Fatima Hassouna. A name you’ve probably never heard. Yet she was there, in Gaza, documenting the war — day after day, ruin after ruin. She wasn’t a fighter, nor a military target. She was a photojournalist. A witness. A voice through the lens. On April 16, 2025, the Israeli army deliberately targeted her home in the Al Tuffah neighborhood of northern Gaza. Ten people were killed. Her entire family. Wiped out.
This is no longer a war. It’s an erasure. Entire families are being decimated — obliterated in their homes, buried beneath the rubble of their own lives. This is not collateral damage. It’s a method. Fatima’s death brings the official toll of Palestinian journalists killed since the beginning of the offensive to 157. Some sources now speak of over 200 journalists killed*: an unprecedented massacre. And a chilling message: even the world’s eyes must be silenced.
That silence is deafening. The Israeli army has refused to comment on the strike. Meanwhile, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) states bluntly: “Gaza has become a mass grave for Palestinians and those who try to help them.” How many more bodies, how many more children crushed, how many families erased, before the international community stops looking away?
A cruel twist of timing: just one day before the bombing, the ACID (Association for the Independent Cinema and its Distribution) announced the selection of a documentary for Cannes — Put your soul on your hand and walk, the result of a year-long video exchange between Fatima and exiled Iranian filmmaker Sepideh Farsi. A lifeline between two women separated by war, bound by courage and truth.
Fatima won’t see the finished film. She died with her family, buried under the ruins of what was once a home, a world, a story. The film may carry her voice — but that is no longer enough.
It’s time to speak the truth plainly: entire families are being wiped out in Gaza, when they are not the victims of targeted journalist assassinations. A society is being destroyed — life by life, stone by stone, breath by breath. Impunity cannot be the final word in this tragedy.
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Note:
See the campaign launched by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), widely relayed by international media, including the op-ed “We, French journalists, stand in solidarity with our colleagues in Gaza”, signed by a large number of journalists and published on the website of the SNJ (National Union of Journalists) as well as in Le Monde on April 13, 2025.
Also worth reading: the investigation by Forbidden Stories, titled “The Gaza Project”, which delves into the deaths of more than 100 journalists in Gaza. Their media partners on this investigation include: Paper Trail Media – Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ) – Le Monde – The Guardian – AFP – +972 Magazine – Local Call – Radio France – Der Spiegel – Der Standard – ZDF – Tamedia Group.
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