The courage of Palestinian journalists should not be measured in coffins and rubble. It is time to admit that press freedom is either universal or it is a lie.

On October 25, 2023, journalist Wael Al-Dahdouh learned — live on air — that his wife, two of his children, and his grandson had been killed in an Israeli strike. Less than 24 hours later, he returned to work, standing in front of the camera in his press vest, holding back tears as he reported the news of his own family. “It’s a difficult moment in the life of a Palestinian journalist,” he said, “when they go to cover an incident for the news and find out that the news is their own family.”

His grief was not afforded silence or privacy. It became part of the spectacle, his composure mistaken for resilience, his professionalism measured by his ability to keep reporting after unimaginable loss. Two months later, his son Hamza — also a journalist — was killed. Still, Dahdouh insisted that someone must keep telling the story: “I found a power in me that made me even more determined to go ahead … with even more resolve, more professionalism.”

Journalist Wael Al Dahdouh holding his grandson who was killed in an Israeli air strike

That is the obscenity of our moment: a Palestinian journalist must bury his wife, his children, even his grandson before much of the world pauses to recognize his humanity. Only then do international outlets run sympathetic headlines, only then do audiences extend empathy. Wael Al-Dahdouh had to lose everything just to be allowed into the circle of sympathy his Western peers enter by default.

This hierarchy of empathy is not new. In a recent investigation, +972 Magazine laid bare how Israel systematically seeks to delegitimize Palestinian reporters. The tactic is simple and brutal: smear every journalist in Gaza as “Hamas in disguise,” then justify their killing. Gaza has become the deadliest place on earth for journalists, yet the targeting of press workers is celebrated rather than denied. To strip Gaza of its reporters is not just to silence voices, but to erase the record of its suffering.

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And still, Palestinian journalists are denied recognition as journalists at all. As someone who regularly writes for Western publications, sits on juries for journalism awards, and speaks at international conferences, I have been acutely aware that journalism rights matter — but not all journalists’ lives are equal. I know that if I speak of press freedom in Afghanistan, Iran, or even my own country, India, I will be met with nods of approval and standing ovations, deservedly so. But the moment I raise the plight of journalists in Gaza, the same rooms fall silent. As if I have broken an unsaid rule, betrayed the responsibility entrusted to me.

At an event in 2024 at an American university, I saw this contradiction unfold in real time. Many audience members lined to speak to me and thank me for my words on authoritarianism, eager to take selfies. Yet when I ended my talk by highlighting the lack of solidarity for journalists in Gaza, the mood of the room shifted.

The warmth drained into a look of betrayal — as if by naming Gaza, I had let them down. Minutes later, as I stepped out for coffee, an elderly white woman approached me and asked quietly – You do know that some of them are not reporters but Hamas conduits ?

The same duplicity plays out in professional spaces. When I once asked a member of a high-profile journalism award about the absence of Palestinian nominees, I was told it was a “grey area.”

There are moments of hope. Last year, as a jury member for the RSF awards, Wael Al-Dahdouh was unanimously chosen by the jury, for the award for courage. And again, last week as I took part in another jury meeting for the RSF, Gaza was on top of the list. But these are just a handful of spaces. In a recent op-ed for the Guardian, Jodie Ginsberg, the head of the Commitee to Protect Journalists, calls out this hypocrisy of the journalism fraternity “The Committee to Protect Journalists received significant offers of support and solidarity when journalists were being killed in Ukraine at the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, the reaction from international media over the killings of our journalist colleagues in Gaza at the start of the war was muted at best. In some high-profile killings – such as that of the Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah – some governments trotted out well-worn defences of press freedom, but stopped well short of seriously censuring Israel. And few took any concrete steps – such as the halt of arms sales or the suspension of trade agreements – that might have forced Israel to change course.”

The journalists in Gaza live this paradox, in their life and in death. Anas al-Sharif, just 28, reported daily from the frontlines of Gaza for Al Jazeera, his audience of half a million following his dispatches in real time. He endured smear campaigns, death threats, and direct calls from the Israeli military to stop reporting. Knowing the risks, he composed what he called his “last will and final message.” In it, he wrote: “If these words reach you, know that Israel has succeeded in killing me and silencing my voice. I never hesitated to convey the truth as it is, without distortion or misrepresentation.” He entrusted the world with a plea both ordinary and extraordinary: “Do not forget Gaza … And do not forget me.”

AFP via Getty Images Anas al-Sharif stands wearing a

Journalist Anas Al Sharif who was killed in an Israeli air strike in Gaza

Sharif was killed alongside several other colleagues in a targeted Israeli attack on a tent housing journalists in Gaza City.

The very act of preparing his own obituary was a refusal — a way to testify that his killing would not be an accident, but a silencing. Journalism in Gaza has been turned into a ledger of anticipated deaths, each report shadowed by the knowledge it could be the last. As of today, at least 248 journalists have now been killed in Gaza, more than in any other conflict in modern times

The double standards and Western hypocrisy could not have been more stark when prominent Democrats and liberal commentators in the U.S. rushed to defend the freedom of speech in their obituaries of Charlie Kirk, a white conservative who was murdered by another white man, invoking the sanctity of political expression. The liberal commentators spoke passionately about the dangers of silencing unpopular voices. Yet when Palestinian journalists are killed — their homes bombed, their cameras destroyed — those same defenders fall silent. If freedom of expression stops at America’s borders, or shrinks in the face of Israeli impunity, then it is not freedom at all. It is a privilege disguised as a principle.

Consider Bisan Owda, who begins her video dispatches not with headlines but with the words: “I’m still alive.” Displaced across Gaza multiple times, she films from hospital corridors and makeshift tents, insisting on documenting even as everything is stripped away. When she returned to her bombed childhood home, she said simply: “My room of twenty years has vanished … but it is still standing … despite everything … I promise we will rebuild.” She wasn’t asking for applause. She was demanding dignity.

And yet, when her work was nominated for an Emmy, instead of celebration, a chorus of Western voices demanded her nomination be rescinded. More than 150 entertainment figures tried to erase her recognition, dredging up alleged teenage associations to discredit her journalism today. The academy had to defend its own decision, as though acknowledging a Palestinian journalist required justification.

This is the moral depravity of our times: a young woman who risks her life to say “I am still alive” must also survive campaigns to silence her even in recognition. To some, her testimony is not journalism, but betrayal. Her survival is not a right, but a threat.

I remember interviewing Gazan journalist Hind Khoudary in a friend’s cramped living room where she was sheltering. Calmly, she told me that one day her family might “find my body under the rubble,” and that she hoped, if she died, it would at least be a respectable death. My notebook was filled with questions about sources and verification, but in that moment they felt grotesque. I was ashamed of my preparedness. Her words reframed courage for me: not the performative bravery applauded on panels and stages, but the daily courage of bearing witness even when it means rehearsing your own death.

I also shared a stage with Samar Abu Elouf, a Palestinian photo journalist in exile who received the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE) International Press Freedom Award alongside me in Toronto late last year. She trembled as she spoke: “This where I am staying is not home.” Later, through Google Translate, she told me about raising her children alone, her childhood in Gaza, the absurd memory of using a bucket as armour against bullets. On the day of the award, she wore a traditional Palestinian dress, pressing into my hand a bracelet woven in the colours of the flag. She showed me photographs of the children she had covered, and then she broke down in tears.

Israel insists that Palestinian reporters are liars, “Hamas mouthpieces,” unworthy of being called journalists — and then kills them for doing their work. Yet at the same time, it bars international correspondents from entering Gaza. The contradiction is staggering: if coverage from Gaza were indeed propaganda, why not allow foreign reporters in to expose it? The truth is simpler, and darker. Israel discredits local journalists and excludes international ones for the same reason — to ensure Gaza’s story is told, if at all, only through rubble, silence, and official press releases.

By silencing those inside Gaza and shutting out those from outside, Israel is not just controlling a narrative — it is rewriting the very definition of journalism. And the tragedy is that much of the international press has allowed this erasure to stand, choosing comfort over confrontation. This moment is a reckoning for all of us in the journalism fraternity. Do we keep censoring ourselves to hold on to the spaces we occupy — the panels, the editorial pages, the international platforms — or do we risk everything to defend the unpopular truth? Because press freedom cannot be conditional. It cannot be partitioned. It is either universal, or it is a lie.