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By Charity Njeri Ngunyi, Croatia
Fatima Hassouna’s voice should still be ringing in our ears. A journalist who chose truth over safety, who chose to tell the world’s most inconvenient stories from Gaza, she was silenced, along with ten members of her family, by violence that seems to have no end.
Fatima did what so many of us take for granted: she bore witness. She documented life under siege with dignity, clarity, and an unshakable belief that the world must know, must care, must act. Her death is not a footnote. It is a warning—and a demand.
We owe it to Fatima not to look away.
We owe it to her to amplify the truths she died trying to tell.
We owe it to her to hold those in power accountable, to refuse the comfort of silence.
We remember her name. We share her story. We defend the freedom of journalists everywhere, especially those whose only "crime" is refusing to let human suffering be buried in the rubble of indifference.
It is difficult to find words sharp enough, or grief heavy enough, to describe what is happening to journalists in Gaza.
What we are witnessing is not collateral damage. It is a systematic erasure of witnesses—a deliberate campaign to silence those who dare to tell the truth. Fatima Hassouna, like so many others, was not holding a weapon. She was holding a camera, a microphone, a notebook—and for that, she was targeted.
We owe it to Fatima not to look away.
We owe it to her to amplify the truths she died trying to tell.
The Israeli army's killing of journalists cannot be justified under the worn-out excuses of “fog of war.” The pattern is too clear, the numbers too brutal. This is not chaos; it is policy. It is a war not just against a people, but against memory, against history, against the very possibility that the world might see and refuse to forget.
Each murdered journalist is a message: “You will not speak. You will not show. You will not matter.”
But each death must send a louder message back: “We see you. We will not be silenced. We will remember.”
I feel rage. I feel sorrow. I feel a deep and growing shame for every government, every media institution, every comfortable voice that still refuses to call this what it is: a crime against humanity.
Journalists are not combatants. They are guardians of truth. Killing them is an act of terror.
We must stand up now—not when the last camera goes dark.
Source cover image: Facebook / @fatma.hassona.526
This investigation was carried out with the support of the AGEE - Alliance for Gender Equality in Europe.
