As the world marks International Women’s Day, the airwaves of global media are filled with symbolic gestures and pompous rhetoric about women’s rights. Statistics are touted, initiatives are celebrated and hashtags are boosted.
Meanwhile, the true oppressors of women are whitewashed, their crimes are covered up and those who resist them are smeared.
But here in Gaza, we know who our oppressor is and who our heroes are. The Israeli occupation has murdered tens of thousands of Palestinian women and girls in the past two and a half years. It has devastated the lives of a million of them.
Against the onslaught of the Israeli genocide, the women of Gaza have stood up and resisted, each in their own way. Women journalists, in particular, have shown true heroism. They have taken on the dangerous task of reporting on a genocidal war, of bearing witness and documenting atrocities.
Their cameras, notebooks and phones have become tools not only of storytelling but also of survival and memory.
For daring to challenge the occupation, Gaza’s women journalists have paid a heavy price. More than 20 of the 270 journalists and media workers murdered by Israel were women.
Among them is Mariam Abu Daqqa, who was targeted by the Israeli army along with other journalists at the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip in August. She worked as a field correspondent for years, documenting the suffering of Palestinians under siege and then reporting on the realities of the genocidal war.
Mariam was not just a courageous journalist but also a loving daughter and mother. When she was younger, she donated one of her kidneys to her father, who was struggling with kidney disease.
She was fully dedicated to her son, Ghaith. During the war, she made the painful decision to send him abroad so he would be safe.
Before her death, she wrote a heartbreaking message to her son: “Gaith, the heart and soul of your mother, I want you to pray for me, don’t cry over my death.”
Four months before Mariam was murdered, the Israeli occupation assassinated another brilliant photojournalist: Fatima Hassouna.
“If I die, I want a resounding death. I do not want to be just breaking news or a number among many. I want a death the world hears about, an impact that lasts through time, and images that time and place cannot bury,” Fatima wrote on social media before her death.
As a talented young photojournalist, she had a bright future to look forward to. She was also months away from getting married.
The Israeli army bombed her home in northern Gaza, killing her and six members of her family, just a day after it was announced that a documentary film about her would be featured at an independent film festival in Cannes.
Fatima left us suddenly and far too soon. Yet her departure was not quiet. It was loud, just as she had wished. The screening of the documentary about her received a standing ovation at the festival along with chants of “Free, free Palestine!”
The mass targeting and killing of Palestinian journalists has been devastating to those who have survived. It has left deep psychological scars.
Women journalists speak quietly among themselves of fear, pain and exhaustion. They know that death can strike at any moment from the sky, and yet they persist. They continue reporting on a war they cannot escape. They continue reporting on a genocide they themselves are experiencing.
They detail starvation while they are searching for food for their families. They record displacements while fleeing their homes with their children. They write about bombardments moments after surviving a bombing. They interview mourners while they themselves are grieving the loss of loved ones.
They work under conditions that can make journalism impossible elsewhere. They operate in a place with no electricity, almost no internet connection and no safe passage for those wearing the PRESS vest.
Yet even amid these obstacles, Gaza’s women journalists continue to write, record, document and broadcast to millions of people across the globe. Their reporting has shaped the world’s understanding of what life during a genocide looks like.
As a young journalist in Gaza, I see these women as my heroes. They are a constant source of inspiration for me. Their strength and commitment to reporting even while facing danger, displacement and personal loss show me what it truly means to be a journalist.
I myself turned to journalism in June 2024. Â For months after the war started, I watched the world around me collapse without knowing how to respond. I reached a point at which the genocide took so much from me that it had become unbearable.
Writing gave me a sense of purpose. It became an outlet for my emotions and a way to process the fear, grief and disorientation of living a genocide.
Documenting what was happening in Gaza felt like one of the few things that was still within my power. I now feel a simple but urgent responsibility: If I do not tell these stories, who will?
Archiving our reality has become a form of resistance. Every image and every testimony is proof that Palestinians exist, that this is our land, that our communities matter and that the world cannot claim it does not know.
Journalism, for me, is not only about informing audiences. It is about preserving memory in a place whose history the powers that be are actively trying to erase.
I know the risks.
I also know that the world may not always listen.
But I am determined to keep going anyway.
It is how I honour the women journalists of Gaza who gave their lives while reporting the truth and refusing to let the world look away.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
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