Gaza’s journalists are talented, professional and dignified. That’s why Israel targets them- Nesrine Malik in The Guardian

A marcher holds a photo of slain Al Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif, as pro-Palestinian protesters in New York City condemn the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, 16 August 2025. Photograph: Stephanie Keith/Getty Images

Recent killings have dazed the world and provoked condemnation. But little is said about the calibre of Palestinian journalism

Nesrine Malik

Mon 18 Aug 2025 02.00 EDT

Last modified on Mon 18 Aug 2025 03.08 EDT

The first time I met Al Jazeera’s Gaza team lead, Tamer Almisshal, was in July last year. His team had already buried two journalists, Hamza al-Dahdouh and Samer Abu Daqqa. The rest, he told me, were hungry. They were also dealing with trying to get hold of protective gear, threats from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and the killing of family members. Ismail al-Ghoul hadn’t seen his wife and child in months and was missing them intensely. Hossam Shabat, Mohammed Qraiqea and Anas al-Sharif were asking for time to secure food in the morning before they could start reporting. Today, they are all dead.

I spoke with various members of the Gaza team while writing a profile of Gaza’s veteran reporter Wael al-Dahdouh, who lost his wife, three of his children and grandson. All spoke of their work as a duty that needed to be carried out despite the risks. Three members of that team have since been killed in a chain of assassinations. Each time I sent condolences, the response was always that the coverage would not cease. “We are continuing,” the Gaza editor told me last week, after he lost his entire Gaza City team in the targeted strike that claimed the lives of Sharif, Mohammed Nofal, Ibrahim Thaher and Qraiqea. “We will not betray their message, or their last wishes.”

As these killings dazed the world – and the response to them became mired in unproven and in some cases risibly implausible claims that some of these journalists were militants – little has been said about the calibre of journalism in Gaza. How fluent, articulate and poised its journalists are under impossible circumstances. How much they manage to capture horrific events and pain on a daily basis, in a journalistic Arabic that they have perfected to an art, while maintaining a professional, collected presence on camera. How much they manage to keep their cool. I struggled often to translate their words into English, so rich and expansive is their expression. Even Sharif’s final message, a text for the ages, loses some of its power in translation. In it, he addresses those who “choked” our breath, but the word he uses is closer to “besieged” – evoking not just physical asphyxiation but the silencing of a surveilled people’s voice.

What strikes me when I speak with journalists in and from Gaza is how evangelical and heartbreakingly idealistic they are; how much journalism to them was a duty even if it meant certain death. All who have been killed had a choice... READ MORE https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/aug/18/israel-gaza-war-journalist-killed-safety-al-jazeera

 AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES (or quotes) IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine, or at least fair and just laws and policies]

‘I couldn’t cry over my children like everyone else’: the tragedy of Palestinian journalist Wael al-Dahdouh. After his wife and two of his children were killed in Gaza, Al Jazeera journalist Wael al-Dahdouh became famous around the world for his decision to keep reporting. But this was just the start of his heartbreaking journey By Nesrine Malik

 Wael al-Dahdouh was live on air when he realised something was wrong. It was 25 October 2023, about 5pm, and Al Jazeera’s bureau chief in Gaza was standing on the roof of the channel’s office building, speaking about the day’s airstrikes. “It’s going to be a bloody night,” said Dahdouh, his voice playing over live images of the skyline, as explosions flared on the horizon.

Out of the corner of his eye, Dahdouh noticed his nephew Hamdan, a producer with Al Jazeera, looking agitated. Then Dahdouh’s mobile phone, slotted in his flak jacket, began to ring. Hamdan reached over, pulled the phone out and answered it. It was an odd thing to do while they were on air, Dahdouh thought. Alarmed, he addressed Hamdan. “Who is it?” Dahdouh asked, still audible to viewers. After a few seconds on the phone, Hamdan angrily kicked a wall. “What’s going on?” Dahdouh asked. Hamdan replied: “Your daughter. The girl is in the hospital. They have struck the place where your wife and family are.” Dahdouh took the phone. As viewers continued to see live scenes from Gaza, they could hear Dahdouh’s rising alarm and Hamdan’s flustered interjections in the background. Then the transmission cut to the studio in Doha.

On the phone was Dahdouh’s 21-year-old daughter, Khulood, who was bewildered and unable to give him a clear idea of what was happening. He hung up and rushed to Nuseirat camp seven miles away, where his wife and seven of his eight children had been sheltering in an Israeli-designated safe zone. When he arrived about 40 minutes later, Dahdouh found a chaotic scene. People were digging in the rubble with their hands, using their mobile phone torches to see. Some were in tears, others wailing the names of the dead. In the debris, Dahdouh found his 18-month-old grandson, Adam, covered in dust, unconscious. Cradling the boy in his arms, Dahdouh raced to al-Aqsa martyrs hospital 15 minutes away.

In the melee outside the hospital, Dahdouh found Khulood. When she saw Adam’s body in her father’s arms, she began screaming and stroking her nephew’s face. Then she collapsed, taking Dahdouh down with her, still clutching the toddler. Dahdouh staggered to his feet. Inside the building, he handed Adam to a doctor and began to search for the rest of his family, lurching through the throngs also looking for their loved ones, through corridors full of the wounded. Dahdouh’s reporting had made him famous in Gaza, and as he continued his search, asking if anyone had seen his wife and children, he started to realise that people were avoiding him, as if they knew something he didn’t. Then an ambulance brought in his youngest son, 12-year-old Yahya. His skull was exposed and his head drenched in blood, but he was conscious. Dahdouh rushed him to a doctor who began to sew up his wounds on the spot. There was no anaesthetic. Yahya screamed in pain... READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/oct/31/wael-al-dahdouh-gaza-palestinian-journalist-tragedy

 [AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES (or quotes or watch videos) IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine]

'Stunned, angry, and infuriated': Journalists address US silence on colleagues killed in Gaza

Jan 14, 2024 

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 82 journalists and media workers have died since the Israel-Hamas war began on October 7th, making this war the deadliest in modern history for journalists. Hamza Al-Dahdouh and Mustafa Thuraya are the latest journalists to be killed in the war. Hamza is the son of Al Jazeera’s Gaza Bureau Chief Wael Al-Dahdouh, who had already lost his wife, daughter, another son, and grandson in an Israeli airstrike. Al-Dahdouh vows to continue reporting through his pain and loss.

The third Arab journalist murdered in less than 48 hours by Israel - at least 111 journalists murdered in the last 95 days by Israel

 

The third journalist murdered in less than 48 hours - at least 111 journalists murdered in the last 95 days
The well-known and respected journalist Abdallah Breis, together with three other journalist colleagues, survived an airstrike 2 months ago, while covering the ongoing genocide against the 2.2 million prisoners in Gaza

The Israeli army has assassinated Hamza Al-Dahdouh, the son of Wael Al-Dahdouh, Al-Jazeera’s main correspondent in Gaza...

This is a photo of Hamza next to his father.

The Israeli army has assassinated Hamza Al-Dahdouh, the son of Wael Al-Dahdouh, Al-Jazeera’s main correspondent in Gaza.

 

In the first weeks of the genocide, they killed his wife and some of his children. Now his oldest son, who worked as a journalist.

 

Hamza was in a car moving to report on atrocities in Rafah and other southern parts of Gaza.