As soon as you're identified as a journalist, you're dead': Mohammed Mhawish shares experience of reporting in Gaza
In our letter from the editor we introduced you to Mohammed Mhawish, a Palestinian journalist who spent 8 of the last 11 months reporting from north Gaza.
Before the most recent and persistent massacres at the hands of the Israeli military began last October, Mhawish, 24, was already an accomplished journalist. He’s written and reported for outlets such as The Nation, Al Jazeera, +972 Magazine and The Economist. When the bombing began, followed by international journalists being barred entry into Gaza and all the news outlets fleeing south, Mhawish’s reporting from the north became even more valuable.
He witnessed firsthand that every Palestinian in the strip was a target: civilians, civil servants, rescue teams, journalists and anyone else speaking up against the injustices Palestinians face. And because of that, he felt a strong obligation to report.
“I felt like it was my national duty to communicate what's happening from Gaza to the world. So aside from being a journalist by profession, it was a national responsibility to step up,” Mhawish told Palestine in America over Zoom from Cairo.
Even though everyone is in danger in Gaza, being a journalist places an additional bullseye on a person’s back. At one point Mhawish stopped wearing his press vest because it put him at greater risk of being targeted while he reported and searched the street for life’s necessities.
“It functioned literally as a red target for the drones … for the artillery, tanks and soldiers positioned across the streets,” he explained. “As soon as you're identified as a journalist, you're dead.”
Journalists like him have to be strategic about their movement while trying to report on a story, he said. More than 100 journalists have been killed by Israel during the last 11 months. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, this is the deadliest period for journalists since the organization began collecting data in 1992.
“We were dealing with displacement, with evacuation orders from one place to another, and the place that we were ordered to evacuate a few hours later [has] Israeli soldiers across the same street that you were sheltering, and so there is no way back for you in there. And even if you did, you're done, you're over. And I've lost colleagues who have been in the same situation. I've lost a number of colleagues and friends and mentors and people who were by my side reporting since the beginning of the war, and they didn't have the luck to survive these tactics and these strategies,” Mhawish said.
Mhawish depicted a scene in which the Israeli military has Gazans—journalists and not—scrambling for safety.
The Israeli military has tried to stop Palestinian journalists from reporting by threatening them and their family, as we reported in the letter from the editor. Mhwaish was no stranger to that strategy.
He said he was harassed consistently during the first few weeks of the bombardment. It began on social media and escalated to emails, text messages and phone calls, but that didn’t deter him from taking care of his wife, child, sister and parents, nor did it deter him from doing his job.
“To be honest, we didn't take those threats seriously. We thought it was an attempt to scare us to stop, to make sure that I stopped writing and stopped reporting. But at the end of the day, they were pretty serious about it,” Mhawish said. “The house was bombed [last December], a lot of people got injured, a lot of people sustained serious injuries, including myself and my family. We are lucky to make it out as survivors.”
Still, he kept reporting. As soon as he recovered from his injuries, Mhawish was back in the street reporting and searching for food and water for his family—navigating the deadliest strip of land in the world.
As time went by and the bombs from Israeli warplanes—paid for by U.S. tax dollars—continued to drop and famine was becoming an unavoidable issue, Mhawish had to seriously consider leaving his life in Palestine behind for the time being. Even though his family was very supportive of his work, he no longer could keep his wife and kids safe and healthy in Gaza.
“[My family] were my source of support, and they're very kind. They embraced the idea that I should be able to speak up, despite the fact that it could be the reason we all can get attacked,” Mhawish said.
Because of the sense of purpose and duty, Mhawish said the decision to leave Gaza wasn’t an easy one, despite it being a matter of life and death that forced his hand.
Once enough money was raised, he and his family made the dangerous journey south in hopes of finding refuge in Egypt.
Despite succeeding in getting his family to safety in Cairo, Mhawish said the adjustment to their new life has its hurdles. He is continuing his work as a freelance reporter, but he is having trouble finding full-time work and extending his visa. So, his time in Egypt may not be permanent.
Despite the circumstances, Mhawish’s demeanor isn’t altered. He’s approaching this unfair life with dignity and pride, celebrating scenes around the world of solidarity against the occupation and genocide of Palestinians.
“What we are dealing with is a system that tries to strike at the trenches of the Palestinian people and their demands for liberation and basic rights. So I think it's necessary to not only have this sort of action from the diaspora, but to have it sustained, and to make it consistent because what Palestinians are asking for isn't just a ceasefire,” Mhawish explained. “Although it's really necessary to stop the bloodshed and everything people are facing there. But it's also necessary and more important to sustain some sort of normalcy in their lives. Because these people are asking for dignity. They're asking for equality. They're asking for justice. They're asking for liberation.”
Palestine in America interviewed Mhawish from Cairo, where he detailed his experience reporting from the north of Gaza, the dangers of wearing a press vest in Palestine and his eventual evacuation. You can listen to the full interview on YouTube and Spotify.
