Today, Gaza bleeds once again. Israeli airstrikes, relentless and indiscriminate, have so far buried 50,700 lives under the rubble – most of them women and children. These attacks did not just shatter bodies; they shattered the last fragile threads of a cease-fire already hanging by a thread. Peace for Gaza is now nothing more than a mirage. And yet, the horror does not end with numbers. Recently, another wound tore open this bleeding land: Israel bombed a tent house where journalists were staying near Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis. Two Palestinian journalists were burned alive; their colleagues were left wounded.
The so-called cease-fire, in place since January, was never a gift – it was a temporary pause in a decades-long siege. Mediators like Qatar, Egypt and the United States took credit for this fragile truce, but hope does not fill empty stomachs or rebuild bombed-out homes. Negotiations stalled over prisoner exchanges and border controls, leaving Gaza with nothing but devastation. Khan Younis now stands under a choking cloud of smoke, its streets littered with bodies, its people left to fend for themselves. The world watches, arms crossed, indifferent.
And now, even those who bear witness – the journalists – are hunted. The attack on their tent was no accident. Hilmi el-Fakavi burned alive in the flames and Yusuf Haznedar perished beside him – our colleagues, whose only crime was telling the truth.
We’ve named it before: a massacre. Israel, under the guise of “precision strikes,” has obliterated hospitals, wiped out entire neighborhoods and erased the streets where children once played. The latest bombardments turned homes into graves and hospitals into war zones. At Nasser Hospital, where the journalists’ tent stood, doctors waded through pools of blood, desperately trying to save the wounded. Their hands trembled not from fear but exhaustion. A Palestinian mother, clutching the lifeless body of her child, cried out: “We are not people to them. We are just targets.” Nearby, the journalists – Gaza’s eyes and ears – faced the same fate. One burned to death, his camera silenced, his story unfinished.
A 76-year Nakba
This genocide is not new. It is the latest chapter in a 76-year Nakba – a slow, deliberate erasure of a people who refuse to vanish. Since 1948, Palestinians have faced displacement, occupation and slaughter, yet their spirit endures. But endurance comes at a cost: Every day is written in blood, every night is punctuated by the screams of the dying. Gaza’s people don’t seek pity – they demand justice. They don’t beg for saviors – they yearn to live.
The journalists, too, embody this resilience. Working without electricity, scarce internet, and constant danger, they report from the edge of survival. That tent at Nasser Hospital was no luxury – it was a frontline outpost for truth. Israel’s bombs turned it into a pyre.
Across Europe, the streets pulse with outrage. Their fury isn’t aimed solely at Israel but at a world that arms this slaughter and excuses it with silence. The West’s selective morality is suffocating. Imagine 450 dead in Paris or New York in a single week – headlines would scream, sanctions would fly, and justice would be demanded with righteous fury. Now imagine a journalist burning alive in London or Berlin – the world would stop. But Gaza? It’s a distant echo, a tragedy too inconvenient to confront. The international community’s silence isn’t neutrality – it’s complicity. Every bomb that falls bears the stamp of global indifference; every child’s cry, every journalist’s death, is an indictment of our failure.
Silencing the witnesses
The attack on the journalists’ tent is more than an atrocity – it’s a strategy. Over 210 media workers have been killed by Israeli forces since October 2023, according to the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate. This is not random. It’s systematic. Israel knows that journalists are the lifeline between Gaza and the world. A photo of a shattered home, a video of a grieving father, a story of a child’s last breath, these pierce the armor of apathy. So, the bombs fall on tents, on press vests, on cameras. If the witnesses are silenced, the narrative can be controlled. But Gaza’s journalists refuse to bow. They write, film and die – so we cannot say we didn’t know.
Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti once wrote:
“It’s fine to die in our beds,
on a clean pillow,
and among our friends.
It’s fine to die, once,
our hands crossed on our chests,
empty and pale,
with no scratches, no chains, no banners,
and no petitions.”
But for Gazans, even this most basic dignity has been denied. There are no clean pillows, no gentle farewells – only the cold grip of concrete and the deafening rocket blast of missiles. For the journalist who burned recently, there was no quiet death, only flames that left ash. Barghouti’s longing for a “clean death” remains a cruel fantasy for the people of Gaza. Death doesn’t arrive as a quiet visitor there; it comes as a merciless thief, stealing children from their mothers, husbands from their wives, and hope from an entire people.
We cannot look away
But we are not helpless. Every protest, every shared post, every voice raised against this horror matters. In the age of algorithms, silence is a choice. And it’s a choice to stand with the killers. Gaza’s people don’t need our tears. They need our action. The journalists don’t need eulogies. They need justice – a war crimes investigation into these targeted killings. They don’t ask for heroes. They ask for the right to exist, to laugh with their children, to rebuild their homes, to report without dread.
We journalists are trying to report as much as we can about this genocide.
History turns on what we do, not what we say. Will we let Gaza’s story end in silence, or demand it be heard? Blood flows, but so does the courage of its people – and its journalists. That reporter’s death, burned alive in a tent that housed truth, is a call to account. The world owes Gaza more than passing coverage. It owes answers, justice and a chance at life. We hold the pen. It’s time to write the ending.