I write these lines with a heart heavy with grief and a soul immersed in a shock I cannot escape.

Today, I said goodbye to a group of my colleagues and dear journalist friends, who the Israeli occupation targeted and killed in their press tent outside Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City on Sunday. Al Jazeera correspondents and staff, Anas Al-Sharif, Mohammed Qreiqeh, Ibrahim Zaher, Moamen Aliwa, and Mohammed Noufal, were killed 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, and killing a journalist is a war crime. 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. There are families whose lives were torn apart in an instant. Al-Sharif’s children, Sham and Salah, woke up today to the absence of their father, asking about him as if war could bring him back. Qreiqeh’s daughter, Zeina, waits for him every evening, unaware that her wait has become endless. What heart could possibly explain to them that their father was martyred, not because he carried a rifle, but because he carried a camera?

And here, I must ask the painful question: What if these journalists were 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 journalists’ tents are 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 real crime can be recorded.

We know the path is lined with death, but we also know that silence is another kind of death—one even more cruel.

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 martyred colleagues as we count the days of this war? Since the genocide in Gaza began, the Israeli military has killed at least 242 journalists and media workers. With every name, a part of our strength is stripped away—but in its place, we gain a new reason to carry on.

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, and the faces that were beside us behind the cameras yesterday, we now see in photographs hanging on the 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.

Editorial Team:
Lara Witt, Lead Editor
Carolyn Copeland, Top Editor
Kyubin Kim, Copy Editor