Journalists work in dire conditions to tell Gaza's story, knowing that could make them targets

“I still cannot believe that five of our colleagues were struck in front of me on camera and I try to hold up and look strong to carry the message. May no one feel such feelings. They are painful feelings.”

The deaths of the five journalists in the Aug. 25 strikes on Nasser Hospital add to a toll of nearly 200 news workers killed by Israeli forces while working to bring Gaza’s story to the world. Those killed in the attack, which left a total of 22 people dead, included Mariam Dagga, 33, a visual journalist who freelanced for The Associated Press and other outlets.

Like the vast majority of Gaza’s population, most of its journalists have seen their homes destroyed or damaged during the war and have been repeatedly displaced after evacuation orders by Israel’s military. Many have mourned the deaths of family members.

But journalists and advocates say the trials go well beyond. Every workday, they say, is shadowed by an awareness that covering the news in Gaza makes them singularly visible in the conflict, putting them at extraordinary risk.

For journalists in Gaza, “it’s about dying or living, escaping violence or not. It’s something we cannot compare (to other wartime journalism) at any level,” said Mohamed Salama, a former reporter in Egypt who is now an academic, researching the life of news workers in the Strip.

Israel calls strikes ‘a tragic mishap’ but also levels accusations

After the August strikes, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisted that the military was not deliberately targeting journalists and called the killings a “tragic mishap.” After a preliminary review, the military said the attack had targeted what it believed to be a Hamas surveillance camera and that six of the people killed were militants, but offered no evidence.

Late last month, the AP and Reuters — which lost a cameraman and a freelancer in the attack on the hospital — demanded that Israel provide a full account of what happened and “take every step to protect those who continue to cover this conflict.” The news organizations issued their statement on the one-month anniversary of the strikes.

Israeli officials have previously accused some journalists in Gaza of being current or former militants. They include Anas al-Sharif, a well-known correspondent for Al Jazeera who was killed in an early August strike on a media tent outside another Gaza hospital. Four other journalists were also killed in the attack.

The Israeli military, citing documents it purportedly found in Gaza, as well as other intelligence, had long claimed that al-Sharif was a member of Hamas. He was killed after what press advocates said was an Israeli “smear campaign” stepped up when al-Sharif cried on air over starvation in the territory.

There is a long, sometimes tragic history of journalists risking personal safety to cover conflicts. But the risks, trials and toll of doing so have never been higher than they are in Gaza right now, experts say.

Since the war was ignited by the Hamas attack on Israel nearly two years ago, 195 Palestinian media workers have been killed by Israeli forces in Gaza, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

The toll recently prompted Brown University’s Costs of War project to label Gaza a “news graveyard.” Journalist deaths in Gaza have now surpassed the combined number killed during the U.S. Civil War, World Wars I and II, the Vietnam and Korean wars, the war in Yugoslavia that ended in 2001 and the Afghanistan War, the project said in a report issued earlier this year.

In a separate survey of Gaza news workers last year by Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism, nine in 10 said their homes had been destroyed in the war. About one in five said they had been injured and about the same number had lost family members. That was before Israel resumed fighting in March after a brief ceasefire.

One Gaza journalist, Nour Swirki, told the AP in an interview that since her home was destroyed early in the war she has been displaced seven times. Swirki and her husband, who is also a journalist, arranged for their son and daughter to exit Gaza in 2024 and stay with family in Egypt while the couple continued to work.

“I preferred their safety to my motherhood,” said Swirki, who works for the Saudi-based Asharq News and was a friend of Dagga's.

“Death is there (in Gaza) every moment, every second and everywhere,” Swirki said. She is reminded of that reality whenever she skims through photos and videos stored on her phone and is met by the faces and voices of the many colleagues and friends who have been killed in the war.

“We get afraid and terrified and we work under the harshest conditions," she said, "but we still stand up and work.”

Journalists are pressured by violence, hunger

Qannan, who saw his colleagues killed in the August strike, said Israel’s refusal to let foreign reporters enter Gaza puts tremendous pressure on local journalists, many of whom see their work as a duty to their fellow Palestinians.

He recounted working without a break since the war’s start, grabbing sleep between live broadcasts. His family has been displaced seven times. Now he and other journalists struggle to find food. In a recent social media post, he and fellow journalists gathered to cook a kilogram (2.2 pounds) of pasta that had cost them the equivalent of $60.

Yet when he goes on camera, Qannan said he makes an effort to appear strong in hopes of reassuring viewers. In fact, he and others journalists are exhausted and scared, he said.

Qannan says his fears have increased since he aired video of his colleagues being killed in the hospital attack, because it could draw the attention of the Israeli military. “The situation is terrifying more than the human brain can imagine,” he said. “The fear that we are living and fear of being targeted are worse than is being described.”

Another Gaza journalist, Mohammed Subeh, said the Israeli strike that killed the Al Jazeera reporter earlier in August left him with shrapnel lodged in his back and an injury to his foot. But hospitals are so overwhelmed with critical cases that he’s been unable to get treatment.

“A journalist in Gaza lives between covering the war on the ground, following the news and at the same time trying to take care of his safety and the safety of his family,” said Subeh, who reports for Al-Ekhbariya, a Saudi Arabian news channel.

Salama, who together with colleagues interviewed more than 20 Gaza journalists for their academic research, said that unlike foreign correspondents covering a war, Palestinian reporters have experienced decades of conflict firsthand. That experience makes them uniquely capable of telling Gaza’s story, he said — but they can never step away from it.

“You don’t have the luxury to break your soul away from what is happening on the ground,” said Salama, now a doctoral student at the University of Maryland.

Subeh, who works for the Saudi news channel, said he’d thought repeatedly of quitting and trying to flee. But, despite the extreme difficulties and dangers, he can’t bring himself to do it.

“I feel that my presence here is important and that the voice of Gaza should be sent to the world from its own residents,” he said. “Journalism is not only a job for me, but a mission.”

Mroue reported from Beirut and Geller from New York.