In Gaza, journalism has become one of the most dangerous professions in the world. Reporters, photographers and broadcasters move through the ruins with cameras and pens as their only armour, documenting a war that has taken colleagues, families and homes. For many, survival itself has become secondary to the duty of recording the truth before it is buried under rubble.

Since the start of the assault in October 2023, more than 240 journalists have been killed. Some died in their homes alongside their families, others while holding their cameras in the streets. Behind every statistic lies a personal story of someone who insisted on bearing witness, even as the risks grew unbearable. The relentless targeting of the press reveals a deeper fear: that images and testimonies from Gaza are more powerful than any weapon.

Journalists describe living a life divided in two, humans who tremble with fear during airstrikes, mourning the loss of loved ones, yet professionals who feel compelled to stand their ground, no matter the cost. Many speak of haunting memories: sharing bread with a colleague one evening, only to bury them the next morning; filming mass displacement while grieving their own families; walking into hospitals where the dead outnumber the living. Each image captured becomes an act of remembrance, ensuring that those silenced by bombs are not erased from the world’s memory.

The devastation has stripped away the boundary between the story and those who tell it. Reporters are no longer distant narrators but part of the very tragedy they cover, witnesses who have lost siblings, parents and children, yet continue to carry their cameras. Their accounts of colleagues targeted in strikes, of newsrooms reduced to ashes, and of families forced into tents show not only the collapse of safety but also the deliberate effort to extinguish independent voices.

Despite exhaustion and grief, many insist they will not be silenced. To them, quitting would mean surrendering the truth. Every photograph, every broadcast, every written word is an act of defiance, a way of honouring the victims and preserving memory against erasure. In the midst of death and destruction, Gaza’s journalists stand as the last witnesses, their courage a reminder that even under the heaviest bombardment, the truth refuses to die.