THE EYES OF GAZA

Piercing observations from a displaced Palestinian journalist.

After college in Cyprus, Alaqad returned home to Gaza, where she played tennis, socialized with other young Palestinians, and weighed her professional options. Her life was forever changed on Oct. 7, 2023, when Israel, responding to horrific attacks by Hamas, launched its ongoing war in Gaza. Alaqad’s account of the ensuing carnage is raw and brave. Citing historical precedents, she explains why Palestinians’ greatest fear is “having to forcibly leave our homes.” This fear became reality when an Israeli bomb hit her building that October, forcing her family to seek refuge in a hospital and, later, with relatives. In the weeks that followed, several of her loved ones and colleagues would be among the tens of thousands of Gazans killed by Israel. Alaqad was still a student when she decided to become a reporter, determined to “inform the world” about life in Gaza. After the war started, she filed reports for foreign news outlets and shot footage for social media, amassing 4 million Instagram followers. Her book’s diary-style entries contain harrowing imagery—ice cream trucks filled with corpses, a child so badly injured he cannot be identified, a baby’s bottle “under the rubble, full of milk.” She also witnesses remarkable community-mindedness. As Gazans aid displaced neighbors, a cabby gives Alaqad a free ride, asking only that she publish his photo and ask readers to pray for him “when I get killed.” She captures the mindset of a terrorized populace, describing how “a part of me is happy” when Israel bombs a hospital because it might mean the war is ending: “Which lives are left for you to target?” This is an important record of unfathomable brutality, which Alaqad describes with clarity and candor.

An arresting personal history of loss and survival in besieged Gaza.