26/10/2023–|Last updated: 10/26/202309:46 AM (Mecca time)
As usual, Al Jazeera’s correspondents in Gaza and the rest of the Palestinian territories did not hesitate to make every effort and time, even risking personal security, in order to provide the best coverage of the ongoing Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip for nearly 3 weeks.
Among them was Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Gaza, Wael Al-Dahdouh, the most prominent star who you can see on screen morning, noon, evening and night as he conveys to viewers what is happening, at a time when major media outlets have been lax in reporting the truth, not to mention distorting and distorting it at times.
Because we, as journalists on the Al Jazeera Net website, do not stop watching the Al Jazeera screen, it was remarkable and captivating to see the great effort made by the people of Gaza in presenting the tragedy that befalls the Strip due to the brutal bombing launched by the occupation forces day and night.
A few days ago, a colleague in the Al Jazeera Net newsroom suggested that we ask one of our correspondents in Gaza to prepare a report on our colleague Al-Dahdouh as a prominent star of media coverage who reaches day and night, moving from a hospital bombed by the occupation to the ruins of homes destroyed by continuous bombing.
In turn, I suggested that the colleague who will prepare the report should seek to communicate with Al-Dahdouh and that among the questions he asks him should be about his family’s conditions, whether he is able to spend some time with them under these circumstances, and what his feelings were as a father and head of a family before he became a newspaper reporter while covering these painful events. The majority of the bombing victims are women and children.
The proposal was accepted, as the journalist is a human being before he is a journalist, and readers in general are attracted by human stories, and many of them must have a passion to know how the lives of these people and their families are going while they are under fire and in the heart of the event.
Shocking news
While the Al Jazeera Net team in Gaza was trying to find the right opportunity and time to try to communicate with our colleague Al-Dahdouh and find out about his situation and his family, the shocking news came: the occupation targeted his family just as it targeted thousands of families in the besieged Strip.
Al-Dahdouh was on the air when he received the shocking news on Wednesday evening, as his family – who had been displaced like others to an area they thought was safe according to the promises of the occupation army – was the target of bombing, and – until that evening – they joined the list of 6,546 martyrs, most of them women and children, according to data from the Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip. .
Al-Dahdouh lost his wife Amna (Umm Hamza), his 16-year-old son Mahmoud, and his six-year-old daughter Sham, as well as his grandson Adam, an infant who came into this world only 45 days ago.
The man lost his family even though they were displaced to the Nuseirat camp, one of the areas to which the Israeli army called on Gaza residents to go, but the occupation soldiers bombed them there, confirming once again that there is no safe place in the besieged sector, which has been under bombardment for 20 days.
Therefore, it was not strange that sadness was mixed with bitter sarcasm in the speech of the bereaved Al Jazeera correspondent, as he linked the targeting of children and women in a safe area, and the occupation army’s description of itself as a moral army.
While Al-Dahdouh was fighting back his tears, he was careful to say that they were tears of humanity, not tears of cowardice and collapse, before adding, “Let the occupation be defeated.”
Imprisonment and ban
Al-Dahdouh, like all Palestinians, suffered a lot because of the Israeli occupation. He spent 7 years of his life in its prisons after he was arrested in 1988 due to his participation in the first Palestinian Intifada.
After his release from prison, he continued his studies at the Islamic University of Gaza and obtained a bachelor’s degree in journalism and media in 1998. When he tried to travel outside Palestine in order to complete his studies, the occupation was waiting for him, but preventing him from traveling did not prevent him from obtaining a master’s degree from Abu Dis University in the West Bank. .
Al-Dahdouh began his career as a correspondent for several Palestinian media outlets before joining the Al-Jazeera office in Palestine as a correspondent starting in 2004, then he became director of the Al-Jazeera office in Gaza.
Over the years, Al-Dahdouh participated with his colleagues in covering all the wars witnessed in this besieged sector. During these wars, he lost about 20 of his relatives, including his brothers and cousins.
In a previous press interview with Al-Dahdouh, he said, “The role of the father is missing in the journalism profession… When your children need you, they miss your presence, and this is a very painful thing.”
But Al-Dahdouh was facing another, more severe pain. After his family lost him due to the necessities of working in a difficult field, here he was losing them: his wife, son, daughter, and even the infant grandson. What sin did these and others commit so that their lives would end under the rubble of residential buildings bombed by planes without… Mercy.
Now, if the Al Jazeera Net correspondent was able to meet our colleague Al-Dahdouh, would it be appropriate to ask him about his situation with his family under these circumstances?!
The post first appeared on www.aljazeera.net