• Israeli forces killed Dahdouh’s wife, 3 children, a grandchild, and his cameraman

• ‘Journalists might expect to be targeted, but when their families are attacked because they perform their professional and humanitarian duty, that is far more painful,’ says Gaza bureau chief for Al Jazeera

ISTANBUL

Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza pushed Palestinian journalists into a harrowing reality – covering a war that targeted them, their families, their colleagues and friends.

“The most painful thing of all was when a journalist ceased to be the one searching for the story and instead became the story,” said Wael al-Dahdouh, the veteran Gaza bureau chief for Al Jazeera television. “When he sought to tell the story but became part of its pain and tragedy.”

Speaking to Anadolu, Dahdouh – whose wife, three children and a grandchild were killed by Israeli forces – described a conflict that has not only created the deadliest environment for media professionals in history, but has turned them from observers into direct victims of the violence they are documenting.

This war, he said, “was unlike any we have ever experienced or covered in the Gaza Strip.”

According to Dahdouh, the pressure on Gaza’s press corps began the moment Israel launched its offensive.

“It began with the closure of crossings, the cutoff of electricity, water and communications – jamming, internet blackouts, loss of equipment and logistical support,” he said. “It started with everything imaginable, surreal, shocking and painful.”

This informational siege was systematic. Israel’s devastating campaign included sustained attacks on Gaza’s telecommunications infrastructure, with physical damage to mobile towers and fiber optic cables causing repeated blackouts and crippling journalists’ ability to transmit reports.

But the assault soon targeted the journalists themselves, with numerous documented cases of targeted attacks on clearly identifiable press personnel – a violation of international humanitarian law, which designates journalists as protected civilians.

According to the Gaza Government Media Office, at least 256 Palestinian journalists, including several women, have been killed by the Israeli army since October 2023. Others, such as the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and UN experts, place the figure just slightly lower at 248.

According to the IFJ, more than one in 10 media workers in Gaza have been killed – a death rate “dramatically higher than any other occupational group.”

- ‘Why were they killed?’

For Dahdouh, this personal violence struck with unimaginable force.

He lost his wife, Amna; sons Mahmoud and Hamza, who was also a journalist; daughter Sham; and a grandson in a series of Israeli attacks.

Dahdouh himself was injured in a separate drone strike that killed his cameraman, Samer Abu Daqqa.

“There is nothing harder for a journalist than the pain of loss,” Dahdouh explained. “Journalists might expect to be targeted directly or indirectly, but when their families are attacked because they perform their professional and humanitarian duty, that is far more painful.”

He posed the questions that haunt him: “Why were they targeted? Why were they killed? Why was this family erased? These are questions that open deep wounds.”

Within his grief, Dahdouh made a choice.

“I immediately returned before the camera, with full professionalism, composure and resolve,” he said. “That, perhaps, was difficult for the occupation to bear. Thus, it continued targeting me and my colleagues.”

- Western media ‘failed miserably’

As local journalists risked their lives to keep reporting, Dahdouh said major Western news outlets failed to meet basic professional and ethical standards.

“Most media outlets failed miserably to handle what is happening in Gaza with professionalism and realism,” he said. “Western media institutions, in particular, failed this moral and human test because they simply echoed the Israeli narrative.”

He said the problem was compounded by Israel’s restriction of access. Since the war began, foreign media have been barred from entering Gaza without a military escort, and their material is reviewed and censored by the military.

“In Gaza, journalists realized they were left alone,” Dahdouh said.

He said the global media environment amounted to another form of harm.

“For us journalists, it felt like another form of killing, just as lethal as Israeli bombs,” he said.

This failure of objectivity, Dahdouh said, was a betrayal that extended to local Palestinian staff. Many were “abandoned by international agencies during the hardest times, when they were targeted by Israeli forces.”

- A tragedy beyond numbers

One of the most difficult tasks facing Gaza’s journalists has been accounting for the human toll. Dahdouh described this as a “tragic and complex file,” with reality far exceeding the official figures.

“The official death toll … refers only to those who reached hospitals and whose data were recorded,” he said. “But we also have about 10,000 missing – under the rubble, on the roads, or in areas still occupied by Israeli forces.”

Some of the missing, he added, are believed to be in Israeli custody, while others were executed. He described bodies recently returned to Gaza bearing “clear signs of torture and execution.”

“Strangulation marks, bound hands and feet, burns, crushed bones from tank treads,” he said. “Israel, in its arrogance, did not even bother to conceal these traces. These are war crimes.”

Full documentation of the dead is impossible, he said, without excavators, fuel, medical teams and international observers – none of which Israel has allowed into Gaza.

Beyond the numbers, lies a profound social collapse as entire families have been erased from the civil registry or left with only one survivor, Dahdouh said.

The result, he warned, is tens of thousands of orphans and widows, and a demographic crisis that will shape Gaza for generations.

Despite this, he said, Gaza’s journalists continue their work because they feel a responsibility to record what is happening, even when the cost is borne by their own families.

“They have no choice but to carry out this mission as long as they are alive,” he said.