Elaine Loughlin: Do you wonder why you're not seeing reports from Gaza?

After more than 18 months, genocide has become normalised in Gaza, writes Elaine Loughlin

Palestinians collect belongings from a school used as a shelter by displaced residents that was hit twice by Israeli airstrikes on Tuesday, killing more than 25 people, in Bureij, central Gaza Strip. Picture: Abdel Kareem Hana/AP

"Do you realise that there is less news and footage coming out of Gaza?

“That’s because the journalists have either been killed or wounded. The ones that are alive are either severely ill or too starved to manage any energy beyond the attempt to secure food and water.

“This is what Israel wanted when they declared a war of attrition back in November 2023.

“The whole world should be reporting what they have learned up to this point. The whole world owes the journalists and people that documented and appealed to stop a warmongering regime.”

These are not my words, but those of American-born Palestinian writer and commentator Mariam Barghouti — which I read while trying to find the right words for this column.

After more than 18 months, there are no descriptions graphic enough; no warnings from humanitarian organisations on the ground that can encompass the sustained brutalities; no new angles for the international media who have been blocked from accessing the strip to witness the full scale of destruction.

Genocide has become normalised.

Palestinians struggle to get donated food at a community kitchen in Khan Younis on the Gaza Strip on Monday. Today, the world is now standing by as Israel announces its intention to seize the enclave, take control over aid and force more than two million Palestinian civilians into a small area in the ruins of the south. Photo: AP/Abdel Kareem Hana

The horror statistics of bombings, amputations, forced displacement, and death pile up one on top of another — bodies upon bodies — losing meaning and impact.

When reporters become bereft of words, the most powerful tools at our disposal, it is easy to despair. But at this point — when Israel has put the world on notice that it intends to expand on the list of war crimes it has already committed — politicians, the media, and the public must not tune out.

In the early months of Benjamin Netanyahu’s bombardment of the Gaza Strip, the daily death toll was widely reported and easily available through a simple Google search. However, as the lives lost have climbed into the thousands and the tens of thousands, reporting has become more sporadic.

Mothers, daughters, sons, friends, and parents are dehumanised in death as they are added to an overall number. The stories of these lives lost are not being told because journalists are not being given permission to enter Gaza, while our Palestinian colleagues are being killed as they heroically go about their work.

Journalist killings

Shortly after lunch on Wednesday of this week, freelance reporter Yahya Sobeih headed to the Rimal neighbourhood in Gaza City — where the Israeli army had just bombed a popular restaurant in a crowded market area. 

Before leaving, he shared a photo on social media cradling his newborn daughter after becoming a father.

When he arrived at the restaurant to record the attack, a second Israeli airstrike hit and killed him.

Journalist Yahya Sobeih was killed in the Israeli strike on the Thai restaurant and the market west of central Gaza City.

The incident bore all the hallmarks of what is known as a ‘double-tap strike’, when a second attack on the same location is delayed long enough for responders to flood into the area.

“Enough! Words fail to convey the endless nightmare faced by journalists in Gaza. Yahya Sobeih was torn from his profession and his family by a bomb from the Israeli armed forces,” Reporters Without Borders director general Thibaut Bruttin said afterwards.

“The impunity for crimes committed against these reporters cannot be tolerated, yet the international community continues to fail each day to force Israel to protect Palestinian journalists.”

Sobeih’s name has been added to the list of reporters killed. He is a statistic, but he was also a father to a daughter who now will never know him.

Yesterday, the Committee to Protect Journalists’ preliminary investigations showed at least 178 journalists and media workers were among the tens of thousands killed in Gaza, the West Bank, Israel, and Lebanon since the war began, making it the deadliest period for journalists since the committee began gathering data in 1992.

The committee is also investigating more than 130 additional cases of potential killings, arrests, and injuries, but many are difficult to document given the restrictions imposed on external observers.

Programme director, Carlos Martinez de la Serna, said in New York this week:

Every time a journalist is killed, injured, arrested, or forced to go to exile, we lose fragments of the truth.

“Those responsible for these casualties face dual trials: One under international law, and another before history’s unforgiving gaze.”

'Genocidal'

It is now 15 months since Taoiseach Micheál Martin raised the alarm around the lack of information getting out of Gaza, stating that he feared the world does not yet know the “extent of the horrors” being carried out by Israel.

His words came at a time when the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had raided Nasser Hospital, the largest functioning health facility in the Palestinian enclave. Footage showed chaos, shouting, and gunfire in dark corridors filled with dust and smoke.

By last month, an Israeli air raid had left the last functioning hospital in northern Gaza non-operational — forcing critically ill patients onto the streets.

It is six months since the Taoiseach told my colleague, Paul Hosford, that Israel’s actions were “genocidal”.

Today, the world is now standing by as Israel announces its intention to seize the enclave, take control over aid — which has been blocked from entering since March — and force more than two million Palestinian civilians into a small area in the ruins of the south.

In the Dáil, Tánaiste Simon Harris admitted: “Israel is not listening. Nothing that has happened to date has changed the situation here in terms of Israel actually showing restraint, or issuing statements calling for restraint, when there is a government in Israel that plans doing the exact opposite.”

International reaction

But words and actions do have impact, even if the situation can feel hopeless.

This week, in the British House of Commons, Conservative MP Mark Pritchard — a strong supporter of Israel for decades — broke ranks with his party.

“I’ve been in this House 20 years. I have supported Israel pretty much at all costs quite frankly. But today, I want to say that I got it wrong and I condemn Israel for what it is doing to the Palestinian people in Gaza — and indeed in the West Bank — and I’d like to withdraw my support right now for the actions of Israel.”

A small but growing number of Tory members have also come out against official party policy to call for an immediate recognition of the Palestinian state.

The international reaction to Israel’s war crimes has been too slow. It has allowed for the continued denial of basic medical and humanitarian aid, the forced starvation of a people who were already living in an open air prison for many years, and the targeted murder of civilians and aid workers.

We cannot give up

Despite being restricted in our ability to fully report on what is going on, we in the media cannot give up. As futile as our reporting may feel, we must not give up.

The Irish Examiner has sent reporters to Lebanon, Israel, the West Bank, and Jordan. It has repeatedly spoken to doctors and aid workers on the ground — including UNRWA’s senior deputy director John Whyte, who is a guest on The Mick Clifford Podcast this week. 

This paper has used its front page and social media to platform powerful images from Gaza. It’s not enough, but it’s something the Irish Examiner will continue to do.

In her social media post, Barghouti reminded her hundreds of thousands of followers that Palestinians have said again and again: “Do it not for us, but for you.”

“Do it because what you see happening to us will be exported to you. I am telling you, actually, do it for us,” she wrote. “Even if this violence is not exported to you, just do it because it’s the right thing to do.”