By Fatima Salameh
Across Lebanon’s skies and streets, the sound of bombardment has not been the only echo. A silence settles after it; heavy, unfinished. It belongs to journalists who fell while the truth rose.
Since October 2023, being a reporter in Lebanon has meant more than bearing witness. It has meant standing where the strike will land. Camera raised. Waiting.
Issam Abdallah was not on a battlefield. He stood behind his camera when a single strike cut the frame short. The image remained. He did not.
Farah Omar became the story she once told, falling alongside Rabih Maamari, who shared with her word and image until both were taken in the same moment.
The bleeding did not stop: Hadi Al-Sayed, Kamel Karaki, Ghassan Najjar, Mohammad Reda, Wissam Qassem, and Ali Hassan Ashour; names that once filled the broadcasts, now returned as silence.
Ali Shouaib knew the South inch by inch. He remained despite imminent danger, as if his blood would one day return to its soil.
Inside a clearly marked press vehicle, Ali Shouaib, Mohammad and Fatima Ftouni trusted visibility. It failed them. The strike did not miss. It ended the scene.
Amal Khalil sought shelter alongside fellow journalist Zeinab Faraj. The place they hid was struck, followed by another. Khalil remained under the rubble for hours. No warning. No interval. No way out.
They were not numbers. They were voices cut mid-sentence. Frames left open. Stories without endings.
What is unfolding cannot be dismissed as collateral damage. It repeats too cleanly, too often. It points to something deliberate: A thinning of witness, a quieting of testimony.
Journalists are civilians, and targeting them is not a mistake; it is a violation. It is a war crime.
And still, the story does not end. Each name leaves a mark that resists erasure. From Issam Abdallah to Amal Khalil, the trace endures. In Lebanon, as in Palestine, truth is written in blood; not to disappear, but to be read.
No comments:
Post a Comment