Democracy Now!

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

We turn now to Gaza, where Israel’s assault on the besieged strip continues despite ongoing talks over a possible ceasefire. Palestinian authorities say 5000 people are missing or have been killed in this first 100 days of Israel’s siege of north Gaza.

Since Monday morning, 33 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, Al Jazeera Arabic reports, including five people who died in an Israeli attack on a school sheltering displaced people in Gaza City.

• READ MORE: Other Gaza journalists reports

On Friday, Saed Abu Nabhan, a Palestinian journalist for the Cairo-based Al-Ghad TV, was killed by Israeli forces while reporting in the Nuseirat refugee camp, his funeral was held on Saturday. This is his colleague Mohammed Abu Namous:

MOHAMMED ABU NAMOUS: [translated] It is clear that the Israeli occupation wants to target the journalist body that exposes its crimes, while the occupation had utiliSed its media to say that they only target the resistance and their weapons, until the Palestinian journalists have exposed the truth to the world, saying that this occupation targets children, women and unarmed civilians.

AMY GOODMAN: The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate reports more than 200 journalists have been killed in Israeli attacks since October 7, 2023. More than 400 others have been wounded or arrested.

On Thursday, Palestinian journalists held a news conference outside Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, where they decried the hypocrisy and neglect of international media organisations. This is reporter Abubaker Abed:

ABUBAKER ABED: We are just documenting a genocide against us. It’s enough, after almost a year and a half. We want you to stand foot by foot with us, because we are like any other journalists, reporters and media workers all across the globe, no matter the origin, the color or the race.

Journalism is not a crime. We are not a target.

AMY GOODMAN: For more, journalist Abubaker Abed joins us now from Gaza. He used to be a football — a soccer — commentator, but now he calls himself an “accidental” war correspondent. His new piece for Drop Site News is headlined “What It’s Truly Like to Sleep in a Damp, Frigid Tent: A Report From Gaza.”

He’s joining us from Deir al-Balah, where that news conference was held.

Abubaker Abed, thank you for joining us again. You’re 22 years old. You didn’t expect to be a war correspondent, but that’s what you are now. Talk more about what you were demanding on Thursday, surrounded by other Palestinian journalists, demanding of the Western media, of all international journalists.

‘Journalism is not a crime.’  Video: Democracy Now!

ABUBAKER ABED: Yeah, thank you so much for having me.

So, what I demanded was very simple: just the basic human rights as any other people across the globe, particularly for journalists here, who have been subjected to sheer violence, brutality and barbarism over the past almost year and a half — particularly if we talk about, if we have a bit of a comparison between us and any other journalist across the globe.

As I said in this press briefing, that we are working in makeshift tented camps and workplaces. I personally talk about myself here.

I just spent long hours just trying to finalise a story, or finalise a report, just to tell people the truth, and sometimes we don’t have the internet connection.

We have been through starvation. We have been through freezing temperatures. We have been taking shelter in dilapidated tents. We haven’t been given any sort of a human right at all.

So, this is what I really demanded, because what I’ve been seeing for the past 14 months from international media outlets is absolutely enraging.

Like, I do have the same rights. What if we were in another spot in the world? The world would absolutely be standing with us and giving us everything we wanted.

But why, when it comes to Palestinians, it’s a completely different story? We understand, and we’ve been taught as a young man, I’ve been always taught, that the world cares about the human rights of every single person in the world.

But I haven’t seen any of those human rights as a Palestinian. What have I got to do with this war so I was subjected to this scale of barbarism and this starvation and this cold and just all of these diseases?

Right now while I’m talking you, Amy, I’ve been diagnosed with bronchitis. I’m still recovering from it. There are no proper medications inside any of the pharmacies here in Deir al-Balah, where more than a million people are taking shelter.

Even if we’re talking about it in detail, the lack of medical supplies and aid inside the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital here, which serves more than 1.5 million people in central Gaza, — apart from the everyday casualties — is literally insane.

When we talk about that, when we talk about the Palestinian journalists, we’ve lost around 210. And even after the press briefing, another journalist was killed.

So, you talk to an absolutely dead conscience of the world. You’re talking about — like … the world just keeps turning a blind eye and deaf ear to what is happening, as if we are talking to ourselves.

It’s completely enraging and unacceptable, because, again, we are like any other reporters, media workers and journalists across the globe, and we have the right to be given access to all media equipment, access to the world, and our voices must be amplified, because, again, we are not any party to this war.

And we must be protected by all international laws, because that’s what has been enshrined in international laws and human rights that have always been taught to the entire world.

AMY GOODMAN: We should make clear that all media has access to journalists on the ground in Gaza.

Our Democracy Now! viewers and listeners know we go regularly to Gaza, almost unheard of in the rest of the American corporate media. Yes, they are banned. And that should be raised every time they report on Israel and Gaza, that they are not allowed there.

Abubaker Abed, what would it mean if there was more attention brought to the journalists on the ground in Gaza? According to a number of reports, well over 150 — nearly 250 —  journalists have been killed, most recently this weekend in Nuseirat, is that right, Abubaker?

ABUBAKER ABED: Yes. I mean, like, the reports are always horrific. Even when we go to a particular place to report on a specific event in the continuously deteriorating humanitarian situation, we know that this might be the end.

We know that even everything we’re doing right now to report on or anything we’re trying to tell, any story that we are trying to relate to the outside world, is going to cost our lives.

But we want to tell the world. We want to live in dignity. We want to live in peace, in calm, because that’s what we really deserve, as any other people across the globe. You said it in the beginning, that I shouldn’t have been an accidental war correspondent, but that’s what I’ve evolved into, because this is my homeland, and this is something that I have to defend wholeheartedly.

But, yes, even when I’m trying to do this, I’m not given the basic things. I’m not given the basic human rights.

So, every journalist here, that is working tirelessly, that has been working relentlessly since the outbreak of this genocidal assault on Gaza, has faced unimaginable horrors. We have — I, myself, lost my very dearest friend, lost family members and lost many of my friends and many of my loved ones.

But I still continue to hope. I still continue to endure the harsh, stark realities of living inside Gaza, because Gaza is now a hellscape. Absolutely, it’s the apocalyptic hellscape of the world. It’s not livable at all.

Children particularly, because I’ve been talking to many children and reporting on them, we can see the children are painful, are barefoot. They are traumatised. Their clothes are ripped apart.

And they are desperately needing just a sip of water and a bite of food, but that is not available because Israel continues, continues applying the collective punishment on all people of the Gaza Strip.

And again, I just want to reaffirm that half of the Gaza population is children. So, what have these children got to do with such a genocidal assault on Gaza?

They should have the right to educate because they have been deprived of their education for the past year and a half almost. They have been deprived of every basic right, even their their necessities and their childhood and everything about them.

The same for us as young men. I should have completed my studies. Unfortunately, my university has been reduced to rubble. Everything about Gaza, everything about my dreams, my memories has also been razed to the ground and has also been reduced to ashes.

Amid the growing news of a possible ceasefire on the line, on the horizon, I can tell you that from here, that we are very hopeful. There is a state of optimism in the anticipation for a ceasefire, because people, including me, want to heal, want to lick our wounds or stitch our wounds — heal up.

And we want to really have one moment, only one moment, of not hearing the buzzing sounds of the drones and the hovering of warplanes, particularly during the night hours, because the tones are every single day, we are very much traumatised.

We really need rehabilitation, to really get to our lives, to get to who we were before this war started.

So, it’s a very much-needed thing, because people are really crying for it. People are really hopeful about it.

And I hope that this will not dash their hopes, the continuous attacks on Gaza. And I hope that they will have their dreams coming true very, very soon, in the coming days.

AMY GOODMAN: Abubaker Abed, we want to thank you so much for being with us, a 22-year-old journalist, speaking to us from Deir al-Balah, Gaza. He used to be a soccer commentator, now as he calls himself, an “accidental” war correspondent.

The article was first published by Democracy Now! and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States Licence.

This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.