A familiar statistic: The Israeli military has killed some 34,000 Palestinians in Gaza in just six months. Another statistic, familiar to us in the magazine business: Around 100 of those killed were journalists.
The life of a media worker has no special value, except that we live to transmit information. During this particular war, which feels more like an annihilation, the Israeli government has banned reporters from entering Gaza while targeting those who were already there.
From where I live and work as a writer, in New York City, the resulting asymmetry of information compounds a longstanding material bias. The United States is Israel’s constant friend, its supplier of arms and blank-check legitimacy before the United Nations. Our newspapers and television networks quote Israeli sources with unqualified credence, while twisting syntax to question the humanity and intellect of Palestinians.
Casualty numbers are treated skeptically, as propaganda: “More than 10,000 killed in Gaza, Hamas-controlled health ministry says.” A massacre becomes a bundle of nouns with no one to blame: “As Hungry Gazans Crowd an Aid Convoy, a Crush of Bodies, Israeli Gunshots and a Deadly Toll.” Many outlets have published stories about the operations of Hamas — the use of hospitals as cover; the rape of women during the October 7 attacks on Israeli military forces and civilians — that were later revealed to be thinly sourced or false. Western media workers who resist such propaganda have been silenced and fired.
As a member of the Freelance Solidarity Project of the National Writers Union, which represents journalists and authors in North America, I’ve been in touch with our sibling organization in Palestine, the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate (PJS). In mid-March, I spoke with Amal Toman, a PJS member and radio journalist from Gaza, with the assistance of two Palestinian interpreters (who wished to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation). We reached Toman in Egypt, where she had escaped with her children and mother.
E. TAMMY KIM Give us some background on who you are and where you come from.
AMAL TOUMAN I was born in the city of Khan Yunis in the Gaza Strip, in Palestine, in 1982. I have four brothers and four sisters, and my father was an education guy — he was a school president — and my mom was a housewife.
ETK When you were young, what kind of journalism did you and your family consume? Was it newspapers, radio, TV? What made you want to become a journalist?
AT We always listened to the radio with my father. He was a man who loved politics. He was a man who loved to follow the news. Actually, that was something common to all Palestinians: We are very educated on a political level. In my first year of secondary school, I made a magazine, and I named it A Forbidden Question. I also wrote political theater.
ETK Were there women journalists in Gaza and the West Bank you especially admired?
AT I always read Nufouz Al-Bakri, of Al Hayat newspaper, and Omaima Juha, a journalist and political cartoonist with Al-Quds newspaper. I also saw a lot of news hosts and anchors on Palestine TV. I had a lot of role models, a lot of examples and people to look up to.
ETK How did you become a journalist?
AT My bachelor’s degree was in both Arabic literature and journalism. I worked as an editor for a magazine, and worked at a radio station. Then I worked at Palestine TV. In 2000, there was the Second Intifada of al-Aqsa. I saw how the Gaza Strip was divided into many sections. I used to live in the south of Gaza, and my university was in the city of Gaza. It was a long distance, so I sometimes had to sleep at the checkpoint.
In 2005, as an anchor, I covered the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. I remember that the Palestinians were saying farewell. They were very, very happy. But with the withdrawal of the Israeli army, I saw the Palestinian division between Fatah and Hamas. In 2010, I was selected to represent Gaza for the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate and I headed the women’s committee. In 2011, I graduated with my master’s degree. My thesis was about Palestinian mass media and its impact on the partition of Palestinians. I have been working for the radio station at Al-Azhar University — Gaza.
ETK Tell me about your family.
AT In 2012, I got married and I have three children. When we were living in the Al-Zaytoun neighborhood, it was always targeted by the occupation. I was always asking my husband to relocate us to a safer zone. He couldn’t do it. So, eventually, I broke up with him. I continued my life with my children in the Khan Yunis area. These painful events made me into a very solid and very strong woman.
ETK What has been your experience since October — your work, on the one hand, and your family life, on the other? How have you survived?
AT At the start of the war, on October 7, I was managing the radio station and representing the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate. I continued to play these roles while documenting violations that journalists were subjected to as the war on Gaza progressed. This included a number of journalists who were displaced; journalists who lost their homes, who were targeted; female journalists who were hurt, whose limbs were amputated, who have lost family members or suffered all types of losses. This is in addition to the journalists who were killed, who were martyred.
Women journalists in particular suffered from a lack of access to even the basic things in life. They couldn’t provide safety for their children, and suffered more in order to keep their children alive. Journalism became a crime to the occupation. So many women journalists lost their husbands, their children, their fathers or brothers. Women lost their privacy, and could not hide their tiredness or their needs, such as menstrual pads.
Through PJS, we obtained some relief and food assistance, and I took charge of distributing these packages to women journalists. The packages contained food, but also milk or formula for children. I went in with my personal vehicle during airstrikes.
ETK Where were you forced to go?
AT I was displaced first from Khan Yunis, and a second time, from Rafa. The occupation army spread pamphlets on our houses instructing us to leave. We had to leave everything: our memories, our degrees, our clothes, everything, everything — our dreams. We escaped because we were scared for our children, but if it had been up to us alone, we wouldn’t have left. I was displaced to a house that lacked the minimum requirements for life. It was like a storage locker. There was nothing — nothing clean, no electricity, no water; everything was cut. And of course I was very depressed, because I couldn’t communicate with my colleagues.
My younger daughter has a problem with her chest. She couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t take her to a hospital; hospitals weren’t receiving such patients. So, I had to cope one way or another. I felt like my daughter was dying in front of me, and I couldn’t help her. I was trying to advocate against the targeting of journalists while taking care of my children, and my sick mom was also with me.
ETK You are all in Egypt now. How did you manage to leave Gaza? What was the process?
AT I left the Gaza Strip on December 10, 2023. All I took was an ID and my passport, and my three children. The father of my children was in the U.K. He went to an embassy and asked for his children to be able to go from Gaza to Egypt. This was successful, and he went to Egypt to welcome the children.
I didn’t have any permission to go. They interrogated me many times on the Palestinian side. “Why are you leaving? Your name is not on the list.” I told them, “I am with my three children and I cannot leave them.” So I went to the Egyptian side. The security guards interrogated me. Again, I said, “I am leaving with my children. They are underage. How can I leave them?” After a lot of debate, they were convinced. They treated me as a mom, and they let me through.
My mother left four days after me. She was a humanitarian case — my brothers had gone to the Red Crescent. My mom is 78 years old. She has high blood pressure and heart problems. In Egypt, I took her to many health centers and we discovered after many tests that she has cancer. She got cancer from the white phosphorus that was bombed on Gaza.
ETK What happened to the radio station you were working at, at Al-Azhar University – Gaza?
AT It’s completely destroyed. Actually, they bombed the radio station. They bombed the university. It was completely destroyed, reduced to rubble. It was a very ugly act of violence. This was a very prestigious Palestinian university, founded in the ’90s. A lot of generations in Gaza have graduated from Al-Azhar University. We were very, very emotional and sad.
ETK Do you believe that Israel has been targeting journalists and journalistic organizations in Gaza?
AT Of course. It’s not a coincidence to have so many journalists killed. When I was distributing aid to women journalists, normal people were afraid to walk or live or be around a journalist, because journalists had become radioactive; they were putting other people in danger.
They destroyed almost every single journalistic station and form of media; they destroyed all of our tools, our cameras. Even social media journalists and social media activists were targeted. This is not to mention what happened to Shireen Abu Akleh, shooting her in broad daylight, and it was an intentional crime.
ETK Do female journalists face particular threats?
AT There are lots of violations reported every year against female journalists in Palestine. In the West Bank, women face humiliation and arrest. In one case, a journalist was seven months pregnant when she was arrested and interrogated. They didn’t allow her to use social media or to contact anybody. Female journalists face a lot of abuses by settlers and the Israeli army.
During this war, with the raids on houses in Gaza, women were told to strip and remove their hijabs. This is, of course, a privacy violation and a violation of their basic rights. This is very sensitive, because women in our culture are scared of rumors spreading. So they would keep these stories to themselves. Female journalists are very scared of this subject; they have to preserve their image in front of their families and society.
ETK Our sibling unions recently participated in the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women here in New York. What is your opinion of the United Nations and international responses to this war?
AT Since 1948, the United Nations has played a big humanitarian role for the Palestinian people. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency has provided relief and education and medical services. We don’t want to deny or ignore this fact. However, in this moment, this role has become obsolete. They don’t have power to make decisions or implement actions to stop this waterfall of blood. I really think that the United Nations has lost its importance. We feel like all of these powers are gathering around a table and watching our dreams burning, that the world is okay with our extermination.
ETK Do you intend to return to Gaza? What are your dreams and hopes in the coming months?
AT A few minutes ago, I got a photo of my house. It’s completely destroyed. I can still hear the sound of the bombs and the missiles. We’re in Egypt and we can still hear them. It’s like the sounds are still stuck in our ears. We have dreams about living in our house, being safe — and how we used to be as a family.
We’re always in a brain fog. We cannot think; we cannot enjoy. We cannot have normal lives, ever. It’s a nightmare. I wish that I’d never been born, so that I wouldn’t have to live through this war. Why are we doomed to be punished? Why are we chosen to be displaced and become homeless and go through all this suffering? Why us? Why anybody?
E. Tammy Kim is a contributing editor at Lux, a contributing writer at the New Yorker, and a Puffin fellow at Type Media Center.
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