'We are being exterminated': Gaza's journalists rebuke 'world's indifference' as Israel kills more colleagues

Sunday evening, in a modest tent pitched beside the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, Palestinian journalist Ahmad Mansour sat in his usual spot, writing and editing one of his stories about the Israeli actions in Gaza. Around him, other journalists also tapped away on phones and laptops, trying to transmit the unfolding daily horrors. 

Mansour's tent was a familiar and popular refuge for Gaza's press corps, despite its walls scorched from previous Israeli air strikes, and the scent of smoke and death lingering in the air.

But that night, everything turned to fire.

An Israeli warplane reportedly launched a missile at the tent that was filled with journalists, instantly burning a journalist and another man alive, and wounding others, including Mansour. 

"The Israeli attack instantly killed our colleague Hilmi Mohammed al-Faqaawi, who was working for the Palestine Today TV, and Yousuf al-Khuzondar, a young man who was inside the tent. Nine other journalists were wounded," Samid Wajih, a Palestinian cameraman from Khan Younis, told The New Arab. 

"There were no screams. Mansour just burned in silence. His voice, dreams, and memories consumed in one breath," Wajih said, voice breaking with emotion. 

Mansour, critically wounded, was transferred to the nearby Nasser Hospital, as were other survivors.

'Assassination of the truth' 

Palestinian journalists posted videos documenting that horrifying moment. In the videos, one can see his colleagues screaming and scrambling toward him in desperation; some filming the carnage, others attempting to extinguish the flames with their bare hands.

"I never imagined a day would come when I would run toward a friend, not to save him from death, but to stop his body from burning," Abdel Raouf Shaath, a Palestinian journalist who was among the first to reach Mansour, said to TNA. 

"When the missile hit, everything exploded: sound, fire, dust. I turned around, and there he was, burning before me. Not in a poetic sense, but literally. It's an image I will never forget," he described. 

"I rushed toward him with fear, instinct, love. I don't remember how I moved or what I did. It was as if I was trying to extinguish the fire inside my chest," Shaath added. 

Despite the flames' intensity, he and others around him managed to pull Mansour out, wrapping him in a blanket. "He was still breathing, but his whole body was burnt,"  Shaath said. 

But by Tuesday, the Gaza-based health ministry announced Mansour succumbed to his burns. 

The strike has sparked renewed outrage and despair among Palestinian journalists in Gaza, many of whom say they are being systematically targeted by Israel.

"This isn't war. This is the assassination of the truth," said Mohammed Adwan, a Gaza-based journalist who has worked in media since 2013. 

"Journalists are civilians under international law. Our only weapon is a camera. What crime did Ahmed [Mansour] commit?" he asked. 

Adwan, who has covered three previous wars in Gaza, describe this Israeli war as unlike anything he's witnessed before. "In past conflicts, there were dangerous areas, but at least we believed there were safe ones too. Not now. Every inch of Gaza is a target. Every journalist is a target," he said. 

"I don't have even a 1 per cent chance of survival. Israel isn't just targeting militants; it is exterminating civilians, and journalists are at the top of the list," he added. 

Normalising killing

Despite the risks, Adwan and his Palestinian colleagues remain committed to their journalistic mission.

"Every time a colleague is killed, we grieve, we shake, but we return to our work. Because it's our duty. Because someone must tell the world that we are being erased," Adwan asserted. 

Meanwhile, for many Palestinian journalists, the international community's silence feels even more suffocating than the risk of death.

The war in Gaza is the deadliest conflict ever for journalists, according to a recent report by the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs' Costs of War project. The findings state that more journalists had been killed in the Palestinian territory than in both world wars, the Vietnam War, the wars in Yugoslavia, and the United States war in Afghanistan combined.

"If such a number of journalists had been killed in Ukraine, would the world be silent?" Rizq Abdul Jawad, a photojournalist, rhetorically asked. "Of course not. But in Gaza, we are burned, buried, and forgotten."

Despite the overwhelming documentation of video evidence, eyewitness accounts, and audio recordings, Wajih, Shaath, Adwan, and Abdul Jawad are starting to think that their stories were being buried beneath a global indifference.

"The world's muted reaction is normalising killing," Abdul Jawad remarked. 

"When a journalist is killed here, there might be a brief condemnation, a tweet or two, then silence. But if one Western journalist were killed this way, the world would tremble. Days of mourning would be declared. Laws would change," Wajih said. 

"We are not asking for pity. We are asking for justice. For accountability. We are asking the world to stop treating our deaths as footnotes," Shaath added. 

Since 7 October 2023, the Israeli army killed about 212 Palestinian journalists, according to the Gaza Government Media Office.

The office accused Israel of deliberately targeting the press as part of a "systematic campaign to assassinate the truth" and held Israel, the United States, and European allies, such as the UK, Germany, and France, "fully responsible for war crimes against journalists."

More than 1,330 Palestinians have been killed by Israel and close to 3,300 others injured since the war recently resumed. In total, over 50,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel since 2023, mostly civilians.