By Raiyana Malik
Hossam Shabat and I aren’t very different on paper. We were close in age. We both studied journalism. We both had big dreams. Except he’s now six feet under, and I’m drowning in guilt.
Since 2023, between 147 and 232 journalists have been killed in Gaza. Hossam is just another number to the world. Another name on a growing list of Palestinian journalists murdered for doing their jobs—for documenting the genocide of their own people.
But he was more than a statistic. He was 23 years old from Northern Gaza. He was a son, a brother, a friend. He was a freelance journalist at Al Jazeera Mubasher who, despite the bombs, the starvation, the destruction, still picked up his camera and reported the truth. The kind of journalist I strive to be.
I wonder if he was scared. If he ever thought about stopping. If he ever let himself imagine a future beyond the war, beyond the grief. Or if he knew deep down, that his press vest wouldn’t protect him, that his byline might one day become his obituary.
When I sit in my classes, when I stress over deadlines, when I dream about my future in journalism, I think about how unfair it is that I simply get to. That I get to complain about assignments while Hossam had to document the erasure of his home. That I get to imagine a career while he was murdered for simply doing his job.
I think about how, if I were in his place, I don’t know if I’d have his courage. The people of Palestine truly are the most resilient and brave.
Hossam didn’t get to live. He didn’t get to grow old, to build a career, to experience the mundane and beautiful things that come with simply existing.
But his words, his work, his name—they still exist. They still matter. They will not be erased. We cannot forget the journalists of Gaza—past, present and future. And that’s why I’m writing this. Because despite the evil in this world who want them to be just another number, I refuse to let that happen. We have to refuse to let that happen.
اللهم ارحمه وادخله جنة الفردوس
Allahu arhamhu wa adkhilhu jannatul firdaus.
May Allah (God) have mercy on him and grant him Jannah (Paradise).
Riadh Magazine 
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