Please note: This article contains distressing images
Wael al-Dahdouh has endured more than any journalist could ever imagine.
For millions across the world, Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief became the face of reporting on the horrors of Israel’s bombardment of the strip and war with Hamas.
Dressed in his blue press flak jacket, the 55-year-old father of eight tirelessly documented life and death on the ground, earning him the moniker “the mountain of Gaza”.
But very quickly, the Gaza-born Palestinian and his family became part of the nightmare he was covering.
Just one month into the onslaught, Israeli bombing killed his wife Amina, two of their children aged just 16 and seven, and his eight-month-old grandson, alongside nine other nephews and relatives.
The family had, under Israeli military orders, fled to an area earmarked for civilian evacuation. Wael found out live on air – but despite the unimaginable loss, he carried on reporting.
A few weeks later, in December 2023, his close friend and cameraman Samer Abu Daqqa was killed in an Israeli strike on a school, in which he was also severely injured.
Then, in January 2024, an Israeli drone strike killed Wael’s eldest son, Hamza, 27, also a journalist for Al Jazeera, in Khan Younis.
This horror sparked a campaign to get the famed reporter out of Gaza: a few days later, Wael and the remains of his family were finally evacuated to Egypt.
Despite grappling with physical wounds and a “volcano of emotions” over his own family’s slaughter, Wael is still at work. This time from London.
Since October 2023, Israeli bombing has killed almost 250 Palestinian journalists in Gaza – more than in any other conflict in modern times, according to United Nations experts, who have warned that reporters are being deliberately targeted.
And so Wael is in the UK to petition the world to protect his colleagues who remain reporting inside from Gaza, and to hold their killers to account.
“Most of the journalists were killed on live television in front the world’s watchful eyes. This was, to be honest, more painful than going through the experience of being shot or bombed,” he says from Amnesty International’s office in London, his right hand, which will never properly heal, still in an external brace from the bombings.
“The feeling that our colleagues elsewhere in the world are not showing enough solidarity is as painful, if not even more painful, than going through the experience itself.”
He is expected to brief members of parliament on Tuesday night and join a vigil for the slain reporters on Wednesday outside Downing Street. At each stage, he has a message to deliver to journalists, media unions, parliamentarians, academics and students: take action now.
“I have renewed my call… stop the killing of journalists,” he tells The Independent.
“Two-hundred-and-forty-eight journalists have been martyred – this is unprecedented in history. This cannot be allowed to continue.
“In order to stop this, we need a large campaign in which everyone participates, to put an end to this massacre. Without this, it will continue, because Israel, to put it simply, will feel safe and consider itself outside the scope of accountability and prosecution.
“If we don’t do something now about the people of Gaza, this will start happening to many other people elsewhere, and nobody will be safe from its consequences.”
Israel has repeatedly denied targeting journalists or committing any crimes in Gaza since it began its unprecedented bombing campaign and siege, following Hamas militants’ October 2023 attacks on southern Israel, during which 1,200 people were killed and more than 250 people taken hostage.
But rights groups and UN agencies have sounded the alarm, as the number of people killed in Gaza has surged past 64,000, according to local officials: the largest professional organisation of scholars studying genocide concluded last week that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
In the eye of this storm are the reporters. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) says that the death toll among Palestinian reporters is so high that Israel is “engaging in the deadliest and most deliberate effort to kill and silence journalists that it has ever documented”.
At the same time, Israel is barring international correspondents from accessing the besieged Strip – except on controlled military embeds – further restricting information.
The CPJ has warned that Israel has not only killed correspondents in bombings and targeted their families, but in several instances, it has created smear campaigns falsely accusing journalists of being militants.
They cite the 10 August killing of Wael’s colleague, Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent Anas al-Sharif: a state-sponsored assassination celebrated by Israel, which accused him of being a Hamas militant. In the weeks before, CPJ and the UN special rapporteur on freedom of expression repeatedly warned these accusations were completely unfounded and intended “to manufacture consent to kill”.
Two weeks later, an apparent “double tap” strike on one of the few remaining hospitals in southern Gaza killed five correspondents, including Maryam Abu Daqqa — a photojournalist for The Independent’s partner publication Independent Arabia and a friend of Wael’s.
Mariam had the opportunity to evacuate Gaza with her 11-year-old son, but decided to stay and keep reporting.
“Nothing could deter her, nothing could stop her from continuing her work with dedication, perseverance, and patience despite the challenges,” Wael continues.
He now worries for the remaining journalists as Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushes ahead with plans to expand Israel’s offensive and impose a boots-on-the-ground occupation of Gaza City, the largest city in the Strip.
He says that journalists in Gaza feel “haunted” every day by the feeling of uncertainty, “that death is awaiting for you around the corner, that you are being systematically targeted”.
That is why Wael is in London, as time is running out.
The veteran correspondent was born and raised in Gaza and has spent 21 years working with Al Jazeera and 27 years covering Palestine. He initially intended to be a medic, but the First Intifada derailed plans to study in Iraq. Aged just 17, days before his scheduled departure, he says Israeli forces raided his home at night and arrested him, eventually sentencing him to 15 years in prison for “throwing stones”.
As part of a wider policy aimed at discouraging resistance, he adds that the Israeli authorities also demolished his family’s house.
Fast forward to the present day, and Wael’s home has once again been destroyed by Israeli bombing. The image of such a prominent correspondent wearing a press-emblazoned flak jacket, in tears, clutching the bodies of his children, is burned into our collective memories. He does not want any other journalist to suffer the same fate.
“We fear that we will wake up one day and the world will be faced with the reality that there are no more journalists, no people there. There is no more Gaza – history and geography has been wiped out,” he adds bluntly.
The only way to do that, he says, is to let Israel know that it will be held accountable for these “crimes unprecedented in history”. Only then would it be forced to reconsider its actions.
“When my family was targeted, and later my son Hamza was targeted because of my work, I remember saying that day that I wished that Hamza’s blood would be the last blood to be spilled in Gaza, whether journalist or civilians,” he adds, with a haunted look on his face.
“But after that, the bloodshed continued, as did the killing and targeting of journalists – until it happened to Maryam.
“This massacre will continue unless the world – the whole world – puts an end to it.”
