Are We Truly on The Side of Truth?

In Gaza, when another journalist’s body is pulled from the rubble, it feels as though another light of truth has been extinguished.
Over the past year, dozens of Palestinian reporters have been killed, many injured, and those who remain alive continue to document the horror around them — amid hunger, fear, and despair. Their collective cry reverberates through every report and every video they send to the world:
We were left alone.
At the 2025 World Congress and Media Innovation Festival organized by the International Press Institute, journalists covering the Gaza war expressed their deep disillusionment with the world’s silence over Israel’s systematic targeting of the press.
Al Jazeera’s executive producer Wael al-Dahdouh — whose reporting from Gaza has become a symbol of courage — described the excruciating moral and human cost of journalism in a war zone. “Here, a journalist must choose between being human or being a journalist,” he said. Al-Dahdouh lost five family members, including his wife and son, in Israeli airstrikes. His surviving daughter, Batool, now refuses to live anywhere that has a roof. “What was my family’s crime?” he asked.
Al-Dahdouh accused international media of abandoning their colleagues in Gaza: “We were left alone.”
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), since October 7, 2023, at least 238 journalists and media workers have been killed in Israeli attacks — an unprecedented toll in modern history.

Other panelists Basil Khalaf of Al Araby TV, Rawan Damen, Director General of Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism, and Laurent Richard, founder of Forbidden Stories echoed his grief.
Damen called the assault on al-Dahdouh “an attack on a role model of journalism,” condemning the global media’s silence over the genocide in Gaza and contrasting it with the bravery of a few independent outlets that continue to speak out.
Richard warned that “the killing of journalists, followed by total impunity, is becoming the new normal.”Khalaf captured Gaza’s grim transformation in one haunting line: “Before the war, we called Gaza a large prison. Now, it is a vast graveyard. “The truth is that journalism in Gaza has become the world’s most dangerous profession.
Most of those killed are local Palestinian journalists, working for international networks at minimal pay — without bulletproof vests, without safe shelters, and without any hope for justice. Yet they continue to pick up their cameras, knowing that if they fall silent, the world will never know what is happening.
A Palestinian photojournalist summed it up in one chilling sentence: “We write news under the shadow of death — and the world counts us only as numbers. “This is not merely the lament of a few reporters; it is a moral test for humanity itself.
When truth-tellers are murdered, it is not only a person who dies — it is conscience that dies with them. When journalists are targeted, the world’s eyes are deliberately blindfolded.
The tragedy is that the same global media that so often preaches “freedom of the press” has remained largely silent when it comes to Gaza. No international outrage. No coordinated campaigns. No resolutions.
Perhaps Palestinian blood, as cynically as it sounds, simply lacks the color that makes a headline. Today, Gaza’s journalists are fighting two wars — one against death, and another against oblivion.
Through their cameras, they are documenting history amid ruins, tears, and screams — reminding the world that freedom of expression is not just the right to speak, but the courage to tell the truth.
And so, a question remains for every newsroom, every journalist, and every reader across the globe: Are we truly on the side of truth or have we, too, abandoned Gaza’s journalists to their fate?