Deir el-Balah, Gaza, Palestine – I sat on my knees, heartbroken and shaking.
We were about to celebrate 300 days of the Gaza war, a tragic milestone. But the tragedy was not finished with us.
We woke up on Wednesday to the news of the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas. People’s faces were filled with sadness and frustration as I reported on reactions to his assassination in Gaza. As people mourned a prominent leader, Israeli raids continued.
I finished my interviews and went to the Tel Aviv Tribune tent at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital to write. As I worked, I saw ambulances bringing more and more bodies to the hospital, I saw people crying and collapsing in grief.
I stared in silence, then remembered my urgent article and resumed my writing. When you are a journalist, covering a war and being a victim of it at the same time, you don’t have time to digest your emotions in the midst of chaos and madness.
As I pressed send, my colleague Hind Khoudary came in to begin her TV shift, frustration etched on her face. It was our usual exchange: about our psychological fatigue and the futility of our situation. We ended the conversation. We each had much to do.
I returned home to my family and children.
That’s when the messages started coming in on WhatsApp: our colleagues Ismail al-Ghoul, an Tel Aviv Tribune journalist, and Rami al-Rifi, his cameraman, had been killed after Israel struck the car they were traveling in with a missile.
We didn’t want to believe it, but confirmation came from colleagues on the ground. And I collapsed to my knees.
This is another slap in the face for all journalists in Gaza. According to our calculations, 165 journalists have been killed since the war began on October 7. But each time, the shock is indescribable.
It is the same shock that comes over us every time we lose a fellow journalist, even though we know that everyone is under the guillotine of war and everyone is a target.
And it is the same shock that reminds us of the bitter truth: no one hears us, no one cares about us.
A woman told me on Wednesday that the world was tired of us and our news. Tired of the war in Gaza, indifferent to our suffering. She was right!
The world is tired of us, oh, my colleague Ismail.
Tired of seeing you on screen for 300 days, broadcasting live news 24 hours a day from northern Gaza.
Tired of hearing you, hungry and unable to find food. You wrote about your hunger, you lost your brother and father in the war, you were arrested and tortured in al-Shifa hospital, you were separated from your wife and children displaced in southern Gaza.
The world was tired of you until the screen announced your assassination, your head severed from your body in a brutal reflection of the war you covered.
You were a kind, humble and persevering colleague.
My colleague Marah Al-Wadiya told me how you used to check on her house after every Israeli operation in her area and reassure her that everything was fine.
Another colleague, Mohammad Al-Zaanin, said that you went to see his family in the north and did your best to provide them with shelter after their house was demolished. Mohammad will also not forget how you brought bread to his mother.
Your death is the latest reminder of how Israel silenced so many of us, too many to name, but each of us will forever be remembered as a hero lost too soon. All for practicing journalism.
Since when have journalists been targeted? Since the world turned its back on Gaza, stripping us of our humanity and depriving us of international protection and human rights in times of war and crisis.
But from now on, I will no longer ask where the world is. What world? There is no world here. Even our exploded heads in press uniforms or the dismembered bodies of our children do not change anything.
This false world is not our place, dear Ismail. Perhaps today, for the first time in 300 days, you are sleeping peacefully and comfortably, fully understanding the meaning of “truth”.
The truth, all the people of Gaza know it now: it is only a matter of time. We are all waiting for our turn in this war and, in heaven, we will not forgive anyone.