By Shaimaa Eid

When a journalists’ tent is targeted in front of the world, it is a clear declaration that documenting reality is forbidden, that journalism is a crime.

I write these lines with a heart heavy with grief and a soul gripped by a shock I cannot escape.

Today, I said goodbye to a group of my colleagues and dear journalist friends who were killed after being directly targeted by the Israeli occupation while inside their press tent. They were taken in cold blood, leaving behind silent cameras, unfinished pages, and stories that will never be told.

In any other place in the world, a journalist in times of war is seen as a witness, not a target. But in Gaza, the journalist has become a direct target. Carrying a camera here is like wearing a mark on your forehead that reads: “Kill me.”

The loss is not limited to colleagues alone. Families’ lives have been torn apart in an instant. Anas’s children, Sham and Salah, woke up today to the absence of their father, asking about him as if war could somehow bring him back. 

Zeina, the daughter of Mohammed Qreiqa, waits for him every evening, unaware that her wait has become endless. What heart could possibly explain to them that their father was killed not because he carried a rifle, but because he carried a camera?

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And here, I must ask the painful question: What if these journalists had been Israeli? Would the world have remained silent as it has in the face of our killing? Would it have treated the matter with such indifference, as if it were just another passing headline?

The occupation does not stop at killing bodies; it seeks to assassinate the truth. When a journalists’ tent is targeted in front of the world, it is a clear declaration that documenting reality is forbidden, that journalism is a crime, and that the witness must be erased before the crime can be recorded.

Despite all of this, we may break for a moment, but we rise again. The loss is heavy, but our determination is heavier. We bury our loved ones in the morning, and by evening, we are back carrying our cameras, writing reports, and sending images. We know the path is lined with death, but we also know that silence is another kind of death—one even more cruel.

How long will the world continue to ignore what is happening here? How long will we keep screaming into the void, counting the names of our killed colleagues as we count the days of this war? 

Since the genocide in Gaza began, dozens of journalists have been killed. With every name, a part of our strength is stripped away—but in its place, we gain a new reason to carry on.

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Farewells in Gaza are no longer fleeting moments; they have become a daily ritual we endure with bitterness. Today we say goodbye to a colleague, only to find ourselves, days—or even hours—later, standing before another coffin, carrying on our shoulders their camera, their voice, their last image. 

There is no longer time between farewells for full mourning, as the war robs us of the chance to grieve properly.

Funerals have become an unending procession. The faces that were beside us behind the cameras yesterday are now seen in photographs hanging on walls. Each farewell opens a new wound and reopens old ones. Yet despite this, we carry their trust and continue on, as if to say to them: Your departure will not silence us.

Today, I write with a solemn vow to them: We will carry on. We will bear their cameras and voices, tell their stories, and continue to speak to the world what it refuses to hear. The rockets may kill us, but they will never kill the truth we carry.

(The Palestine Chronicle)