“The Only Thing Keeping Me Standing Is the Suffering I’m Seeing”: A Journalist in Gaza

 

 "Every single time I saw the crazy bombardments around my home and my neighborhood, I couldn’t stop myself from filming, but I had this fear inside me. I’m afraid for my family, I’m afraid for my kids, and I know that there’s nothing that’s going to protect them; if they do get targeted, like Wael’s family was targeted, no one is going to do anything about it. Okay, people are going to cry, people are going to be sad, but I’m going to lose my family. I might be lost with them as well. I’ve seen many journalists, other colleagues who have lost their families in many of the bombardments and the attacks. I felt constant fear. That even affected my work a little bit—I felt like I was always breaking down.

The only thing that’s really keeping me standing, keeping me going to work every day and standing in front of the camera to speak, is the suffering that I’m seeing, the constant bombardments that never stop, the ongoing killing of people and civilians around me. If I let these people down, who is going to speak out for them? Who’s going to tell the world their stories? Who’s going to tell the world that Gaza is still under constant attack, that people are being killed every single day, that there is fear of ongoing bombardments through the night, that people are still under the rubble, that hospitals are under siege, that there is not enough humanitarian aid entering the Strip, that the struggle is real, that diseases are spreading widely among people, that the despair in the eyes of children is the only thing that you can see?"

read report by By Youmna El Sayed