The war that the world cannot see

For many people outside Gaza, the war flashes by like a doomsday scenario of headlines, casualty figures and photos of screaming children, the bloody shreds of someone else's fear.

But the true scale of death and destruction is impossible to comprehend, the details hazy and shrouded by internet and mobile phone disruptions that hamper communications, restrictions that ban international journalists and the extreme, often life-threatening challenges of reporting as a local journalist from Gaza .

There are holes in the darkness, openings like the Instagram feeds of Gaza photographers and a small number of testimonies that slip through. However, with each passing week, the light dims as those documenting the war leave, quit, or die. Reporting from Gaza seems pointlessly risky to some local journalists, desperate to galvanize the rest of the world into action.

“I survived death several times and put myself in danger” to document the war, Ismail al-Dahdouh, a reporter from Gaza, wrote in an Instagram post this month to announce he was leaving journalism. Yet a world “that knows not the meaning of humanity” had not acted to stop this.

At least 76 Palestinian journalists have been killed in Gaza since October 7, when Hamas led an attack on Israel and Israel responded by launching an all-out war. The Committee to Protect Journalists says more journalists and media workers – including essential support staff such as translators, drivers and fixers – have been killed in the past 16 weeks than in an entire year of any other conflict since 1992.

“With every journalist killed, we lose our ability to document and understand the war,” said Sherif Mansour, the group's Middle East program coordinator.

The New York Times and other major international media have evacuated Palestinian journalists working for them in Gaza, although some Western news agencies still have local teams there.

At the same time, foreign reporters have repeatedly tried to enter and do so permission denied by Israel and Egypt, who control Gaza's borders.

A handful have made very brief visits to the Israeli army, providing a limited and composite view of the war. And a CNN correspondent reported briefly from Gaza after entering with an Emirati aid group.

Apart from that, only journalists from Gaza have been working there since the start of the war.

Nearly all the journalists killed in Gaza since October 7 were killed by Israeli airstrikes, including 38 at home, in their cars or with family members, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. That has led many Palestinians to accuse Israel of targeting journalists, although CPJ has not repeated that accusation.

“Israel is afraid of the Palestinian story and of Palestinian journalists,” said Khawla al-Khalidi, 34, a Gaza-based TV journalist for Al Arabiya, a well-known regional Arabic-language TV channel. “They are trying to silence us by shutting down the networks.”

An Israeli military spokesman, Nir Dinar, said Israel “has never and never will deliberately target journalists.” But he warned that remaining in active combat zones carried risks. He called the accusation that Israel deliberately cut communications networks to hide the war a “blood libel.”

The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, which has members in both Gaza and the West Bank, has counted at least 25 Gaza journalists who it said were wearing protective vests with the word “press” on them when they were killed, said Shuruq Asad, a spokeswoman for the syndicate. Some journalists sleep away from their families for fear that sheltering with relatives would put them in danger, she added.

Since October 7, Israel has blocked most electricity in Gaza and has barred all but a slow trickle of access to the territory. The war has also damaged or severed communications networks, making it virtually impossible for most Gazans to give interviews to foreign media. Telecommunications disappeared completely more than six times during the conflict.

It is the job of Gazan journalists, who usually work for Palestinian or regional Arabic-language channels such as Al Jazeera, or young freelancers with little more than Instagram, to bring snippets of Gaza reality to outsiders. Wearing their instantly recognizable navy blue 'press' vests, many have turned heads on social media for their raw, personal English-language videos and photos of the war.

Every time Amr Tabash, a 26-year-old freelance photojournalist in Gaza, rushes to document the aftermath of an airstrike, he said he fears he would find his family among the victims. During one attack, he discovered that his uncle and cousin had been murdered.

“I have to report with complete focus” on Israel's attacks, he said. “But I always worry about my family, and that takes up a lot of my focus.”

Others have chosen to leave Gaza altogether.

Motaz Azaiza, a photojournalist who gained a large following on Instagram with his reporting on the war, evacuated to Qatar last week.

Ms al-Khalidi, the Al Arabiya journalist, said she had never thought about leaving journalism, even though the job became impossibly difficult, much worse than in the previous wars she had covered. But this time there was no word of strikes during the day and going home to her family at night, no hot showers, little food. She and her family had to leave their home for shelter, she said.

“We don't just report what happens. We are already part of what is happening,” she said.

One journalist who felt obliged to report on the war was Roshdi Sarraj, 31, who founded a media company at the age of 18 and also worked as a photographer and fixer for international news media.

Before the war, his company, Ain Media, provided production, photography and film services to local and international clients, including Netflix. He and his wife, Shrouq Aila, had worked together on a documentary episode for Netflix about bee sting therapy while falling in love, she said.

When war broke out, they were married with a young daughter, and the couple was on a pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia. They planned to fly to Qatar.

Then Mr. Sarraj heard that a friend and fellow journalist had been killed in Gaza. Another was missing.

Mr Sarraj's brother-in-law, Mahmoud Aila, who helped Ain Media expand in Qatar, said that when he asked about their travel plans, Mr Sarraj told him: 'At a time like this, the only place I can be is in Qatar. Gaza.'” He canceled the trip.

Mr Sarraj's friends said this was typical of his loyalty to his hometown.

Calm and soft-spoken, Mr. Sarraj was stubbornly principled when it came to the fight for justice and freedom for the Palestinians. After the war started, he told his friends that he would not leave his hometown, Gaza City, ignoring Israeli evacuation orders, because he believed that fleeing was equivalent to being forced to leave his home, like many Palestinians had been during the 1948 war surrounding the creation of Israel.

It was on October 22 at his family home, as he sat with his wife and daughter, that Ms Aila said an Israeli airstrike had hit. He was so deeply injured that Ms. Aila could see his brain, she said by phone. They bandaged his head and Mrs. Aila told herself that in the worst case scenario he would be paralyzed.

“It doesn't matter, as long as he's there,” she remembered thinking. “I don't care at all that he was paralyzed. I would stay next to him all my life.”

But at the hospital she was told his case was hopeless; the operating room was already overwhelmed. He died within half an hour, Ms Aila said.

She remembered kissing his shoulder as a farewell: she could have sworn he smelled of musk, as if someone had perfumed him at the moment of death.

It reminded her of the time they prayed in Mecca, with their hands on the black cover of the holy Kaaba shrine, which also smelled of musk. She said she told her husband to pray that he would live to raise his daughter Dania so that she would not be an orphan like Mrs. Aila, who lost both her parents young.

But he didn't seem sure, she said.

Mrs. Aila buried him in a mass grave. Amid the chaos, there was no other option.