How do I comfort the loved ones I left behind in Gaza?

Mahmoud Mushtaha

October 17, 2024 For more than a year, Gaza has been stuck in an endless loop of destruction. While the rest of the world moves forward, for us, time feels frozen. People everywhere celebrate milestones, build futures, and pursue their passions, but in Gaza, Palestinians are still living the same day on repeat: bombs exploding, homes collapsing, funeral after funeral, and suffocating fear.

I left Gaza nearly six months ago, but it never truly left me. My heart and soul remain tethered to the people I love there: the friends, family, and countless others still trapped under Israeli bombardment, a war machine fueled by unwavering U.S. support. Every success I experience outside of Gaza feels hollow, almost like a betrayal. I live, travel, and work, while those I care about fight to survive.

What I find most agonizing is the uncertainty. When I left Gaza, I promised my family it was only temporary, assuring them I’d return when the war ends. But days turned into weeks, and then months, and now a year has passed with no relief in sight. The thought of never being able to return or see my family again is unbearable. Each morning when I wake up, I check the news and brace myself, terrified of discovering that I’ve lost someone I love.

When I manage to reach friends in Gaza, their voices carry the weight of a reality that has become disturbingly normal. “We had to move again,” my friend Anas, who is 23, told me on the phone last week, as though he were recounting a mundane task. “We stayed in the previous place for 10 days, but the bombing and tanks got too close so we packed up and left.”

Every time I hear his voice, I am afraid it could be the last. But what frightens me most is the resignation in his tone. The terror, the displacement, the bombs — they’ve all been woven into the fabric of everyday life.

Palestinians fleeing from Khan Yunis to Rafah, February 2, 2024. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)

Palestinians fleeing from Khan Younis to Rafah, February 2, 2024. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)

Being forced to accept the unimaginable is part of the tragedy of being from Gaza. In 2007, when Israel first imposed a siege on the Strip, we thought it would just be temporary — a form of political pressure that would soon be lifted. Instead, it has lasted 17 years. Today, we find ourselves wondering if this war will be the same. Will it ever end? Or is this our new normal? This painful cycle has been repeating itself since the Nakba of 1948.

Anas graduated with a degree in civil engineering just three months before the war began. Like so many others, his family sacrificed everything for his education, clinging to the hope that it would lead to a better future. But now, that hope feels so far away. “I wish I wasn’t born in Gaza,” he told me recently, his voice heavy with regret. “Sometimes, I wish I wasn’t born at all. What’s the point of life if everything you build, everything you dream of, is just taken from you?”

The weight of his despair was palpable, echoing the pain I’ve heard from so many others over the last year. “This war won’t end until we’re all killed,” he said. “Even if the bombing stops, how do we rebuild? I’ll never be the same person I was before.”

In the past, I would have tried to offer some words of comfort. But lately, I find myself retreating into silence. It’s not that I want to distance myself from my friends and family inside Gaza; on the contrary, I want to be there for them, to offer solace or strength. But each time I hear them speak, I am overwhelmed with helplessness. Every conversation reminds me that there’s nothing I can do.

Anas updated me last week that his family had found another place to stay. “We survived displacement for the 13th time, next time might be the last,” he wrote to me on WhatsApp, punctuating his message with a laughing emoji. The absurdity of that emoji — laughing at the possibility of death — made my heart sink.

Anas’ cousin later told me that after finding shelter in a relative’s building, they settled in for just one day before receiving a threat from the Israeli occupation forces: the building was to be bombed, so once again they had to flee. I haven’t replied to him yet. I don’t know what to say.

‘It’s naive to talk about hope after more than 365 days of horror’

My friend Ahmed Ziad, also 23, is currently living in a tent in Deir al-Balah following a series of forced evacuations. In May, he was on the verge of leaving Gaza to complete a Master’s degree in the U.K.. But a week before he was supposed to depart, Israel invaded Rafah and sealed off the crossing. Virtually no one has been able to leave Gaza since then.

Yesterday, I mentioned to Ahmed that I’d heard a rumor that the Rafah Crossing might open soon under Palestinian Authority control. He replied with a heavy sigh. “Are you serious? Do you actually think that life can open up? Our salvation and our crossing are in the hands of Israel, not the Palestinian Authority or Hamas. Israel does not want the war to end until it ends us.”

Like many others in Gaza, Ahmed used to speak about his hopes for the future. He was bursting with plans to do something meaningful with his degree. Now, there’s only despair. “I was so close,” he told me. “Everything was ready. And then, in one moment, it all vanished.”

“It’s naive to talk about hope after enduring more than 365 days of horror,” Ahmed continued. The negotiations once offered a glimmer of hope, even in their failures. But now it’s been months since there was any talk of a ceasefire.”

When I hear from my friend Ahmed Dremly, 27, I am also left speechless. Sheltering in the Al-Sabra neighborhood of Gaza City, he lives in constant hunger and fear along with the tens of thousands of Gazans in the northern Strip. Apart from his married sister, Ahmed is the only one of his family who remains in Gaza, after his parents left through Rafah in May to seek medical treatment for his mother. “We’ve been deprived of everything here, even before the war,” he told me during a recent phone call. “Now that you’re outside Gaza, you should do it all.”

In Gaza, even doing simple things — grasping for any semblance of life before the war — feels impossible. “Sometimes, I just want to go to the sea,” Ahmed said. “But when I do, I’m met with Israeli naval boats patrolling the horizon. I can’t shake the thought that an Israeli soldier, wanting to show off his marksmanship, might just decide to shoot me, as we’ve seen happen countless times.”

“Inshallah, God willing, you’ll make it out,” I begin to say, trying to comfort him. But he cuts me off. “There’s no escape from this war that was imposed on us except death,” he responds. “And even if this war ends, there’s another [nightmare] waiting for us. Where will we live? Will we stay in the camps, in tents? How many years will it take to rebuild Gaza? We’ve all lost our jobs and businesses — where will we work? Who will rule Gaza? Will we return to the same vicious political divisions?”

Ahmed’s nightmare is also mine. Even as a survivor of this genocide, I continue to live within the war. The fear haunts me every day.

 

“What scares me most is the thought of learning to live with the war, to coexist with death,” he went on. “How can I possibly adjust to life amid all this death, humiliation, and despair?”

The more I write, the more words fail me

For a while now, I’ve been trying to distance myself from the psychological toll that writing about Gaza exacts. A month ago, I arrived in the U.K., hoping to carve out a new path. I told myself I would focus on my studies and occasionally check in with family and friends. But within a matter of days, I felt a new burden: I began to notice how many people have forgotten about Gaza, even as Israel’s aggression continues to intensify. Airstrikes are burning people alive, starvation is spreading across the entire Strip, and life outside goes on.

I consider myself fortunate: I had the chance to flee, to survive. But with that good fortune comes a heavy responsibility to speak out for my people. Documenting and reporting on the genocide from inside and outside of Gaza, I’ve tried to capture their resilience and fear, the glimmers of hope amid despair. But the more I write, the more I feel the inadequacy of words. Each attempt to articulate our reality feels like a grain of sand against a relentless tide, lost in the vastness of the unspoken details that no one outside sees.

“Let’s be realistic,” Ahmed Dremly said to me in our most recent conversation. “What does the media cover? Images of tents stretching endlessly. But do they capture what’s inside them? Do they show how we gather firewood? The last time I searched for wood, my hands were bloodied and my clothes were torn. I was searching beneath the rubble of my uncle’s home, with bodies still trapped under the debris and the smell of death clinging to the ground.

“Does anyone witness how women and children are forced to live in these conditions?” he continued. “Do they feel how we freeze every night, our bodies shivering under the weight of fear and bombing?”

For the past week and a half, the Israeli army has been besieging the northernmost region of Gaza. Tens of thousands of people are trapped without food and water, while Israeli soldiers, tanks, and drones fire at anyone that moves. The sheer helplessness is overwhelming; there’s nothing I can do to stop it. It’s a grim reality, one that weighs heavily on me as I grapple with the loss of connection to a place that was once so integral to my existence.

I called my mother in Gaza City, just south of the besieged area, to check on her and the rest of the family. “We don’t know what to do,” she told me. “The army has isolated us from the north, and we have no contact with your aunt in Jabalia. We don’t know whether they are alive or not. We’re afraid the Israeli forces will reach us next. Where can we go?”

“The situation keeps getting worse,” my mother continued, her voice full of confusion and fear. “We used to think it would only last another month or two, but now we’ve entered the second year. I don’t know anything anymore; we’ve packed our evacuation bags just in case.” Before ending the call, she added: “We’ve reached the point where the lucky ones are those who die instead of surviving.”

 

‘No one else is going to deliver the truth from Gaza’: An interview with the Palestinian Journalist Syndicate

Editor’s Note: This interview was originally published in The New York War Crimes’ anniversary edition “One Year Since Al-Aqsa Flood: Revolution Until Victory.”

Since the publication of this interview in the October 7th edition of The New York War Crimes, the Israeli Occupation Forces killed Omar Al-Balaawi and Mohammed Al-Tanani, two journalists who were reporting from northern Gaza. Occupation forces also critically injured Al-Jazeera cameramen Ali Al-Attar and Fadi Al-Wahidi. Shrapnel from an Israeli bomb hit Al-Attar in the head, causing severe brain damage; a sniper shot Al-Wahidi in the neck. Fadi is now a paraplegic. His colleagues Anas Al-Sharif and Hossam Shabat are calling for his evacuation from Gaza to receive emergency medical care.

On October 2, the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate (PJS) published a report titled Silencing Voices: The Plight of Palestinian Journalists Detained by Israeli Occupation During Ongoing Israeli Aggression. The document’s 26 pages include testimonies from more than a dozen Palestinian journalists from Gaza, the occupied West Bank, and East Jerusalem who were kidnapped by the Israeli occupation and held without due process after October 7, 2023 while on the job.

“They speak of beatings with sharp objects, prolonged hanging, forced stripping, attempted rape of both male and female prisoners, and death threats,” said PJS President Nasser Abu Bakr of the testimonies. “It is slow torture, carried out over hours, days, and sometimes months…We ask the conscience of humanity—where are you in all of this?”

Israel’s mass slaughter of media workers constitutes the largest and most systemic attack on the press in world history. Authors of the PJS report counted over 165 Palestinian journalist martyrs in Gaza since the start of the genocide and 107 media worker detentions throughout Gaza, the occupied West Bank, and East Jerusalem. Some remain behind bars; others are unaccounted for.

We sat down with Shuruq As’ad of the PJS to discuss the findings of the report and conditions that Palestinian reporters continue to face while reporting on the Israeli occupation.

NEW YORK WAR CRIMES: What was the impetus behind the report and why did the PJS decide to release it now?

Shuruq As’ad: I want to start by saying that this is nothing new. It’s not like the occupation was very nice to journalists and then after October 7 they started being violent. What we are experiencing is a systematic attack that has been escalating year after year.

We decided to launch this particular report because for a long time, we were focused on documenting the journalists being killed. Then we started to notice an escalation in home invasions, in journalists being violently taken from their families and held in prisons without any rights, without any international condemnation, without any due process. We couldn’t even visit them. We didn’t know where they were.

We knocked on the doors of international human rights organizations, but they didn’t have any answers. So our colleagues were left alone to face this military rule, this administrative detention, which is illegal under international law. We felt that we had to shed light on what was happening, not just so people understand what’s going on but so we can stop this. We want journalists in Palestine to have the same protections as journalists anywhere else.

 

NYWC: The report emphasizes the occupation’s use of administrative detention to intimidate and silence the Palestinian press. Can you talk about what this tactic constitutes and why the PJS is focusing on it?

SA: Administrative detention is an emergency military law that was used by the British during the mandate period. When the Israeli occupation took root in Palestine, they inherited this law, which gives them the right to come into your home at any time, to drag you to prison without saying why, without taking you to court, and without telling you when this arrest will end. They can renew your detention every three or six months simply because there’s supposedly a secret security file on you.

Israel uses this law when it has no legal case against people it wants to arrest. If they don’t like what you write, if they feel you may be going to demonstrations, if they sense that you are educating your students about Palestine, they can put you behind bars. So many people in Palestinian society — parents, teachers, doctors, activists, journalists — are in prison. Of the more than 10,700 Palestinians arrested since October 7, about 8,800 of them are administrative detainees. It’s not a small number.

NYWC: Let’s discuss the main findings of the report. What did you learn over the course of your interviews and research?

 

SA: The main finding is that Israel is waging a campaign of terror against Palestinian journalists. There is a sense that if a journalist simply does their job, they could pay a high price for it; they could be arrested, tortured. Everyone getting out of Israeli prison is 20 pounds lighter, even after only a month behind bars. They get out and they say, “I survived.” All of them appear traumatized, full of fear.

The stories are terrifying. They hang you until you are suspended only a few inches from the floor. Or they put your head in a bag that smells like human feces for hours. They beat you continuously. We heard of women who got their periods and were denied pads. They were shut in cells and not allowed to shower for days, and if they did shower, it was only a few seconds under the water. We heard of women who weren’t allowed to change their clothes for six months. Then there’s the humiliations, situations where they would, for example, order people to get down on their knees and howl, or lick food off the floor and say they love Israel. Some people contracted illnesses, skin conditions that they can’t name. Of course, they’re not given medication or allowed visitation. There’s also rape in the prisons. It didn’t happen to any of our colleagues, but it happened to many people from Gaza, according to people we spoke with who spent time inside.

NYWC: How did you collect testimonies of the journalists who were imprisoned after October 7?

SA: Our members in Gaza collected testimonies from their colleagues who were released, and we heard from a lot of families — mothers and sisters and such — many of whom gave us testimonies of what they heard from their relatives who were released. And in the West Bank, we met up with the journalists who were released and collected their testimonies in person. We also collected data and information from the official prisoner agencies and organizations like the Palestinian Ministry of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoner’s Club. We also met up with lawyers. Some of them were afraid to talk as well because they could be prevented from visiting their clients. And the ones who were visiting were only doing so once a month, imagine that.

NYWC: What kind of response and support have you gotten from international organizations?

SA: Organizations like the CPJ [Committee to Protect Journalists], all they do is publish reports saying the Israelis arrested this many journalists and broke this many cameras. They publish report after report after report after report — and then? They want more documentation, ok, and then? How are we going to get journalists to work safely, to film safely?

We went to the Red Cross’s office in Ramallah after one of our colleagues, Ibrahim Muhareb, was hit by Israeli shrapnel in Khan Younis and bled out for an entire day. The journalists he was with at the time called the Red Cross and asked them to come rescue him, but no one came and he died. When we asked the organization why they did not send anyone to save Ibrahim, or why they didn’t even issue a statement calling for his rescue or condemning his killing, they told us this is not their strategy, that they prefer to work through diplomacy. And I thought, ah, OK, if it was the war between Russia and Ukraine, then would it be your strategy? We didn’t even get a press release from the Red Cross.

NYWC: Whatever their strategy is, it does not appear to be doing anything.

SA: There needs to be a call from the UN and from all international humanitarian organizations to protect journalistic freedom in Palestine. We need to work together to apply real pressure on Israel, not just to put out press releases and documentation. Diplomats and foreign aid workers and NGOs need to take this documentation back to their governments and do lobbying, do something. They have a role to play. In the end, we are just a local syndicate working under occupation. We do what we can, but we don’t have any kind of authority.

NYWC: We’ve heard about the conditions of journalists in Gaza reporting while displaced, while deprived of food and water, and in the aftermath of their loved ones’ martyrdoms. We know less about the conditions of reporters in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Can you give us a sense of their experience on the job?

SA: My colleagues recently sent me a video, a snippet from Al Jazeera International. They were in Qabatiya, in a location far away from the action, far from the tanks and the military. The moment they came out of their cars — all of which were television production vans with TV stickers — and started putting on their vests, they immediately got showered with tear gas for absolutely no reason. Every time journalists have gone out to cover the Israeli raids on Jenin, Tulkarem, and Nablus, they have been chased by the occupation forces and, in some cases, injured.

Jerusalem is, of course, completely isolated. None of the reporters in the West Bank can get there. For us reporters from Jerusalem, when we go out, we’re faced with about 550 army checkpoints in addition to the wall. It should take half an hour for me to get from Ramallah to Jerusalem, but instead it takes three. And the moment you get to the front of the line and tell them you’re a journalist, they become aggressive. When they see you carrying a camera, showing your press cards, doing an interview, you’re opening yourself up to being attacked, not just by the army, but also by settlers.

So it’s really scary to go from place to place, and that is intentional. They want you to remain stuck in a small place, unable to leave and report elsewhere. They don’t want any narrative other than their own getting out.

NYWC: Despite all these risks, Palestinian journalists keep reporting. Can you explain the choice to carry on in spite of all the odds?

SA: I think about this question a lot. I can try to answer it from my own perspective. I covered invasions, I covered the [2006] war on the Lebanese border, and I kept functioning, even when we were besieged and scared, because in that situation you’re not just covering a story, you’re covering yourself. You’re covering your life, your country, your children, your friends, your hospitals, your schools, your streets, your future. It’s not just a story for you. And journalists in Gaza really feel like this is their role, like they have a responsibility to their people, especially because no one else is going to deliver the truth from Gaza. Some become frustrated because no matter how much they deliver, nothing changes, but they keep going because it gives them a little hope that they can contribute something.

For them, I think, it’s not just a job. They are witnesses more than they are reporters. They are witnesses to genocide, to massacres, to displacement. And they witness all this while they themselves are displaced. Some days, I think that if they stop reporting, they will be too devastated. It keeps them going. Yesterday I was telling a journalist I am working with, “Sorry, I know that you were just displaced from your tent, so if you don’t have time to do this today, don’t worry about it.” And she told me no, it’s the opposite. When I work, I feel like I’m getting out of the catastrophic conditions that I’m in. Instead of feeling like there’s no meaning, I have a purpose. When I do nothing, I just sit around and think about death and loss. I feel devastated.

I believe that they have taught a lot, the journalists of Gaza. We learned from them how to be really dedicated to what you do, how to work in the midst of a crisis, a crisis that you are a part of, a crisis in which you are an even bigger target than the people around you. They go through so much to capture a photo; They work so hard to find a little food, and then they give it to their families. Imagine, without these local journalists, we would have never known what happened in Gaza. Their patience is unbelievable. Each one of them is a story. Each one of them is a story.