Today, pindrop silence follows every Israeli strike. The groans you hear are not from the wounded; they have long been left under the rubble, but from the pangs of hunger that grow louder by the hour. Even the sound of planes above leaves us guessing: will they drop aid, or will they kill us? In this hellscape called Gaza, few remain to tell our story.
Over 2,500 years ago, Aeschylus, the ancient Greek playwright and soldier often called the "father of tragedy", is said to have declared: “The first casualty of war is the truth.”
Here, where civilians are hunted like prey, where hospitals double as morgues, and where entire families are erased in seconds, Palestinian journalists shoulder the burden of documenting the unimaginable, knowing they, too, may be killed without warning.
Had Aeschylus lived today, he might have written about the Palestinian journalist, killed not only for being Palestinian, which is itself a death sentence, but for telling the truth. We, the journalists of Gaza, are not just reporters; we are the last line of defence against total erasure.
Though we are targeted, imprisoned, wounded, and killed, we carry the weight of an entire people and the final record of our existence.
Since October 2023, 228 of my journalist colleagues have been killed by Israeli fire, along with at least 60,000 of my fellow Palestinians. Gaza is, without doubt, the most dangerous place in the world to be a journalist or simply to live. Press vests soaked in blood. Baby incubators shattered by sniper fire. Women scrambling for flour, picked off by mortar shells.
Journalists. Civilians. We are all protected under international humanitarian law. Our killings should constitute war crimes. But here, silence is complicity, and there has been no serious investigation, no accountability.
The ICC and the ICJ have moved at a glacial pace, paralysed by political pressure and diplomatic cowardice.
Meanwhile, Israel continues to escalate its genocide of the Palestinian people, under the most hollow and criminal pretexts: "journalists are embedded with militants", it claims.
As Aeschylus would no doubt have found out, in Gaza, holding a camera is enough to warrant an airstrike. This is what happens when a paranoid occupation fears the truth: killing by any means necessary and sealing Gaza’s prison walls to keep the world from witnessing the full extent of the destruction.
This is not a conventional “war,” and it is certainly not a “conflict.” It is a genocide, one in which Israel uses "starvation as a weapon". Reporting on it has been relentlessly dangerous for us as Palestinian journalists, who face constant physical and psychological peril. Many of us never set out to become reporters, but we were compelled by one thing: the need to tell the truth.
Perhaps it’s worth explaining what reporting in Gaza truly entails, a reality often glossed over by Western outlets that routinely elevate their own narratives above ours, dismissing our reporting as biased or unreliable, even as we risk everything. Reaching targeted areas after a strike is often a near-certain death sentence. Some are declared “red zones,” accessible only with direct coordination.
For photojournalists, even identifying the location of a nighttime bombardment is a challenge. Internet access is scarce, transportation is nearly nonexistent, and roads are either destroyed or blocked. Electricity is another constant hurdle. Charging laptops or devices depends on hospital generators or fragile solar panels. With most offices destroyed, journalists now work from tents, their newsrooms improvised, their lives always in danger.
The aftermath of every daily massacre is another wound, raw, unbearable and unforgettable, death by a thousand cuts. The psychological toll of documenting slaughter is scarring. There is no reprieve, no pause. The burden of capturing devastation over and over again wears the soul thin. Some of us turn to sleep to escape the images that refuse to leave. But even sleep, like water and bread, has become a luxury in Gaza.
We witness and continue to witness during the genocide is enough to shatter the mind of any human being. The scenes are endless: charred bodies, severed limbs, crumpled buildings, mass graves, the wails inside morgues, the white of children's coffins, the suffocating black of body bags, the funeral prayers, the forced displacements, the helplessness of entire families. There aren't just images, they are engraved in the collective memory of our people. And they are seared even deeper into those who document it all.
How are we meant to forget these scenes? How do we silence the screams that live in our heads? And when this ends, if it ends, who will help us carry what we have seen?
On June 30, Ismail Abu Hatab became the 228th journalist killed in Gaza, murdered by an Israeli airstrike as he sat at Al-Baqa, a beachside café. His colleague, Bayan Abu Sultan, survived, though wounded.
At the very beginning of this genocide, Israel targeted and killed Samer Abu Daqqa, Hamza al-Dahdouh, and Roshdi Sarraj, erasing them from their families, their communities, their lives. On October 9, 2024, Israel shot Fadi Alwhidi, a bullet severing his spine between the second and third vertebrae. He lived, but now lives paralysed.
In Gaza, journalists do not merely cover the news. They are the news. Their blood flows beside the civilians they document, their deaths as deliberate as the stories they once tried to tell. Ismail Al-Ghoul, assassinated while reporting from northern Gaza, had his body left without a head. Rami al-Rifi met a similar fate. Ismail’s daughter, Zina, is now one of Gaza’s countless orphans. His wife carries her grief alone.
On March 24, two more journalists, Hossam Shabat and Mohammed Mansour, were killed within an hour of one another. Both were targeted for one reason: telling the truth. In his final message, Hossam wrote: "Don't stop talking about Gaza. Don't let the world look away. Keep fighting. Keep telling stories until Palestine is free."
Days after Hossam's murder, an Israeli airstrike hit the tents of journalists sheltering outside Nasser Hospital. Ahmad Mansour was burned alive. Others, including Abdullah al-Attar and Hassan Aslih, were severely wounded. At Al-Aqsa Hospital, another strike hit a displacement camp, leaving journalist Ali al-Attart with a critical head injury.
On May 7, Israel carried out a massacre in Gaza City's Al-Rimal neighbourhood. A strike on Al-Tilandi Restaurant killed at least 30 people and wounded more than 150. Among them was journalist Yahya Sobeih, who had celebrated his newborn daughter’s birthday only hours before.
Not long after, Israel assassinated Hassan Eslieh, a prominent Palestinian journalist, with a direct airstrike on Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis. He was injured, asleep, and surrounded by hundreds of patients. The entire burns unit was destroyed. What justice permits the murder of a wounded man inside a hospital? What law allows such brutality to continue unchecked?
In June 2025, journalist Ahmad Saad was killed in an Israeli strike on a group of civilians in Gaza City’s Al-Tuffah neighbourhood. He was young, like so many others, punished with death for telling the truth. It seems truth is Israel’s greatest fear.
And still, journalists continue. Hind Khoudary, Ahmed Al-Najjar, Anas Al-Sharif, Hisham Zaqoot, Islam Bader, Mohammed Qraiqea, Nour Elassy, Bisan Owda, they show me what it means to speak when silence is safer. They don’t just report the news. They live it. With bombs falling around them, no electricity, no internet, no food, and no guarantee they’ll see tomorrow. They remind me what it means to use your voice when it could cost you everything.
Despite everything, we keep reporting, even if we’re the last ones left. The task is enormous: to document a genocide while living through it. We tell the stories the world tries to ignore, and we die for it.
Just as Aeschylus’s old phrase still rings true 2500 years later, history will surely remember the Palestinian journalist: the one who stood unarmed before the Israeli war machine, armed only with a camera and a pen.
Our grief deepens each time we bury another colleague. We carry their names in our hearts, their stories in our bones. Every image they captured, every cry they preserved, echoes still. Israel believes that by killing journalists, it can kill the truth. But our voices are louder than silence. And we will not be erased.
Huda Skaik is an English literature student, a writer, and a video maker. She is a member of We Are Not Numbers, and she also a contributor for Electronic Intifada and WRMEA. She dreams of a future as a professor, professional poet, and writer.
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