Last witnesses: Gaza’s journalists brave death to keep truth alive

Iftikhar Gilani

ANKARA, Turkiye (MNTV) – Night brings no peace to Gaza. Even under the cover of darkness, the sky hums with the metallic whir of Israeli drones—circling endlessly, like vultures above a dying battlefield. The air trembles with their presence, a constant reminder that death is awake even when the world sleeps.

Every conversation with journalists in Gaza carries that haunting buzz in the background—a high, thin sound that seems to slice the silence, foretelling another strike. For them, that noise means no sleep, no calm, no pause—only the nearness of death.

For Momen Faiz, a 38-year-old independent journalist and filmmaker, the drone’s hum has become a cruel lullaby.

“When we close our eyes,” he said over a flickering line from Gaza, “the sound stays with us. Then a blast. The walls shake. Glass explodes. We run out, desperate to see which house has vanished, how many are gone—and whether one of us is under the rubble.”

But where others flee, Faiz and his colleagues run toward the smoke. They wade through dust and debris, clutching shattered cameras, knowing another missile may already be on its way.

When asked what a typical day looks like now, Faiz’s reply was stark:
“When we leave home in the morning, we don’t know if we’ll return alive. When we sleep, we don’t know if we’ll wake up.”

Faiz’s body is itself a map of Gaza’s wars. Thirteen years ago, an Israeli bomb took both his legs. He came back on crutches, filming atop ruins. Later, another strike crushed his fingers. “I’ve been seriously wounded at least three times,” he said. “Each time, I thought it was the end. It’s only luck I’m alive.”

His mornings no longer begin with tea or bread, but with death counts. He checks messages, verifies lists with paramedics and civil defense crews, and rushes to hospitals echoing with screams. From there to funerals, from funerals to fresh bomb sites—this has been his routine for two years.

“It’s a circle of grief,” Faiz said. “We start the day searching for martyrs, and sleep to the sound of bombs.”

With power and internet cut off, reporters depend on solar panels, dying generators, or smuggled SIM cards—sometimes Israeli or Egyptian ones—to file their stories. Each call risks their lives, as surveillance pings can turn into targets. They hide footage in tiny memory cards buried beneath rubble or sewn into clothing, hoping that even if they die, the truth survives.

Their equipment is shattered—broken lenses, dented tripods, cameras patched with tape. “Most of our gear was destroyed in bombings or during forced evacuations,” Faiz said. “We still use what’s left. Because without it, the world would see nothing.”

Bombing blindly

This war, he said, is not like the others. “They’re not just bombing blindly. This time, they’re hunting journalists. We’re showing the truth. We’re the voice of grief. And that’s why they want us silent.”

He’s not exaggerating. Since October 7, 2023, at least 240 Palestinian journalists have been killed, according to the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) counts 278—the highest toll in modern history.

No other war—Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, or Bosnia—has ever killed so many journalists. Many were wearing PRESS vests, sitting in media tents, or sheltering at home with families when Israeli missiles struck.

Had these reporters not recorded every strike, every child pulled from rubble, every scream in a hospital corridor, the genocide in Gaza would have been swallowed by official denials and propaganda. Israel’s war crimes would have drifted into a haze of “military claims,” unseen and unproven—had these men and women not risked everything to show the truth live to the world.

Holding a camera has become a death sentence. Reporting the truth is treated like an act of war.

The siege has left Gaza starving. In March 2024, Israel sealed its crossings, trapping 2.4 million people. Since then, more than 500 have died of hunger, including 200 children. Reporters now wait in breadlines, often giving their portions to children before heading out to film more devastation.

Some bury their own children in the morning, then cover others’ funerals by evening. “We make films,” Faiz said quietly, “but our hearts break with every frame. Every child in the footage feels like our own.”

Many journalists survive on tea and a scrap of bread, collapsing from exhaustion in the field but refusing to drop their cameras.

Tepid international outrage

Meanwhile, international outrage remains tepid. On September 1, more than 250 newspapers in 70 countries ran the same front-page headline:
“At the rate Israel is killing journalists, soon no one will be left to tell you what’s happening.”

But there was no follow-up. RSF filed four war-crime complaints at the International Criminal Court—none advanced. Western networks, fearing political backlash, remained silent.

“Even the big channels stay quiet,” Faiz said bitterly. “They fear losing their jobs or visas. History will not forgive their silence.”

Salma al-Qudumi, another Gaza journalist, said the hardest part of these fifteen months has been the repeated displacement—packing, fleeing, and losing family again and again. “You settle somewhere, and then you leave, knowing nowhere is safe.”

She was injured while covering the south; her colleague beside her was killed.

Others never made it back. Mohammed Mansour, his wife, and son died when an airstrike hit their home in Khan Younis. Hussam Shabat, 23, an Al Jazeera correspondent in Beit Lahia, was killed in a targeted car strike. Israel’s army later boasted it had “eliminated” him, branding him a “sniper terrorist.”

Al Jazeera, headquartered in Qatar, condemned the killing as “cold-blooded murder” and called for global condemnation of Israel’s “systematic executions of journalists.”

Maram Hameed, reporting for Al Jazeera English Digital, said:
“I’m exhausted. My heart and mind fight every day. There are too many stories, too much pain. After what we’ve seen, sleep and peace are gone.”

Her daily routine is surreal. “I wake, cook, wash clothes by hand, care for my newborn—but my mind keeps writing.”

She remembers the woman sleeping on the road with her four children after failing to find a tent; the ex-prisoner now selling tea in a hospital; the medical student whose dreams died in a camp; the mother begging for milk for her baby; the children selling roasted chickpeas in hospital hallways to the sounds of bombs.

“Every day my mind finds a new story,” she said. “A girl waiting for bread who later washes reporters’ clothes in the hospital. A young man holding up a stick with a phone to share Wi-Fi with others. These stories are power. They must reach the world.”

Maram described a hospital scene she’ll never forget:
“You hear wailing. A child’s body arrives. People pray over martyrs pulled from the rubble. Mothers collapse. Fathers whisper, ‘Be patient, son, you are a martyr.’ Men stand in line to wash the dead. A father waits with his daughter’s body for a shroud.”

“It feels like the Day of Judgment,” she said. “But we’ve grown used to it. Somewhere nearby, someone sells tea, someone drinks coffee, children peddle chickpeas.”

These images, she said, have become routine. “There’s no time or space to mourn. My mind feels guilty—but if we don’t write, who will? If we don’t film, who will? Who will tell their stories? Who will preserve this horror for history? My God, what kind of cruelty is this?”

After nearly two years of live coverage, interviews, and reporting, she asks herself: “What’s the point? The world watches and does nothing.”

Yet the truth remains—Gaza’s journalists are the last witnesses. Without them, Gaza’s genocide would have disappeared into official briefings and denials. Their footage is the world’s conscience.

Faiz says Gaza’s reporters “rise from ashes like the mythical phoenix.” He knows each assignment could be his last. “Still,” he said, “with broken cameras and failing breath, we record everything—to awaken what’s left of the world’s conscience.”

Many have fainted from hunger, but none have stopped reporting.

They are the lamps of Gaza—snuffed out one by one in the dark. Yet their dying light keeps the story of Gaza alive.

If not for them, the genocide would be cloaked in silence. Because of them, the world cannot claim ignorance.

History will one day write their story in blood-red lines, and generations will know: even in the darkest night, when truth was a crime, Gaza’s journalists kept the light alive.