Plestia Alaqad: Western Media Language Is Enabling Genocide
Palestinian journalist Plestia Alaqad has been a leading witness of the genocide in Gaza. In an interview with Jacobin, she explains how Western media misrepresentations have enabled Israel’s crimes.
Palestinian journalist Plestia Alaqad tells Jacobin that there will only be a real end to the genocide when people in Gaza can wake up without hearing news of more people murdered by Israel. (Ahmad Salem / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
- Interview by
- Elias Feroz
In The Eyes of Gaza: A Diary of Resilience, Palestinian journalist Plestia Alaqad offers a firsthand account of the first weeks of the bombardment of Gaza. Published in the United States in September 2025 by Workman Publishing, the book has swiftly become a New York Times bestseller.
Fleeting Gaza with her family in late 2023, Alaqad has spoken out against Western media distortions and the silencing of Palestinian voices. Named One Young World’s Journalist of the Year in 2024 and one of the BBC’s 100 Women of the Year, she has been a leading advocate for Palestinian rights and for the protection of journalists in so-called conflict zones.
Through personal diary entries and on-the-ground reporting, Alaqad’s book documents the destruction of her homeland, the loss of colleagues, and the resilience of a people under siege. In this interview, Alaqad discusses the role of language in documenting violence, Palestinians’ intergenerational experiences of displacement and trauma, and her critical perspective on the ceasefire agreement.
You’ve written recently on Instagram that the hardest country to publish your book in was the United States because publishers feared the word “genocide.” You’ve also criticized how language in Western media distorts reality and avoids using the term. How do you view the broader debate around language in reporting on Gaza?
For two years, while Gaza bled before the world’s eyes, mainstream outlets spoke of “conflict,” “escalation,” or a “humanitarian crisis,” but rarely of “genocide.” Only now has the United Nations confirmed what Palestinians have been saying from the start.
Often it is framed as an “Israel–Hamas war.” If this is truly a war between Israel and Hamas, then why are children being deliberately starved to death? Babies are dying, families are being erased, and yet the debate over words continues — as though the extermination of a people needed further proof. And yet it is also heartbreaking that we often invoke the suffering of children to awaken empathy, as if the killing of men, women, and the elderly were somehow less shocking.
Since leaving the Gaza Strip, have you felt pressured to adjust your own language?
Anyone who is still alive in Gaza is alive purely by luck. Journalists are a target — in fact, almost everyone there is — and the death toll just keeps rising. You keep asking yourself, what if something I say triggers Israel and makes me the next target? I used to think that once I left Gaza, I would finally be free — that I could speak openly without fear, because at least I wouldn’t be killed by Israeli bombs or missiles. But I soon realized that wasn’t true. There are actually things I could say more freely inside Gaza than I can say outside of it.
This year, for instance, I gave an interview to a Swiss journalist who ultimately refused to publish it — simply because I spoke about Palestine and Palestinians, while he kept insisting on asking about rockets and missiles over the skies of Israel, as if we Palestinians didn’t exist. For two years now, international journalists have hesitated to name what they’re witnessing — and it’s the people and journalists in Gaza who are paying the price for their silence. Journalists are not “dying,” they are being “killed.” Language is enabling this genocide.
You recently posted on Instagram that “The Genocide is over.” Given the recent ceasefire, do you believe this marks a real end to the violence?
I am not naive — I know the occupier’s word means nothing. We’ve seen ceasefire agreements shatter before. But after two years of blood and rubble, I wanted to express my hope. Still, no one will truly believe that the genocide is over until Palestinians can wake up without the sound of rockets or the news of murdered people. A ceasefire doesn’t mean that life in Gaza will return to “normal.” Many people are still missing without a trace — we don’t know whether they’re alive or not, or what will unfold in the coming days. We shouldn’t forget that one of the main reasons we lack information about Gaza is because journalists have been deliberately targeted and killed.
You’ve said that for two years much of your work has focused on humanizing Palestinians. Do you see any change in how international media portrays Palestinians?
I do see a shift, but it’s important to remember that all the footage and reporting the media broadcasts exists only because of the sacrifice of Palestinian journalists. If there is any change in how Palestinians are portrayed, it’s thanks to the journalists and media workers who risked — and continue to risk — their lives reporting from Gaza. Many of them have been killed, yet others are still there, bearing witness.
In your book, you describe how sad you felt having to leave your colleagues Mohamed and Hatem, who were also visible in your reporting on Instagram during the first days after October 7 in Gaza. Have you heard from them recently, and are they still reporting from Gaza?
Yes, they’re both alive, alhamdulillah [meaning “all praise belongs to God” in Arabic], and they’re still in Gaza, continuing to report. I recently interviewed them for a piece I’m currently writing for Rolling Stone MENA.
A couple of weeks ago, Hatem’s daughter asked him why she couldn’t have a pomegranate. How can he explain that there are no pomegranates, barely any flour, and that this is done deliberately — that her hunger is being used as a weapon? I saw colleagues with sunken cheeks and frail bodies, barely able to stand, documenting their own starvation for anyone abroad in the hope that someone will act. These circumstances make reporting nearly impossible. Who will report if the reporters themselves have to work under these conditions? And yet I keep asking: Why do my colleagues have to prove their own starvation?
Gaza has become the deadliest place in the world for journalists and media workers, with more than two hundred killed since October 2023. In your book, you also describe the immense loss and trauma you’ve experienced. How do you deal with your trauma in your daily life?
There’s really no way to deal with it, since the suffering is not over yet. I wake up every morning not knowing if I’ll lose a loved one who is still in Gaza and didn’t have the privilege to escape the violence. I always hoped it would be over after a few days or months. Now two years have passed. There can be no healing as long as the suffering and killing continue and no certainty that it will ever stop. Healing is impossible while suffering and violence persist, with no guarantee that they will ever cease.
You often share the story of your grandmother Fatma, who was displaced from Jaffa as a child in 1948 and then again from Gaza in 2023 at the age of seventy-eight. What does it mean for you personally to carry and retell these stories of repeated displacement within your own family?
The reason I always share my grandparents’ story is to remind the world that history didn’t start on October 7, 2023. Palestinians have been suffering and facing displacement for decades. My grandmother Fatma now lives with the rest of my family in Australia, after being displaced at least five times in her life. Jaffa was the home where she was born and raised, until she was forced to leave at just two years old. Gaza then became her new home — until she was displaced again in 2023. Her house was bombed, adding yet another layer of trauma to a lifetime of displacement.
How would you describe your life before October 7, 2023?
I’ve recently posted a video on Instagram about October 7, and how people will memorize that date but stayed silent before it and during the two years that followed. What about life before October 7? Life under occupation, life under siege? Constant fear of when the next Israeli air strike would come, limited hours of electricity, scarce clean water, restrictions on movement. Even the sea was restricted — limitations on how far you can swim or go fishing. Drones from the Israeli military always watching the sky.
Life before October 2023 was never normal. Even then, you never knew what would happen. Because of the extreme violence happening now, people start missing that life back then and tend to romanticize it. But it wasn’t normal, and it should never have been considered normal.
The subtitle of your book, A Diary on Resilience, is particularly striking, as the diary chronicles so much suffering and trauma. Why did you choose this title, and how do you understand resilience in the context of the events you lived through?
I’m not describing my own experience in Gaza as resilience. I’m describing the people of Gaza and their stories as resilient. In the book, I write about the people I met, their lives, and their struggles. I don’t try to romanticize their pain, but I want to show the world that despite everything, Gaza teaches us what resilience truly means.
What does it mean to wake up every day knowing you could be killed at any moment and still carry on? There’s a video of a little girl, with bombs in the background. You can hear the sounds of bombs and drones, yet her family sang “Happy Birthday” to her, their voices louder than the bombs, trying to cover the sound. This, to me, is what resilience means.
Now you travel a lot and participate in numerous panels worldwide to share these stories.
Yes, but the restrictions did not end when I left Gaza. I only have a Palestinian passport. So with my Palestinian passport, to be able to enter certain countries — to travel to the United States, the UK, or Germany, for example — I need a lot of paperwork just to prove that I’m a genuine and “legitimate” visitor who will only stay a few days and then leave. People with powerful passports, on the other hand, can enter Palestine, while I cannot. I cannot return to Gaza, my home, even if I wanted to. It feels as if I am stuck. Others, who aren’t even Palestinian, can travel to my homeland, yet I cannot go to theirs — or even to my own.
After leaving Gaza, you chose to pursue your master’s degree in Beirut, even though the city hasn’t been particularly safe in the past year. What motivated you to study there despite the risks?
I received the Shireen Abu Akleh Scholarship and am pursuing my master’s in media studies, which I consider a great honor. It feels like I’m continuing her legacy in journalism, and being in Lebanon makes me feel close to home. Last year, I had to pause my studies due to the “pager attack,” so I was only there for about a month and a half before the university switched to online classes. I then took a semester off and have now returned. Unlike Gaza, Lebanon is a big country. Even if certain areas in Lebanon experience violence, it doesn’t make the entire country unsafe as in Gaza.
Your book narrates the first weeks of the bombing in Gaza. You left your homeland in November 2023. Do you still write in your diary regularly?
Of course. I’ve always written since I was young. For me, writing is a way to document my life, and it’s also therapeutic. I have many diaries, especially since I travel a lot — some in Australia with my parents, some in Lebanon while I’m doing my master’s. But I also have one diary that always travels with me. That’s why I love writing and I believe in its power to document and preserve experiences.
In light of the past two years of suffering, is it even possible for you to remain hopeful?
Even if the bombing stops, the question remains: What will happen to the Palestinians in Gaza? What is the plan? Gaza’s entire infrastructure has been destroyed. Under these conditions, it’s hard to remain optimistic until we can truly witness an end to the genocide. While stopping the bombing is, of course, necessary, it is also far from enough. We will believe there is a ceasefire only when hospitals are rebuilt and medical supplies can enter; when students return to schools and universities; when homes are restored and families come back; when borders are open and freedom of movement is real — and when children are no longer afraid to look at the sky.