The ways in which we allow our work to impact us is also a necessary recognition that the echoes of all the stories we report on will inevitably become parts of us. 

“There is not a single day that passes without reading or watching Israelis kill Palestinians,” Eman Hamed, a mother of four, tells Tareq Hajjaj in a Gaza city park. “My 77-year-old mother always says that she has lived her entire life in wars. I was born in wars as well, and my four kids were born in war, so how could I say that the war ended?” 

What we experienced is just a drop in the bucket of all the violations that journalists, primarily Palestinian journalists, face while working under occupation. Arbitrary detention and arrest seem mild when compared to the execution of our colleagues like Shireen Abu Akleh and Yaser Murtaja. 

Journalism in Palestine becomes a battlefield where the only way to tackle all the injustices swallowing this speck of the world, is to give justice to the story.

I was able until now to get myself out of sadness when I needed to. This time is different because I’m the one who lost his beloved one, my father. My rock, my idol. The one who I always brought out my best for, to keep him proud. 

In the years I’ve been covering Israel’s occupation of Palestine, it’s an issue that arises time and time again. Palestinians are criminalized and imprisoned, and their lives destroyed all because of a weapon that Israel can yield, without any question or consequence: secret evidence.

In the weeks after Shireen was killed, and in the face of countless efforts to discredit them, their experience, and their testimonies, these journalists persevered. Amidst all the trauma and grief they were experiencing, from losing a hero and friend, they chose to speak up, and continued telling the truth.

Childhood in Gaza includes children gaining their first awareness of siege and occupation.

The Aida Refugee Camp in Bethlehem rallies around Athal al-Azzeh, a 14-year-old Palestinian boy arrested by the Israeli occupation.

Mothers checked on their sons and told them to stay home Monday night in Gaza as the sound of Israeli warplanes spread terror across the sky.