Because the Gaza bureau chief for the influential Qatar-based information community, Dahdouh reported on the weeks of conflict that adopted. The aperture of the Israeli marketing campaign widened, reaching Gaza’s south. In December, Dahdouh was wounded and his cameraman killed in an Israeli drone strike whereas they have been reporting from the southern city of Khan Younis. He was again reporting the following day. Over this weekend, tragedy struck once more when one other obvious Israeli drone strike focused a automobile carrying a bunch of journalists on task near Rafah alongside Gaza’s border with Egypt. The assault killed two Palestinian journalists — his son, Hamza al-Dahdouh, and Mustafa Thuraya.
A grieving Wael stated in a video that emerged later that Hamza was “my breath and my soul,” a sentiment Hamza had reciprocated in what ended up being one among his final social media posts. Their household’s compounded struggling has served as a potent snapshot for what 1000’s of Palestinian households in Gaza are enduring amid every day bombardments and a relentless seek for meals and the essential requirements for survival.
“In a video posted on social media, Wael is proven at Hamza’s marriage ceremony in 2022, all smiles and arms thrown large open as company chucked him, the groom’s father, aloft, after which caught him once more,” my colleagues reported. “On Sunday, he appeared empty, standing over Hamza’s physique on the morgue, clutching his hand and muttering softly. Later, he wrapped his arms round Wafaa, his son’s inconsolable widow, as she positioned her face on Hamza’s chest.”
Based on a tally maintained by the Committee to Shield Journalists, at least 79 journalists and media staff have been killed because the begin of the conflict on Oct. 7. Native Palestinian authorities put that quantity above 100. In both case, it’s the one largest dying toll for journalists in a battle zone for years — surpassing the toll exacted on the press working in Ukraine over the previous two years in only a matter of months. By one estimate, 1 out of each 10 journalists within the Gaza Strip has already been killed.
Israeli authorities claimed the strike that killed Dahdouh’s son was concentrating on a “terrorist” contained in the automobile who was working a drone that put Israeli forces “in danger.” Gazan journalists have, for weeks, used drone footage to doc the dimensions of destruction wrought by Israel’s bombardments.
In response to an earlier story on slain journalists by my colleagues in November, the Israel Protection Forces despatched The Washington Submit an announcement the place it blamed militant group Hamas for endangering civilians, together with journalists, with their operations.
“The IDF doesn’t purposefully goal journalists, and takes measures to mitigate unintended hurt to journalists and all civilians,” the assertion stated, including that the army was “concentrating on all Hamas army exercise all through Gaza,” which entailed “excessive depth strikes, which can trigger injury to surrounding buildings and areas.”
Such explanations are inadequate to media organizations and rights teams. Al Jazeera accused Israel of “violating rules of freedom of the press” and intentionally concentrating on the journalists. “The killings of journalists Hamza Al Dahdouh and Mustafa Thuraya should be independently investigated, and people behind their deaths should be held accountable,” stated CPJ’s Sherif Mansour in an announcement. “The continual killings of journalists and their members of the family by Israeli military hearth should finish: journalists are civilians, not targets.”
Earlier than the conflict, Israel’s critics lengthy bemoaned the relative impunity with which its army acted within the Palestinian territories. To today, no Israeli soldier or official has suffered any penalties for the killing of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh within the West Financial institution city of Jenin. Abu Akleh was additionally a U.S. citizen, but the Biden administration, whereas a staunch defender of press freedom worldwide, solely paid lip service to the necessity for accountability.
It did the identical over the weekend. “I’m a dad or mum myself, I can’t start to think about the horror that he has skilled, not as soon as, however now twice,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken advised reporters throughout a cease in Qatar, referring to Dahdouh’s ordeal. “That is an unimaginable tragedy and that’s additionally been the case for much too many harmless Palestinian males, ladies, youngsters.”
Gaza’s remaining journalists are working on this planet’s most difficult and harmful atmosphere for the media. When not making an attempt to trace developments on the blurred, battered entrance traces, they’re documenting their very own every day struggles to easily get by, from gathering water, to looking for web, to mourning misplaced kin and buddies.
In November, Youmna Elsayed, one other Al Jazeera correspondent in Gaza, described to my colleagues the trauma of visiting hospitals stuffed with the lifeless and wounded. “You’re consistently seeing our bodies in entrance of you. You’re consistently seeing accidents,” she stated. “It haunts me at evening. It haunts after I need to eat. It haunts me after I need to sit and relaxation. You possibly can’t get any peace.”
On Sunday, after Hamza’s killing, she posted a picture of him on social media with the caption, “an excessive amount of ache, an excessive amount of heartache … we will’t take it anymore.”
However Dahdouh, like lots of his colleagues, is carrying on. In a video broadly shared on social media Monday, he stated he would maintain reporting within the reminiscence of his fallen household. “So long as we’re alive and so long as we’re in a position to carry out this responsibility, we’ll accomplish that with out hesitation,” he stated.