CONTENT WARNING: THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS GRAPHIC IMAGES SOME READERS MAY FIND DISTRESSING
Palestinian journalist Motasem Ahmed Dalloul is from Gaza City. He studied International Journalism in London, and works as a Staff Writer for Middle East Monitor. He has lived and worked in Gaza City throughout this genocide, and has paid a heavy price for speaking the truth. But he remains determined to continue reporting about his people’s suffering and the Israeli occupation’s crimes against them:
Motasem Ahmed Dalloul risked his life to find food – but his wife and baby were killed instead
Motasem Ahmed Dalloul has not left Gaza City in the past two years, although be has been forcibly displaced 13 times. Since his family home was attacked and destroyed in November 2023, he and his family have stayed many places, moving from place to place and fleeing the Israeli ground incursions. They are currently living in a tent.
Near the end of February 2024, an Israeli occupation airstrike targeted his neighbour’s house. Dalloul’s three year old son who was named Abu Baker, and his beloved wife Riham, who was pregnant, were buried under the rubble and killed. Dalloul was heartbroken.
He says:
I lived with her a very nice life, very nice years, full of love and affection. I loved her so much, and she loved me so much. She was very beautiful. My wife was killed while she was very hungry.
According to Dalloul, their dinner consisted of a can of corn, which did nothing to satisfy his wife’s hunger. So at dawn he went to an area in the West of Gaza City where aid organisations sometimes delivered food, to try and find something for his starving wife:
It was difficult for someone like me – I am 45 years old – to go through the crowds of young people and get any kind of aid, but I found the flour bag with someone, and he gave it to me, and I sent this flour back home with my son, Ibrahim.
Ibrahim returned an hour later with the news that an Israeli strike had targeted their neighbour’s house. Dalloul’s wife and three year old son had been killed:
Another son and daughter were wounded.
I rushed to near my wife’s family’s house, and bid farewell to her and my two year old son, Abu Baker. And then I carried the body of my son, and relatives carried her body, and we buried them in a makeshift cemetery, because we couldn’t reach the cemetery where we used to bury our dead.
A day before his wife and son were killed, Dalloul posted this on X:
Hunger has been a daily occurrence for Motasem Ahmed Dalloul and his family
According to Motasem Ahmed Dalloul, him and his family have constantly suffered from a lack of food, experiencing starvation three times during this genocide. He recalls the first time, when his wife was killed and he was unable to provide for his family, as being especially difficult.
He confides:
One of my children asked me to give him some food one day, and I couldn’t find any, any, anything. I left the house and around an hour later, he followed me and came to the place where I was with my friends, not far from the house, and appealed for something to eat, and I couldn’t find anything.
I started weeping, and hugged him, as I couldn’t afford anything for him to eat. We were hungry.
I myself lost 40 kilogrammes, and went from 158 to 118kg. Even if I was a billionaire, it has been very difficult for me to live because – and it is continuous until now – there is a shortage of food, and I have to pay extremely high prices to get a very little amount of food.
In May, three months after his wife and young son were killed, Dalloul and his other sons returned to the rubble of what once was their home to look for some winter clothes, as there were none available to buy in the markets. Many of his neighbours were also there, witnessing the destruction, and searching through the rubble. Then, all of a sudden, with no warning, shots were fired, and Dalloul’s 21 year old son was killed.
He says:
Suddenly, a sniper or a tank shot at us, and immediately I found my son, Yahya, shot in the head and he fell down. We ran very quickly. Me and the other children and neighbours. We left him on the ground because there was heavy gunfire and we couldn’t return back to that place until after one week. Then we saw his body. The tank had run over it.
His children pray they are killed by the Israeli occupation forces, so they can see their mother again
Motasem Ahmed Dalloul says the young children he had with Riham, his second wife, have been highly affected by the deaths of their mother and siblings:
They were very sad, and every time when they asked me, what happened, I tell them they went to paradise. They asked me, where is their mother. I told them, she is in heaven. And they told me they want to go and join her, and see her or meet her. But I tell them we can’t, until the Israeli occupation forces kill us.
So they pray that the Israeli occupation shoots them, so they can go and meet their mother. When my sons were killed, they also asked me if they had gone to the place where their mother exists.
Dalloul says he was feeling happy during the days leading up to the ceasefire, and was celebrating with friends and family, including his son Ibrahim, thinking about what they would do when the ceasefire took effect.
But on the day it was announced by Trump, Ibrahim was not there, and there were no celebrations.
Ibrahim used to help run the family’s supermarket in Gaza City, until it was bombed – just two months after it opened in November 2023, then he then became a street vendor. The Israeli occupation launched an intentional starvation campaign against the people of Gaza City, with the aim of forcibly displacing them Southwards. Both the Zikim crossing and Al Rashid Street in the West of the City were closed, which meant no food was getting into the North of the Strip.
So, according to Dalloul, Ibrahim and his friends insisted on going to the south to bring back some food. But Ibrahim never returned.
Israel killed him the day before the ceasefire:
Dalloul says:
On the first day of the ceasefire, someone told my friends that my son was killed near Al Nabulsi Roundabout, on Al Rashid Street. The next day, we went to bring his body, along with the volunteers and civil defense, and we found him, likely killed two days before. He was engaged and his fiancé was very close to him and loved him very much. She collapsed when she knew that he was dead and killed by the Israeli occupation forces. And it was very, very difficult for all of us, and the killing of all of them has affected me. This is the third son of mine to be killed during the genocide, along with my wife.
The Israeli occupation has repeatedly targeted not only Palestinian journalists but also their families in Gaza, attempting to control the narrative and limit the flow of information to the rest of the world about its many war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Journalists have been threatened, detained, tortured, and killed, while media facilities have been destroyed, and access by foreign journalists to the Strip has been forbidden.
Israel’s systematic targeting of the press is a deliberate strategy to not only silence witnesses, but also to stop criticism of Israeli military actions in Gaza and maintain international support by imposing its untruthful version of events. But this strategy has not only been limited to the genocide in Gaza.
The occupation’s army threatened to ‘hunt’ Dalloul. They then seriously wounded him
Motasem Ahmed Dalloul has been threatened and told several times by ‘Israeli agents’ to stop reporting during the genocide, and many of these agents and activists have been posting false information online about him. But he says these incidents also occurred before October 2023:
In 2018, when I was covering the Great March of Return, the Israeli occupation army directly threatened me and told me, ‘we will hunt you’. The march was organized every Friday, and the next Friday, I was shot in the chest with an exploding bullet. There was a lot of shrapnel inside my body that affected my lungs, liver, intestines and other organs, and I remained in a coma for several days. This threat was repeated several times during this genocide, and I feel that I might be intentionally targeted.
But Dalloul is not listening to the occupation’s threats, and he does not intend to stop reporting on the crimes inflicted on the population of Gaza. Instead, he believes the first commitment of a journalist is not to their life and safety, but to the truth:
As a journalist, I have a duty towards my family, towards my people, towards my land, towards my country.
I have to expose the lies and the crimes of the Israeli occupation against them, to let the world know that they are liars, they are thieves. They aren’t the real owners of this land, but because they are growing up on the propaganda and lies, the people around the world take them for granted as facts.
If I remain silent, the people will not know that they are liars and thieves, and they are committing massacres against us. So this is the duty of me as a Palestinian, and the duty for me as a journalist. I am obliged to disclose the Israeli lies and Israeli deception and Israeli massacres, and tell the world the truth about our country, about the Palestinians who are the Indigenous inhabitants and residents of this land.
The international community is supporting this rogue state – the state of lies, the state of criminals, the state which was established on the skulls and bones of my grandfathers.
No hope for justice because world leaders provide the occupation with money, weapons, and troops
Motasem Ahmed Dalloul has lost a total of 59 family members, including a brother and a sister, nephews, nieces, and cousins who lived in Gaza, but is not waiting for any justice because:
The current world, international community, and the leaders of the great powers are not fair, and they support the Israeli genocide. We’ve not only been attacked, destroyed and massacred by Israeli arms and the Israeli army, but also by American, German, British, French, and other Western arms and weapons, money and also soldiers.
Dalloul says although he is happy there is a ceasefire, the loss of his family and the destruction of Gaza leaves him feeling very sad.
He has lost everything.
He has no home, and he cannot even set up his tent where his house once stood, because of all the rubble, and his neighbourhood is now unrecognisable to him:
I think the Israelis will not return to Gaza, because there is nothing left for them to destroy and attack. Only one street remains undestroyed in Gaza City, everything else is destroyed, so why would the Israeli rogue state come back to the genocide and resume the international isolation and attacks against it, and let the people resume marching and protesting against it. I don’t trust the mediators, or the international community, or Trump, but there is nothing left for Israel to destroy here in Gaza.
Featured image and additional images supplied
By Charlie Jaay
This post was originally published on Canary.