Yaser Murtaja and Roshdi Sarraj were friends who shared the same passion for making films about life in Gaza. In 2012, they created their own production company, Ain Media – whose motto is: “Deeper than you see” – with a single camera.
The two visual poets did not know that their passion would cost them their lives.
Murtaja was the first to be killed, targeted by a sniper while filming the 2018 Great March of Return, a demonstration in which Palestinian demonstrators demanded that they be allowed to return to the lands from which their families had been displaced in 1948 with the founding of Israel. Sarraj died last year shortly after Israel launched its war on Gaza when his home was hit by two rockets. He was having breakfast at that time, says his widow, Shrouq Aila, an investigative journalist and producer.
“He had a very serious head injury,” says Aila, 29 years old. “I could see his brain inside. He survived 20 minutes, then died. »
Ain Media also mourns videographer Ibrahim Lafi, 21, who was killed in heavy shelling near the Beit Hanoon, or Erez, crossing on the Gaza-Israel border at the start of the war. Two other people – Haitham Abdulwaheed, 25, and Nidal Wahidi, 33 – are currently missing.
“It’s really heavy on the heart to feel that your profession is a threat,” says Aila. We don’t have time, she says, to mourn the attacks.
The deaths and disappearances of Ain Media photographers underscore the devastating consequences with which visual journalists in Gaza have been hit as they worked to cover the war under fire, with little food and water, and during power outages and communications outages. More journalists have been killed in the current fighting than in any war in the past three decades. But veteran visual journalists say their peers have been particularly targeted. And while all wars are dangerous, Israel’s attack on Gaza was different, they say.
For the past four months, Gaza’s photographers, videographers and camera operators have acted as the eyes of the world, ensuring that the civil catastrophe unfolding in the enclave is not forgotten. While Israel prohibits foreign journalists from entering the Gaza Strip, journalists from Gaza have often been the only ones reporting on the crisis.
The conflict has seen the emergence of a new generation of talent, some professionals with big names, others working freelance, all potentially one click away from losing everything.
They captured aerial views of rubble-strewn moonscapes and frozen tent camps; wide-angle images of Gaza’s population abandoning their homes, countless bodies in mass graves, and crowds scrambling for food with pots and pans in the air; mid shots of premature babies at the incubator-less al-Shifa hospital, their tiny bodies writhing under fluorescent lighting; and close-ups of mothers mourning their dead children.
Names like Motaz Azaiza, the photojournalist who became the personification of the power of digital activism, came out of nowhere as the humanity of their work moved millions. Azaiza now has more followers on Instagram than US President Joe Biden.
Sometimes, in a tragic twist, Gaza’s visual journalists have themselves become the story. Tel Aviv Tribune cameraman Samer Abudaqa, 45, was left bleeding for five hours just a few kilometers from the nearest hospital after an Israeli drone strike. According to witnesses, Israeli forces refused permission for ambulances and medical personnel to reach Abudaqa, who died.
Tel Aviv Tribune’s Gaza bureau chief, Wael Dahdouh, survived that attack, but lost his 27-year-old son, cameraman Hamza Dahdouh, in an Israeli bombardment in January – the fifth member of his family to be killed during the last war in Gaza.
The Israeli military has told international news agencies that it cannot guarantee the safety of journalists operating in the Gaza Strip. Sherif Mansour, Middle East and North Africa coordinator at the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), says he is seeing a “deadly trend” of attacks, detentions and harassment.
“Royal game”
As of January 20, CPJ reported 83 journalists and media workers killed since the war began on October 7. Among them, at least 22 were photographers, videographers and camera operators.
Operating a camera in conflict has always been a dangerous activity. Visual journalists are close to the action, easily identifiable by their equipment, and constantly risk giving away their position. Gaza has accelerated a trend already seen in Syria, Libya and Ukraine: residents capturing vital images of the conflict under fire from hostile forces.
“They were actively targeted before, but it just wasn’t as egregious,” says Greg Marinovich, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist who spent 30 years covering conflicts around the world and now teaches visual journalism at Boston University and Harvard Summer School. . He co-wrote The Bang Bang Club, a book chronicling his experiences during the apartheid period in South Africa, considered a benchmark for photojournalists around the world.
“In South Africa, I would say most killings were accidental or unintentional. Journalists were considered royal game, but not entirely,” he says. “But that has changed dramatically, and part of that is the social media equation, this propaganda war that is waged endlessly. And journalists are seen as an important part of that. …You must understand that you will be targeted if you want to survive.
The death of Reuters video journalist Issam Abdallah, 37, who was shelled by an Israeli tank crew while filming gunfire on the Israeli-Lebanese border, is a case in point. He and his fellow reporters from Agence France-Presse and Tel Aviv Tribune all wore press bulletproof vests, but were shot not once but twice while filming their cameras on a military outpost Israeli. AFP photographer Christina Assi, 28, was seriously injured and then had her leg amputated.
“It was definitely to prevent them from filming and reporting, even though they were clearly identified and had been there for about an hour,” Marinovich says. “A lot of people look for clues to know if you’re photographing. If you report something people don’t like, you might stand 100 meters (110 yards) away from them while they see what you’re doing. This can be a very ugly situation.
Israeli smears
The dangers facing Gaza’s visual journalists have been amplified by Israeli efforts to legitimize their targeting, analysts say. In November, the Israeli government claimed that several independent photographers in Gaza who worked for major international media organizations participated in Hamas attacks in southern Israel on October 7, in which nearly 1,139 people were killed and 240 captured. The media rejected these allegations.
News photographers are driven to get as close to the action as possible, so the stakes couldn’t be higher. Aila says Ain Media photographers and videographers feel safer staying in hospitals and other centers to avoid being targeted while on their way to document victims.
Mansour claims that like other journalists, Ain Media employees have also been defamed. “We identified a pattern of the Israeli military avoiding responsibility, labeling journalists terrorists, spreading false narratives about their association with Hamas, claiming they had evidence showing they were involved in violence. When pressed, they provide nothing.
Sarraj also faced such accusations. An independent filmmaker, he has worked as a fixer for news outlets like Radio France and Le Monde, taken photos for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, and documented human rights violations for rights group Amnesty International.
“We were happy that international organizations refuted these claims and supported the work provided by these freelancers,” Mansour said. “These smear campaigns have essentially put people in imminent danger who are already in a very vulnerable and dangerous environment. »
In other conflict zones, you can always get out, he says. “Gaza is a strip 32 km wide by 10 km wide.
“They have no refuge or way out.”
