased as he has broadcast a video of his associates killed in the hospital attack, as it can attract the attention of the Israeli army. “The situation is more terrible than the imagination of the human brain,” he said. “We are worse than the fear that we are living and fear of being targeted.”
Another Gaza journalist, Mohammad Subah, said the Israeli strike, which killed Al Jazeera reporter in August, splashed him and left with a pellet with injury behind him. But hospitals are so overwhelmed by significant cases that they are unable to treat.
Subbe, who reported for Saudi Arabia’s news channel Al-Ahabaria, said, “After a journalist in Gaza, as well as trying to take care of his safety and his family’s safety, stays between covering the war on the ground.”
Salama, who along with colleagues, interviewed more than 20 Gaza journalists for his educational research, said that unlike the foreign reporters covering the war, Palestinian reporters have experienced decades of decades of struggle. This experience enables him to tell Gaza’s story, he said – but they can never get away from it.
Salama, a doctoral student at the University of Maryland, said, “You do not have the luxury to break your soul away from whatever you are happening on the ground.”
Suba, who worked for the Saudi news channel, said that he had thought of repeatedly leaving and trying to escape. But, despite extreme difficulties and dangers, he cannot bring himself to do so.
“I think my presence here is important and Gaza’s voice should be sent to the world from his inhabitants,” he said. “Journalism is not only for me, but a mission.”
,
Informed by mroue Berry And Galer from New York.