When the Internet Goes Dark, the Truth Goes With It

Alaqad says that due to the fact that accepted media outlets prime and take what to amusement their audiences, losing on-the-ground journalists means losing parts of the truth. “When the radical are being silenced and censored, and they don’t person a abstraction for them to speech oregon a level to explicit what’s happening, and for america to spot what’s happening done their eyes, determination volition ever beryllium limitations [on] however overmuch we know,” she says.

In each crisis, erstwhile connection breaks down, accountability is mislaid and injustice becomes easier to ignore. “Injustice is ace loud,” Alaqad says. “Justice needs to beryllium louder.”

Targeted

Journalists are besides silenced permanently. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) wrote successful December 2025 that 67 media professionals were killed that year, 43 percent of whom were killed successful Gaza by Israeli equipped forces. The full fig of journalists killed successful Gaza since October 7, 2023 has risen to implicit 220, according to the RSF. The UN estimation sits astatine much than 260.

“When we look astatine it wrong the model of imposing a prohibition connected the overseas property entering Gaza now, much than 2 years into that war, erstwhile they are restricting the escaped question of journalists wrong Gaza and into Gaza, erstwhile we are talking astir an unprecedented massacre of journalists, the targeting of media offices and the targeting of connection infrastructure conscionable becomes different portion of that puzzle, which aims astatine imposing a media blackout,” Dagher says. Israel has repeatedly denied claims that it targets journalists oregon media infrastructure.

“Killing journalists means sidesplitting and silencing the truth,” Alaqad says. In her experience, this strategy works connected aggregate levels—killing journalists means less radical reporting connected the ground, but equally, it turns journalists into a menace to the people. “This is besides sending a connection to the radical that each journalists are a threat, don’t speech to journalists, enactment distant from journalists,” she explains.

She recalls her parent begging her not to deterioration her property vest and helmet. Meant to signify neutrality and support journalists successful the field, instead, it made her consciousness similar a target. “It’s expected to protect, but connected the contrary, it really puts hazard connected your beingness and adjacent connected your beloved ones and the ones astir you,” she explains.

Alaqad says it was not ever this way. Early on, radical would greet journalists, connection them food, and convey them for their work. “After a mates of months, erstwhile they’d seen journalists getting targeted, Palestinians started treating journalists differently,” she says.

To study successful Gaza was to enactment wrong a scenery wherever clip itself was unstable and not guaranteed. Plans seldom extended beyond daylight. Conversations ended abruptly. Addresses became memorials overnight. “The lone certainty successful Gaza is uncertainty,” Alaqad says.

She recalls interviewing families and readying to instrumentality the adjacent day, lone to find that the radical she spoke with had been killed successful airstrikes.

She has since near Gaza, and is pursuing a master’s grade successful media studies astatine the American University of Beirut. She received the Shireen Abu Akleh Memorial Endowed Scholarship, named for the Palestinian writer killed by Israeli forces successful May 2022.

Digital Truths

Going viral connected societal media helped her scope people, but it besides enactment her astatine risk. “It showed millions of radical astir the satellite what’s happening successful Gaza, but astatine what cost? Being successful Gaza could outgo you your life, particularly arsenic a journalist,” she says.

Despite the scope of integer reporting, she does not spot its permanence. Accounts disappear, posts are removed and videos are lost. What is disposable contiguous whitethorn beryllium gone tomorrow.