My Year of Reporting on The Genocide in Gaza
Date: 
October 07 2024
Author: 
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October 7, 2023, is a day permanently seared in the minds and souls of Palestinians around the globe. On this day, we mark one full year since the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation and the unconscionable genocide in Gaza — a year of unparalleled devastation. 

It has changed everything, even for those of us who had a strong understanding of the fundamental evils of Zionism and the longstanding moral failure of the international community pre-October 2023. The relentless bombardments and massacres carried out by the Zionist entity — with the utmost intensity and ferocity — have awakened a particular shock in all of us that should have never been discovered.

While covering the genocide since its inception, I ask myself: how has it already been a year when I have not felt time move? Simultaneously, I struggle to remember a life when this current genocide was not our reality. 

With every new atrocity broadcast live to us through our phones, I tried to find words to relay the horror. None came to me. In fact, within these last 12 months, I truly learned the significance of silence. In the face of earth-shattering events, words can feel as though they fall short or onto deaf ears, but silence is a luxury we cannot afford. A moment of silence is only appropriate when the world acknowledges pain and puts an end to it.

It is our duty, now more than ever, to uplift the voices of those in Gaza and bear witness to the wickedness of Zionism, no matter how cumbersome it may feel. Writing about Gaza — reporting on justice and truth — has allowed me to exert my energy into a meaningful practice and contribute to filling in a glaring gap in the West. 

Our peers and comrades in Gaza have paid the ultimate price to deliver us the reality of the situation. Since October of 2023, at least 175 Palestinian journalists and media workers have been martyred in Gaza. Many surviving journalists have lost their family members to the genocide. Still, they have persisted. And it is due to their dedication and sacrifice that the curtains of Zionism and American imperialism have fallen. The charade no longer exists: Palestine has pried open the eyes of millions of people.

Notions of human rights and international law — constantly referenced by the institutions and governing bodies of Western nations —have been disproven. The fight for justice and liberation in Palestine has lit the match that burned the mask off of the West. Instead, the only matter we see the West upholding is manufacturing consent to commit genocide. 

If there is anything I have learned while reporting on Gaza, it is that the easiest and most honorable thing to do is to report the truth. To use a platform to justify Israel’s illegal Occupation, expansion plans, and genocide — just as CNN, The New York Times, the BBC and other legacy outlets have been doing — isn’t only difficult and unsuccessful, but immoral and undignified.

As the world passively watches Gaza experience genocide and ethnic cleansing, it has manufactured consent for genocide anywhere, so long as Israel deems it justifiable. What has been permissible in Gaza is now allowed everywhere. Whether that be flour massacres, ice cream trucks full of corpses, or bombing hospitals, greenlighting genocide for one group of people puts everyone at risk. In fact, Israel is recycling the lies used to annihilate Gaza in its efforts to destroy Palestine’s neighbor to the north. 

Just weeks before the one-year commemoration of the genocide in Gaza, the Israeli Occupation expanded its extermination campaign into Lebanon, killing, mutilating, and blinding people via exploding pagers and walkie-talkies on Sept. 17 and 18. Since then, they have indiscriminately bombed residential areas in Lebanon killing hundreds and displacing over one million people.

In a press briefing organized by the IMEU last week, Wafa Dakwa — the Lebanon Director for Medical Aid for Palestinians — brought attention to the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon who are, once again, being faced with displacement. Dakwar says refugee populations across Lebanon will be bearing the brunt of the tense and difficult situation unfolding across the region.

While the world seems more bleak than ever, I believe that we must be hopeful, keeping alive our resilience for the cause. Israel remains defeated in the eyes of humanity, Zionism has not prevailed because we are still here — the Palestinians, the Lebanese. 

The world can no longer hide behind a false sense of humanity. We are living in a world at the mercy of Zionism and white supremacy. The only ones willing to challenge it by any means necessary are resistance factions across Palestine and the broader Middle East, with only a handful of allies in Latin America, Asia, Europe, and Africa. 

Western hypocrisy must not be overlooked. As the U.S. invites wanted war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu to speak at the United Nations to further the Zionist agenda, Israel continues to assassinate Palestinian and Lebanese leaders. As the settler-colonial state carries out multiple bombing campaigns across the Middle East, the U.S. condemns the Iranian response. To condemn resistance is to condemn humanity.

Reporting on Gaza has allowed me to stay present and communicate accurate information to the world. I find pride and take great honor in not only combatting Western media and Zionist propaganda, but also in giving voice to the Palestinian story. I am able to report because I find a sliver of comfort in knowledge and producing an honest and reliable description of events. To bear witness and know the truth holds great power, especially while the Zionist entity continues to attempt to stifle their crimes by not only murdering journalists but through social media censorship as well. To be part of the movement that exposes Zionism has been my greatest achievement.

Nevertheless, reading and reporting about how Gaza’s infrastructure has e been decimated — to the point where officials cannot keep up with the death toll — is incredibly difficult. I write not only as someone whose goal is to communicate the truth that Israel tries to hide, but as a Palestinian prioritizing honoring our martyrs, holding space for them, and acknowledging the reality and horrors they faced. 

This is one of the many things that have haunted me throughout months of reporting — the magnitude of the loss of life. In July, The Lancet — an independent, peer-reviewed medical journal in the UK — published an article with a conservative estimate of Gaza’s death toll. Researchers explained that by “applying a conservative estimate of four indirect deaths per one direct death to the 37,396 deaths reported, it is not implausible to estimate that up to 186,000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza.” 

This estimate, which relied on a swift ceasefire to be accurate, is now three months past due. To apply the same estimate today — one complete year into the genocide, without so much as a day of ceasefire — would challenge that number. What disturbs me more is that it is difficult to find an accurate direct death toll, especially with an estimated 10,000 Palestinian men, women, and children under the rubble. In addition, Palestinian bodies are evaporating from the intensity of Israel’s bombs. 

To know who has been murdered by the Israeli regime is the bare minimum. And yet, even in death, Palestinians are not granted peace.

The difficult truth is that it is impossible to obtain an accurate death toll until the genocide ends. Mass graves and the IOF's kidnapping and abuse of Palestinian corpses add layers of complications that will forever alter our scope of knowledge about the genocide. Additionally, with fewer journalists alive to continue reporting — and fewer Palestinians in general able to share — it is becoming increasingly hard to fully comprehend the nightmares occurring in Gaza. Global indifference remains the status quo. 

Still, throughout navigating the constant atrocities, agony, and devastation in Gaza, never once have I lost hope. I encourage readers and supporters of the Palestinian cause to engage in the same hopeful spirit. A people who could endure 76 years of ghoulish Occupation and still rise amidst the rubble are simply unable to be defeated in this world.

I wholeheartedly believe Palestine is a land of miracles — a Holy land in all senses of the word. What could spark greater faith than a 15-year-old boy from Gaza who generated electricity to light up his family’s tent after the world left Palestine completely in the dark?

Moments such as this one demonstrate how Palestine is — and always will remain — a noble cause. It shows that no matter how much suffering is endured, the tide always favors justice and liberation. Just as I have covered Palestine before and during its genocide, I will cover it during and after its liberation. After all, it is only a matter of time before Palestine will be free, from the river to the sea. 

About The Author: 

Asma Barakat is a Palestinian writer, oral historian, and embroidery artist. She has authored over a dozen blog posts for Palestine Square, with her primary focus being on the genocide in Gaza. In 2022, she co-created an oral history archive titled ‘Rooted in Palestine,' where she collected oral history interviews from Palestinian refugees, forced migrants, and their descendants. Her Palestinian-style embroidery has been featured in Adi Magazine. She is also a fellow with the Institute for Palestine Studies.


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