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The journalists of Gaza bear witness differently. For those closely observing the horrific developments unfolding day after day in that thin strip of land, some names have become far more than those belonging to bearers of “news” — Wael Al-Dahdouh, Plestia Alaqad, Motaz Azaiza. When 22-year-old Plestia’s Instagram handle — where she has regularly been posting her reportage and updates — went silent for three days because she had lost internet connectivity, panicked followers flooded her comment sections asking if she was alright, if she was still alive. Wael, Al Jazeera’s Gaza Chief of Bureau, was live on air when his wife, son, daughter and 18-month-old grandson were killed in an Israeli airstrike. Cameras were trained on him at the hospital when he saw and held their lifeless bodies. Less than 24 hours later, he was back on air, saying, “I saw that it was my duty, despite the pain and the bleeding wound, to return in front of the camera and communicate with you on social media as soon as possible.”
In ways that they would have never wished for, they are as much subjects of their own reportage as the rest of Gaza. And as they bring to us image after image, update after update of death and despair, they don’t just want to inform us of the magnitude of suffering. They also hope that something in these images and updates will move something, will help halt the juggernaut of destruction so that their families and friends may live. These are not just facts for our information presented by professionals, these are also cries for help by civilians. There are no foreign journalists in Gaza. Their own phones, cameras and voices are all they have and they have been valiantly pushing against staggeringly difficult odds to push out their images and words.
When they are so brave, who are the rest of us to feel cynical or dejected? But our social media feeds are flooded with images shot by them and the ordinary citizens of Gaza — bloodied pieces of bread, men comforting traumatised children, women kissing the bodies of their dead infants. We watch many of them, are deeply moved by some, scroll past many more. As a journalist, who has been consuming these images for more than a month now, I feel my faith in what our work is supposed to achieve is deeply shaken. Maybe not all journalists are motivated by a sense of justice but I am willing to believe that most of us believe in the importance of bearing witness. After everything else is stripped away, that is what lies at the heart of any kind of reporting. And a belief that this act of bearing witness makes some kind of difference. The brave journalists of Gaza bear witness very differently, in the hope that what they lay before the world will pierce through the fog and help save their home and people. And the world indeed is their witness, yet the equivocation and bombardment continue.
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At this peak of human tragedy, has any ideal of the power of testament crumpled? But they continue through grief, fear and the spectre of death to bear witness for a world that watches as everything they know is destroyed.
Through this heartbreaking display of courage, the most moving image for me was when it wavered to lay bare what has been suppressed — when journalist Salman Al-Bashir pulled off his blue press helmet and jacket, breaking down while reporting on the killing of his colleague Mohammed Abu Hatab:
“No one is seeing us or the size of this catastrophe and the crime we are experiencing in Gaza… We are victims, directly on live television. We are losing souls one after the other… We are martyred victims in a matter of time, we wait our turn, one after the other.”
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