Hidden wounds

Yousef Faris has been unable to free his mind of the smell of charred bodies. Even seeing fish being grilled on the way home from work reminds him of the Israeli bombing of Al-Tabieen School, which left about a hundred people dead. “I can’t bear the smell of a barbecue anymore, after I’ve smelled corpses and burned body parts,” says 37-year-old Faris, a journalist in northern Gaza.

After ten months of war on the Gaza Strip, Anas al-Sharif, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in northern Gaza, wrote on his Facebook page: “I lie awake at night, feeling as if I’m trying to find a safe place. Images of massacres in Gaza keep playing in my mind... maybe I can find peace of mind in death?!”

Doaa Rouqa expressed the same feelings, and other fears, on her Facebook page, after she survived for the third time an Israeli raid on the courtyard of Shuhada al-Aqsa Hospital, in which five people were killed: “Will I be burned to death or be killed by a fragment from a missile?! This question haunts me … I don’t want to be torn apart by a rocket, I want my whole body to be whole, when I die.”

What Faris and Al-Sharif say, and what Rouqa wishes for, sum up the situation faced by many journalists in Gaza, male and female, after living through and covering this latest war.

On October 7, 2023, Gazans woke to the sound of explosions. One journalist described rockets filling the sky. As they rushed to cover the war, none of the journalists expected it to last this long. Though Gaza has experienced several wars, the longest lasted no more than fifty-one days. But now journalists found themselves facing a seemingly endless war that few seemed likely to survive.

“The things you see stay with you, the sounds you hear, the sirens, the explosions, and the screams of people in pain... it’s all very disturbing and draining. You can’t go through this for long periods without it leaving a mark,” says Kate Porterfield, psychologist at the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma.

Journalists, both men and women, do more than merely record what happens in war, they also live it in detail every day. “When we talk to people who’ve lost their families, we find ourselves weeping too and we share their feelings, because we’ve lived through what they have,” says journalist Yousef Faris, who works in northern Gaza.

Journalist Salman al-Bashir said during a live broadcast, after being told that his colleague Mohammed Abu Hattab and 11 members of his family had been killed: “We are being killed live on air… at different times.” But despite all these pressures and threats, journalists continue to work.

The 34-year-old journalist Mostafa Garrour sleeps in a tent in the courtyard of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, which he shares with five other journalists. He ended up there after spending the first two months of the war moving between Al- Shifa Hospital in Gaza City and Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis.

Garrour works for a local media organisation. He says “they’re careful to remind you about physical safety and staying out of danger... In that way the organisation is doing what it can, but institutions in general don’t ask journalists whether or not they’re okay! They don’t have the time to do that.” He adds that what ultimately matters to these organisations is getting hold of the journalistic material. Despite him being a "survivor of four previous wars," he says this one is the most difficult.

On day three of the war, Garrour lost three close colleagues in an Israeli strike on a residential building, as previously documented by ARIJ. The video below shows Garrour collapsing and weeping as he hears confirmation that they are dead.

Mostafa Garrour receiving news of the deaths of journalists Saeed al-Taweel, Mohammed Sobh and Hisham Nawajhah, Oct 10, Shifa Hospital

Even the courtyard of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital was subjected to Israeli bombardment, in late March and most recently in early August. Garrour says: “Sometimes I can’t sleep, and when there is bombing like that, sleeping is impossible. It’s all become terrifying.”

Mostafa Garrour, like the other residents of Gaza, has experienced many horrors. His home was destroyed; he lost a number of his colleagues; and his family was displaced several times, before finally settling in the Al-Qarara district of Khan Yunis, where he cannot reach them easily. But what has affected him psychologically most of all, and something that has become part of his morning “routine”, is seeing the bodies of the dead lined up in every corridor of the hospital.

Garrour shares details of what he has experienced with fellow journalists with whom he shares a tent. But 36-year-old war correspondent Atia Darwish prefers to be alone and keeps many of the painful details to himself.

Darwish, who was injured while working some years ago, says that he used to feel frightened and anxious at the beginning of the war, mostly about hearing that his family’s or friends’ home had been bombed. But now this had changed. “This fear is gone! I just don’t feel it now. I can’t even cry anymore.”

As for support from media institutions, Darwish - who lost his brother, niece and eight other members of his family when their house was bombed – says that Arab and international press institutions for which he works do not ask “at the moment” about his mental state, but only about what he needs to go on working.

What Darwish says is consistent with the testimony of journalist Mohammed Ismail Dahrouj. When he was injured, Dahrouj says that the organisation he worked for contacted him and was keen to offer him support. By contrast, when they were trapped inside Al-Shifa Hospital for days, no organisation asked how he was. So, journalists will receive attention from media institutions when their injuries are obvious, but no one pays attention to the hidden wounds.

Abdullah Obaid, on the other hand, says that what motivates him to continue working is that his manager is continually in touch to check that he is all right. But at the same time, the media institution provides no financial support for mental health issues. Obaid says he has been through four previous wars and received no support from any institution.

ARIJ managed to collect data from 125 male and female journalists in the Gaza Strip, of whom 105 said they urgently needed to talk about what they had witnessed during the current war on Gaza.

The survey showed that over half the journalists (64) feel afraid and tense while covering events, while 72 journalists said they deliberately keep busy to escape their feelings.

We also found that 69 journalists thought their social relationships had been negatively impacted by covering the war, while 77 reported having severe mood swings. The figures indicate that 75.2 percent of journalists cannot free themselves from what they have witnessed and experienced, even after they stop working.

Faris finds that, by working over 16 hours a day, he can escape the psychological pressures of this war. "Journalistic work isn’t a blessing for the person doing it except in war. If you’re working, you have a trusted path to escape from what is happening now and from worrying about what might happen.” Faris tried stopping work for one day but could not manage it.

He has not stopped publishing stories on the suffering of people in northern Gaza since the beginning of the war and asks: “Is it possible for someone who’s psychologically normal to write eighty stories, submit forty video reports and twenty-five television stories for the five biggest Arab media organisations in just one month… and to keep this up for six months?”

Regarding the support he receives from organisations with which he works as a journalist, Yousef Faris explains that his relationship with them has taken on a more humanitarian aspect in the course of the war, and gone beyond merely a working relationship. They contact him daily to check he and his family are all right. Faris says that he cut his links with international media institutions – even though the work with them produces better return, because they did not measure up on the humanitarian scale, as he puts it.

Our figures show that 53 of the journalists surveyed have not had a day’s leave since the war began on October 7 last year. Even those who stopped work for a few days - because they had to move home or were arrested – and even those who were injured went back to work straight away.

Security and physical safety expert Abeer Saady says that the risk comes when local war correspondents becoming emotionally involved in reporting in conflict zones, because then the reporter’s awareness of their own security and physical safety disappears. She emphasizes that journalists need to create some distance between themselves and the events.

Saady notes that war correspondents, for example, keep themselves busy so as to escape their thoughts and not be prone to psychological shocks or “trauma.” She argues strongly that such reporters need to have psychological support sessions once they feel “relatively safe” - be this after a ceasefire or when they have moved to a safer place - because this is the stage at which they can comprehend what they have been through.

Our survey of journalists also revealed that 93 out of the 125 who responded to our questionnaire had lost family members, 46 – men and women - had been injured, and the majority (117) had risked their lives.

An earlier ARIJ investigation found that 72 out of 213 journalists had had family members killed, including 49 who had lost first-degree relatives, and that 11 had lost one or more of their children.

All the journalists surveyed had also had to relocate, 88 of them at least five times, and 81 (64%) had become separated from their families.

Wafa Abdul Rahman, director of “Filastiniyat”, a non-governmental media organisation that has been giving psychological support to journalists of both sexes since 2014, does not play down the importance of journalists receiving psychological support. But she thinks there are basic needs facing all Palestinians in Gaza, including clean water, and shelters where they can protect themselves and their families. "Journalists can’t be separated from their environment and that of their families... living and staying alive must come first."

In the same context, Dart Center psychologist Kate Porterfield underlines how important it is for someone’s basic needs for food, rest, and stability to be met, if they are to be able to do their job.

Experts in mental health see the need to offer psychological support to journalists ahead of their coverage work, as well as giving them body armor for their physical protection, especially in conflict zones. In addition, they must be offered mental health processing sessions, to talk about the mission they accomplished after it is over.

In the survey that we conducted for this investigation, 57 out of 125 journalists (46.5 %) stressed that the organisations they work for have been checking on them all the time.

On the other hand, 51 journalists believe that the organisations that they work for fail to offer them adequate mental health support, and necessary advice to preserve their mental wellbeing.

After the coverage ends, 33 journalists only (26.4 %) said that their organisations requested them to prepare a concise report detailing what they had faced in their field work. In addition, 83 journalists said in their responses that they worked long hours, which is to be added to what was expressed by others earlier, that they had to work continuously, without taking a break.

Finally, the survey revealed that 25 journalists only (20%), believe that those organisations had a clear strategic plan to provide mental health support for their journalists after the war ends.

What complicates matters more for the journalists male and female in Gaza, is the fact that most media organisations they work for are incapable of offering them help to leave the coverage locations in Gaza.

Yousef Faris’s experience is that organisations he works with as a stringer are only committed to him to the extent of the work that they agree for him to provide, which is usually less than that offered for their full-time employees. He points out that the organisation “has no legal commitment towards him” according to the nature of his freelance contract.

Faris stresses, on the other hand, that the organisations he has worked with long before the start of the war are committed to providing a range of rights. These include compensation, danger money and holiday pay as well as covering production costs, and other obligations, even though he is contracted on the same piecework basis.

Kate Porterfield, the psychologist at the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, argues that this is the real test for newsrooms today: “Our colleagues in the field, who work as stringers, and are extremely important to our work, may not enjoy the same safety cover or the same resources. But this question is first and foremost an ethical one.”

In the survey we conducted as part of this investigation, it emerged that over half of the journalists included in the questionnaire (74 men and women) were working as independents. About half of the total (sixty-one journalists) said that the support given by media organisations to freelancers was less than that provided to their full-time staff.

Wafa Abdul Rahman, the head of Filastiniyat, estimates that 70 per cent of journalists working in Gaza are independents. She points out that some international and Arab organisations have freelance contracts with their correspondents that go on for years, which means they have no legal obligations towards these journalists. "I don’t mean local institutions that have been suffering even before the current genocide... I’m talking about the way some international and Arab organizations are exploiting the needs of journalists to work."

Shorouk Asaad, a member of and spokeswoman for the General Secretariat of the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate, says that both male and female journalists in Gaza are suffering “trauma”. “In a place like Palestine, where there are ever more killings, arrests, and injuries, physical safety is a priority for us as a union...but mental health too is also a high priority.”

She points out that, during the latest war on Gaza, the union has provided journalists with food aid, physical safety equipment and other emergency aid such as tents. And she says that the union is in daily contact with both male and female journalists in Gaza.

Asaad argues that the amount of help the union can provide is limited by its own material resources: “We are committed to all journalists, but we cannot provide support to all of them, given the numbers. So, we provide help to some, and then move on to others on the list.”

Filastiniyat director Wafa Abdel Rahman says that her organization used to provide psychological support in three ways: group sessions to provide psychological release; “retreats” offering journalists some relief and recreation by taking them away from work for a few days so they could disconnect from the work pressure; and finally, individual sessions with a psychologist.

But she believes that it is impossible to hold psychological release sessions with the continuing Israeli war on the Gaza Strip, since a journalist is not going to break off from work for an hour or two to sit in his tent and take part in such a session.

The spokeswoman for the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate says that media organisations for which journalists work do not see mental health as a priority, except if they are forced to by other institutions as part of training programs or by some other means of support.

According to Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate figures, over 165 journalists were killed in the current Israeli war on Gaza up to the end of September, out of a total civilian death toll of some forty thousand.

Even those journalists who have survived - so far – are left with severe psychological scars. Some say that, after their colleagues were killed, they felt more fear and anxiety about themselves and their families. Others, however, feel that the targeting of journalists has increased their determination to keep on covering the “Israeli crimes” in Gaza.

Filastiniyat’s programme coordinator, Mona Khader, highlights the importance of psychological support and self-care being integral to the work of every media institution. But she notes that some institutions consider it a “luxury,” even when asking their journalists to take leave to attend a psychological processing workshop. This puts yet another burden on journalists, some take a leave from work at their own expense to attend, others avoid going on these programmes all together.

Kate Porterfield, psychologist at the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, says that journalists show a great deal of resilience at work, but that does not mean that they are indestructible and can go on like this forever.

Spokeswoman for the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate Shorouk Asaad, stresses how important it is for journalists to safeguard their mental health if they are to keep working: “Psychological safety is just as important as physical safety. We may lose journalists not only because they are killed or wounded, but just because of mental health issues.”

She adds that institutions which are not based locally provide insufficient support to journalists working constantly under the stress of war, compared to the help given to journalists in Ukraine, Afghanistan and Iraq, for example.

We contacted several regional and international press organizations to find out about how they handle journalists in Gaza. Among them was Deutsche Welle (DW), which says it currently has no crews in the Gaza Strip.

DW said that it was currently using independent journalists in Gaza: “In general, we are prepared to provide all kinds of assistance and support to independent reporters, including psychological support, despite what are currently very limited possibilities.”

Regarding the difference in support offered to journalists, based on the nature of their contract, DW confirmed that its pay rates match the volume of work the journalist provides. DW does, however, provide advice and support services.

The communications officer for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), Robin Miller, responded by saying that the organisations’ employees in Gaza had received hostile environment and first aid training, including a session on trauma awareness and self-care. The BBC also said that, after the outbreak of the war on Gaza, in October 2023, employees had received psychological support from their line managers, with advice on handling security risks, and had been given individual sessions with an Arabic-speaking therapist specialising in trauma.

“The journalists’ and correspondents’ line managers also had a session with a psychiatrist who has worked with people in conflict zones on how to support staff in Gaza, and also how to take care of themselves,” said Miller.

The BBC also said it provides information and resources to support the mental health of its employees, who can access its confidential employee assistance programme 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The BBC did not respond, however, to the question of how many independent journalists it works with in the Gaza Strip. Nor did it make clear if there was any difference in the amount of support it provided, based on the nature of the journalist’s contract or work.

Apart from the BBC and Deutsche Welle, none of the many regional and international media institutions we contacted have replied, up to the date this investigation was published.

Yousef Faris, a journalist who has not been able to see his wife and three children since the first month of the war - comments on what motivates him to go on covering it: “Journalism has given us so much… it would make no sense to betray our loyalty to this profession when it is put to the test.” He stresses that if he were to stop working, he would not only be letting down the profession, but also betraying “the victim, who does not want to die in the dark.”

This investigation was completed with support from ARIJ