Voices from Gaza: The unwavering courage of journalist Ghada Al Kurd

India Today

05-07-2025

In the dim glow of her screen, Palestinian journalist Ghada Al Kurd continues her work, even as her own body bears witness to the suffering she documents. After 21 months of conflict in Gaza, her commitment to telling the story of her people comes at a devastating personal cost—one that speaks to both the power of journalism and the human price of bearing witness. advertisement "Maybe you can't see on my face this is not my face I'm losing too much weight I lost for now almost 10 kilos and even my bones my muscles I cannot sometimes carry anything because I don't have enough food to continue to do my work," Ghada shares, her words carrying the weight of both physical exhaustion and unwavering determination.
This stark confession reveals more than statistics ever could about the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Gaza. Here is a professional journalist, trained to observe and report, becoming part of the very story she's trying to tell—not by choice, but by the cruel arithmetic of survival in a war zone.Survival Between StoriesThe reality of Ghada's daily existence challenges every assumption about what it means to practice journalism. While reporters in other conflict zones might retreat to safe hotels or press centers, Ghada's newsroom is a landscape of destruction where basic human needs become luxuries."Sometimes I sleep uh I'm hungry sometimes i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't have uh this kind of food because I'm i feel my stomach is refusing this kind of food which is unhealthy so i sometimes I sleep without eating i just drinking some water to stay alive," she explains, her repetition of "I don't know" capturing the disorientation that comes with prolonged hunger.The journalist who once might have grabbed coffee between interviews now faces a different reality: "We are depending sometimes on rice and some kind of lentils and we have some popular uh food uh here called falafel uh it's made from uh from beans and all the time we are eating beans... we don't have sugar or sweets we don't have chocolate or even like we don't have any kind of juice."The Mission ContinuesDespite these overwhelming challenges, Ghada remains clear about her purpose. "The mission or the duty of the journalist is to transfer the message of the Palestinian people here this is the most uh important thing that's annoying the community of Israel that annoying Israel that people here still are journalists uh professional journalists they still they are still working from here."Her words illuminate why journalism matters—not just as a profession, but as an act of resistance against erasure. In a place where "everything is being targeted," where safety depends on "luck," the simple act of continuing to report becomes both heroic and necessary.advertisementA Plea for ActionHer message to world leaders carries the urgency of someone who understands that time is measured differently when survival is at stake: "Our message is to put more pressure on both sides, Israelis and Hamas, to stop this killing, stop the starvation as soon as possible. We are dying. Two million people are dying here."The simplicity of her words—"We are dying"—cuts through political complexity to reach the most fundamental human truth.Ghada Al Kurd's story is ultimately one of courage—not the dramatic courage of a single heroic act, but the quiet, persistent courage of showing up, day after day, to bear witness when the world would rather forget. In her words, we hear not just the voice of a journalist, but the voice of a people refusing to be silenced, even as they face what she calls "two weapons now against us it's the killing and the starvation."Her sacrifice—measured in lost weight, in sleepless nights, in the constant proximity to death—ensures that Gaza's story continues to be told. And in that telling, there remains hope that the world will finally listen.- EndsTune InMust Watch