Between blackouts and deaths of journalists, reporting is gradually suffocated in the Gaza Strip

For many people outside Gaza, the true magnitude of the death and destruction is impossible to comprehend. Details of the war are vague, shrouded in internet and mobile phone blackouts, restrictions banning international journalists, and the often life-threatening challenges of reporting as a local journalist from Gaza.

There are openings in the darkness, such as the Instagram accounts of Gaza photographers and a small number of testimonies that slip through. However, with each passing week, the light goes out as those documenting the war leave, resign or die. Reporting from Gaza has come to seem pointlessly risky to some local journalists, who lose hope of getting the rest of the world to act.

“I survived death several times and put myself in danger,” Ismail al-Dahdouh, a Gaza-based reporter, wrote in an Instagram post last month announcing he was leaving journalism. However, a world “that does not know the meaning of humanity” had not acted to stop the war.

At least 76 Palestinian journalists have lost their lives in Gaza since October 7, when Hamas led an attack on Israel and Israel responded by launching an all-out war. The Committee to Protect Journalists said more journalists and media workers — including translators and hosts — were killed in a recent 16-week span than in an entire year of any conflict since 1992.

The New York Times and other major international media outlets have evacuated Palestinian journalists working for them in Gaza, although some Western news agencies still have local teams there. Very few foreign journalists have been allowed into Gaza; Mainly, only journalists from Gaza have been working there since the war began.

Almost all of the journalists who have died in Gaza since October 7 lost their lives in Israeli airstrikes, reports the Committee to Protect Journalists, 38 of them in their homes, in their cars or with their families.

Nir Dinar, an Israeli military spokesman, said Israel “has never deliberately attacked journalists and never will.” But he warned that staying in active combat zones carried risks.

The Palestinian Journalists Union has counted at least 25 Gaza journalists who it says were wearing protective vests with the word “Press” on them when they died, said Shuruq Asad, a spokeswoman for the union. Some journalists have been sleeping away from their families for fear that sheltering with relatives would put them at risk, she added.

“We are not just reporting on what is happening. We are already part of what is happening,” said Khawla al-Khalidi, 34, a television journalist for Al Arabiya in Gaza.

Roshdi Sarraj, 31, founded a media company, Ain Media, at age 18 and worked as a photographer and liaison for international news outlets. When the war broke out, he and his wife, Shrouq Aila, were on a pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia. They planned to visit Qatar.

Then Sarraj learned that a friend and fellow journalist in Gaza had been murdered. Another was missing. He canceled the trip and returned home.

Aila said that on October 22, an Israeli airstrike hit her family's home while Sarraj was sitting with her and her young daughter, Dania. Her wound was so deep that Aila could see her brain. They bandaged his head and Aila told herself that, in the worst case scenario, he would be paralyzed. But at the hospital they told him that his case had no remedy; The operating room could not cope. He died within half an hour, Aila said.

She buried him in a mass grave. In the midst of chaos, there was no other option.

VIVIAN YEE, ABU BAKR BASHIR AND GAYA GUPTA. THE NEW YORK TIMES