Alaqad says that as a result of conventional media shops choose and select what to indicate their audiences, shedding on-the-ground journalists means shedding elements of the reality. “When the persons are being silenced and censored, they usually don’t have an area for them to speak or a platform to precise what’s taking place, and for us to see what’s taking place via their eyes, there’ll all the time be limitations [on] how a lot we all know,” she says.
In each disaster, when communication breaks down, accountability is misplaced and injustice turns into simpler to disregard. “Injustice is tremendous loud,” Alaqad says. “Justice must be louder.”
Focused
Journalists are additionally silenced completely. Reporters With out Borders (RSF) wrote in December 2025 that 67 media professionals had been killed that 12 months, 43 % of whom had been killed in Gaza by Israeli armed forces. The whole variety of journalists killed in Gaza since October 7, 2023 has risen to over 220, in line with the RSF. The UN estimate sits at greater than 260.
“Once we have a look at it throughout the framework of imposing a ban on the international press coming into Gaza now, greater than two years into that conflict, when they’re proscribing the free motion of journalists inside Gaza and into Gaza, once we are speaking about an unprecedented bloodbath of journalists, the focusing on of media workplaces and the focusing on of communication infrastructure simply turns into one other piece of that puzzle, which goals at imposing a media blackout,” Dagher says. Israel has repeatedly denied claims that it targets journalists or media infrastructure.
“Killing journalists means killing and silencing the reality,” Alaqad says. In her expertise, this technique works on a number of ranges—killing journalists means fewer individuals reporting on the bottom, however equally, it turns journalists right into a risk to the individuals. “That is additionally sending a message to the individuals that every one journalists are a risk, don’t discuss to journalists, keep away from journalists,” she explains.
She recollects her mom begging her to not put on her press vest and helmet. Meant to indicate neutrality and shield journalists within the subject, as a substitute, it made her really feel like a goal. “It’s supposed to guard, however quite the opposite, it really places threat in your life and even in your beloved ones and those round you,” she explains.
Alaqad says it was not all the time this manner. Early on, individuals would greet journalists, supply them meals, and thank them for his or her work. “After a few months, after they’d seen journalists getting focused, Palestinians began treating journalists in a different way,” she says.
To report in Gaza was to work inside a panorama the place time itself was unstable and never assured. Plans hardly ever prolonged past daylight. Conversations ended abruptly. Addresses turned memorials in a single day. “The one certainty in Gaza is uncertainty,” Alaqad says.
She recollects interviewing households and planning to return the subsequent day, solely to search out that the individuals she spoke with had been killed in airstrikes.
She has since left Gaza, and is pursuing a grasp’s diploma in media research on the American College of Beirut. She acquired the Shireen Abu Akleh Memorial Endowed Scholarship, named for the Palestinian journalist killed by Israeli forces in Could 2022.
Digital Truths
Going viral on social media helped her attain individuals, nevertheless it additionally put her in danger. “It confirmed tens of millions of individuals around the globe what’s taking place in Gaza, however at what value? Being in Gaza might value you your life, particularly as a journalist,” she says.
Regardless of the attain of digital reporting, she doesn’t belief its permanence. Accounts disappear, posts are eliminated and movies are misplaced. What is obtainable at the moment could also be gone tomorrow.
