On August 25, 2025, the funeral of Palestinian photographer Mariam Daga was held outside the Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, south of Gaza.
Among the crowd, a fellow man holds his camera in his hands, and the body’s blood traces have become black-coated—the device he last held before Dacha’s murder, and the testimony that she recorded the truth with her life.
The Associated Press later confirmed that Dhaka was one of five journalists killed in two precision airstrikes that day, and her body, along with 15 other civilians, was buried in the ruins next to the hospital.
Gaza journalist becomes the "number one target"
The funeral was only a shortcut of the recent two-year humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, where the deaths of journalists are no longer news, but the norm.
According to data from the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, at least 242 journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza since the outbreak of the conflict in October 2023, more than the total number of journalists killed in all wars since World War II.
Israel’s struggle with journalists has never been a “mistake” but a clear-cut tactic.
They often use a trick called "double strike": first blow a wave of targets, wait for rescue personnel, journalists to come to rescue people, shoot material, then fire a second missile, and put the people at the scene a pot.
The Spanish newspaper “World” very directly: it was not an accident at all, but a “calculation” with the aim of not leaving any witnesses.
During her lifetime, Daga specialized in taking pictures of malnutrition among children in Gaza. The desperate eyes of those skinny children and mothers spread to the whole world through her lens.
Perhaps it was these pictures that stung Israel that they made this ruthless move.
Al Jazeera's Wael Dadouh was even worse. As the head of the Gaza office, he not only watched his wife and children being killed, but also was labeled by Israel as "cooperating with Hamas" and included on the assassination list.
In Waeler’s own words, “Working as a journalist in Gaza is no different from walking in the mine district, you can stumble on the death switch at any time.”
8 escapes + 2 years of breeding
The danger of journalists is just one corner of the daily suffering of the Gaza people, living in this land is a tough battle.
Fuel has long been banned for two years, the generator can not turn, the hospital's dialysis machine, the gravity monitor is all set up, the people want to burn hot water, can only break the mattresses and wooden furniture in the house when wood is burned.
The United Nations Children's Fund said that the so-called "safe zone" drawn by Israel in the south is actually a "place of death." Schools and refugee camps are still bombed every day, and tents burn faster than paper.
What's even more painful is the endless moving.
A reporter wrote in his diary that this was the eighth time he had been displaced in the past two years. Every time he packed things, he didn't know what to bring-if he took them, he might be blown up, and if he didn't take them, he wouldn't be able to survive.
The walls of the apartment he rented were all of a gunpowder, which was originally his own escape from the east of the city, and now crowded with three relatives, every evening they had to meet to discuss: should we escape south?
The shortage of food has also forced people to the extreme situation.In early 2025, there was a brief ceasefire of two months, a small amount of meat and egg milk was transported in, and a ceasefire could end, and the passageway was completely blocked.
The food supply in northern Gaza is directly reduced by 70%. WHO warns that at least 55 children have died of acute malnutrition, and countless children are facing permanent damage from growth retardation and cognitive impairment. This generation may be completely destroyed.
The family of Jamala suffered a great deal of pain.They opened a barbecue store in Gaza, which always tasted good and gave food to the poor, and the neighbors recognized their signs.
But the restaurant had long been closed, because even the most basic meat could not come in. Mahmoud lived with his friends, and he never thought that his children would miss the taste of the roast roast every day.
At dawn on September 20, 2025, their family's house was razed to the ground. Mahmoud and his three children were gone on the spot. His younger brother Khalid lost his wife and all his children and became alone.
They didn’t do anything bad, and the only “wrong” was not wanting to escape.
They steal the truth from death.
In such a hell, Gazan journalists are still carrying their cameras, not that they are not afraid of death, but that they know that their own cameras are the last line of defense.
In early 2024, an international media organization appealed to allow journalists to enter Gaza, which was rejected by the Israeli Supreme Court on the grounds that it “may endanger the security of Israeli soldiers.”
To put it bluntly, they are afraid that the outside world will see their real behavior, and they just want their official statements to spread all over the world.
Local journalists have become the only hope of recording the truth, but their lives are more difficult than anyone else. The office was blown up, and new cameras, batteries, lenses and other consumables were all locked off outside, and only mobile phones could be used to shoot;
There is a power outage for more than ten hours every day, and I have to look for signals everywhere to spread the material.
There was a journalist named Salah who fled outside in the early days of the conflict, but worked remotely with colleagues in Gaza every day to edit videos.
Their work "Gaza past" won the Cannes Film Festival prize, and when the prize was received, someone in the lead creation team was still in line in Gaza, and someone had just buried their relatives.
The documentary "Voice of Hinde Rajab" made by Tunisian director Kousser Ben Haniya is even more heart-wrenching. The film records the entire process of Hinde, a 6-year-old girl, being shot dead by Israeli troops on her way to escape.
The film won the Silver Lion Award at the Venice Film Festival, and the audience stood up and applauded for 23 minutes at the premiere. But in Gaza, such tragedies are really staged every day.
The journalists have a family, and they make the most cruel choices every day: to stay with the camera, so that the family may lose themselves at any time, or to escape with children, let the truth be buried?
Some reporters said that neighbors were afraid to take them in, for fear of being bombed for "harboring journalists", but the more dangerous it was, the more they felt they couldn't stop-if even they were silent, only the voice of the oppressor would be left.
What they shoot actually doesn't have to be edited, because the truth itself is powerful enough.
Bombed houses, children wrapped in torn blankets, and anxious faces waiting in line for territorial waters can make people feel the pain of Gaza without special effects or narration.
A reporter wrote in his diary: "We keep the original material, because the story will be told by itself, and even a little modification will be redundant."
A ceasefire is planned.
The reaction of the international community reveals a sense of powerlessness. In September 2025, the United States proposed a "20-point ceasefire plan". It looked like something, but in fact it was all in favor of Israel-requiring Hamas to unilaterally surrender its guns, but not mentioning when Israel would withdraw its troops.
When Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu delivered a speech at the UN General Assembly, representatives of many countries directly got up and left the table, but this could not stop the Israeli army from continuing to advance in Gaza City, cutting the north and south into a "no man's land", even the international humanitarian fleet dared to stop it.
UN Special Rapporteur Irene Khan said: “Israel’s goal is not only to destroy Gaza, but to destroy its memory,” but they underestimate the resilience of the people of Gaza.
Those journalists were carrying cameras with blood, running through the bombing gaps; the people, even if they were hungry, would help journalists to hide equipment.
On the ruins of Gaza, someone wrote a line of blood: “We witness, we are.”
Gaza is not numbers, truth is not silence.
Per that’s the reason they survive.
A reporter told a colleague, "If the world can't stop this massacre, at least let the world remember our story.
We cannot hold on to life, but we can hold on to the truth. If we die, the survivors will have to pass on the story."
Gaza is never a series of numbers in the news, not a piece of ruins on the map, but people of blood and flesh struggling and standing up.
The eyes in those lenses, the unspoken concerns, and the pictures retained with their lives are all proof that Gazans have not bowed to their destiny.
As long as there are people photographing and people remembering, the truth will not be erased.
This is probably the best comfort for those journalists who have died-the stories they protected with their lives will eventually penetrate the blockade and let the world hear the voice of Gaza.