In an instant, the sounds of the crowd and their cheers from the stadiums turned into the echo of Israel’s explosions. The seasoned sports journalist from Gaza, who had spent years covering major tournaments, from the 2022 World Cup in Qatar to the local league, suddenly found himself in front of a camera tasked with conveying the suffering of his people.

What used to be a day of filming goals, celebrations, and match analysis became one of documenting blood, destruction, martyrs, and hunger.

This transition was not just a change of workplace, but a complete reversal of his media mission: from conveying the joy of the crowd and the excitement of the stadium to narrating a live human tragedy to the world. Between the destruction and devastation, and between the scenes he used to see in his sporting dreams and what was happening on the ground, the journalist became a witness to daily violations and massacres, sacrificing the psychological and professional comfort he was accustomed to in sports media in order to convey the voice of Gaza to the world.

It took Palestinian sports journalist Wael Al-Halabi less than a minute to realise that his professional life had changed forever.

Sports journalists on the frontline in Gaza

At noon on 7 October 2023, as he was preparing to cover a Premier League match in Gaza, he received an urgent call from his manager asking him to go to the hospital instead of the stadium. The voice on the other end was decisive:

The newsroom needs you immediately… The war has begun.

In that moment, Halabi’s lens shifted from following players to documenting martyrs. From the background of the stands and cheers, he found himself facing corpses, blood, and screams searching for survivors. He tells Palestine Online:

The job of a journalist in war is no different from that of a fighter… only the weapon changes.

What happened to Al-Halabi was no exception; it was the general scene of an entire sports press turned upside down. Dozens of journalists who used to fill the stadiums with their coverage and interactions are now running after the smoke of air strikes, chasing stories of survivors instead of stars, and recording the names of martyrs instead of league scorers.

Yahya Eid, who used to photograph players’ shots or the joy of the crowd, found himself chasing his camera between destroyed houses:

The player I used to photograph scoring a goal, I now photograph standing at his friend’s funeral… How can a single lens bear this transformation?

He adds that the war has stripped the profession of its original innocence: photography is no longer a search for moments of joy, but an attempt to save memories before they are erased.

As for journalist Khamis Abu Hasira, known to the Gaza public for his voice broadcasting matches on Sawt al-Quds radio, he appeared after the start of the war on Palestine Today television, standing amid the rubble of a stadium that was once filled with cheers. In that shot, which shook viewers, he addressed the camera, saying:

Here, where the crowds used to cheer, displaced people now sleep without shelter.

A seismic shift

The shift from sports journalism to war coverage was not just a professional transition, but a humanitarian shock and a psychological battle that these journalists face every day. Sport gives stories clear endings: winners and losers, goals and joy. War, however, offers only one ending: death.

This shift imposed on Palestinian journalists was not a choice, but a necessity to capture the truth in the midst of one of the most violent wars in contemporary history.

They have become a bridge between what is happening on the ground and what reaches the world, a first line of defence against attempts to obscure the narrative, and witnesses to a time when everything is collapsing… even the stadiums that were once a symbol of life.

As the war continues to change every detail of Gaza, sports journalists remain a model of the profession’s resilience and courage; those who have moved from the roar of the crowds to the echo of explosions, carrying their cameras as a last point of light amid the darkness of war, clinging to their mission: to keep the truth alive… even if the stadium dies.

I, the writer of this article, am no exception to this harsh transformation.

Lives changed forever in Gaza

I spent many years in football stadiums, as a prolific writer, television analyst, and sports reporter, covering international tournaments such as the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, and I was preparing for research projects in sports media development after obtaining a master’s degree in this field.

But the war in Gaza pushed me, as it did others, to leave the stands behind and stand in front of a French television camera, conveying the voices of martyrs instead of the voices of fans, documenting hunger instead of infiltration, and destruction instead of joy.

As the days passed, I could no longer remember what life was like before the war. I was swallowed up by politics and the field, until I found myself writing about myself as I tried to remember what my daily life was like when the most important news was a beautiful goal, not an air strike.

Featured image via the Canary

By Alaa Shamali

This post was originally published on Canary.