Witnessing Gaza from Maastricht: Reflections on “Gaza: Journalists Under Fire”

Laughter, Clinking, Grief, Silence 

As the large entrance in the corner of the room opened, the room filled with the clinking of cutlery and loud chatter from the restaurant next door. The warm ambiance allowed those in the audience to comfortably settle into their seats, catching up with familiar faces. But when the door closed shut, jarring silence swooped back in, reminding everyone what they were there for. While the audience sat in the back, watching the suffering of Palestinians on screen, life in Maastricht continued unfazed.

On 11th September, 2025, Free Palestine Maastricht (FPM) hosted a screening of the documentary “Gaza: Journalists Under Fire”, taking place in Brandweerkantine at the back of the establishment, with the event being separated from the restaurant— An immense distance between suffering and spectatorship. We can continue to live our daily lives while the events in Gaza unfold in the background.

In an age of infinite documentation, such as livestreams, hashtags, endless posts, and more, the war in Gaza exposes a paradox: never before has suffering been so visible, yet never before has it been so easy to scroll past.

The documentary forces the audience to ask themselves: What happens when the cameras stop rolling? What happens when it all stops showing up on our feeds? When the voices of journalists are silenced, who remains a witness?

The Documentary: Faces Behind the Headlines

FPM organised the screening after the deaths of dozens of journalists in Gaza in order to underline the irreplaceable role of journalists in making violence visible. In particular, one of the FPM organisers noted that the deaths of the entire Al Jazeera team contributed largely to their inspiration for the event. The film was chosen not because it was perfect, but because it was one of the only documentaries on the issue available.

After a song and a poem dedicated to the event, the lights dimmed, and the polite conversations halted. The documentary opens with the face of Belal Jadallah. By the time the credits roll, he is dead: beginning with testimony and ending in silence.

The documentary, directed by Robert Greenwald and produced by Brave New Films, premiered in May 2025. It centres on attacks on Palestinian journalists and media workers, following the personal stories of journalists who were killed in Gaza during the ongoing conflict since October 7, 2023. The documentary states at least 178 journalists and media workers have been killed since the conflict began, representing an unprecedented loss exceeding journalist deaths in both World War I and World War II combined, calling for raising global voices against injustice and breaking the silence surrounding these attacks on journalists and civilians.

The documentary first features Belal Jadallah, who was the Director of the Press-House Palestine, as a leading figure in supporting independent journalism and mentoring young reporters. He was even described in the documentary as “the face” of Press-House Palestine. He was killed on November 19, 2023. He was trying to leave Gaza City but was denied safe passage at an Israeli military checkpoint.

The second featured is Heba Al-Abadla, a radio host and media activist who co-founded the Social Media Club-Palestine to empower women and youth through media. She was killed on December 5, 2023, in an Israeli airstrike, along with multiple family members, including her daughter. Her sister appears in the documentary, who lost “57 family members” in a single airstrike and continues to speak out despite living under siege and very difficult conditions with limited access to communication.

Isamail Al-Ghoul was the final profile focus. He was a 27-year-old Al Jazeera field reporter known for courageous coverage. He and his cameraman were killed in an Israeli airstrike on July 31, 2024, shortly after the assassination of a Hamas leader.

Narrative as Resistance: The Documentary’s Techniques 

The documentary’s most striking choice is its refusal to present what is happening in Gaza as abstraction. Instead, it collapses distance through intimate portraits. In other words, the film relies on the stark intimacy of faces rather than sweeping battlefields: the grief of a sister, the persistence of a young cameraman, the look of exhaustion that tells the story. By weaving the individual stories of Belal, Heba, and Ismail, the film refuses to let “178” remain a statistic.

Their stories are placed against a collage of loss: photographs layered over black and white stills, blood-red tints echoing the colour of spilled lives. These visuals transform the screen into an archive of memory: the audience is not merely shown war, but urged to remember names. Even in the beginning, the film opens with the pictures and names of journalists and media workers killed.

We see the lives that Belal, Heba, and Ismail lived, we see their deaths unfold, and we see the impact that it leaves on the lives around them. Belal’s death: grieved by those who worked under him. Heba’s death and the death of her family: grieved by her sister. And Ismail’s death: grieved by those on the ground he would talk to, his wife and young daughter, who still asks when she can see him again.

The intimate storytelling of the three journalists creates a structure that reinforces such relentlessness. Each journalist is introduced through their work, only for the narrative to shift to their killing, often alongside their families. This repetition builds a rhythm of grief that mirrors the reality on the ground: life, documentation, erasure. By the third story, the documentary urges the audience to recognise a pattern, not an accident: the deliberate targeting of truth-tellers.

At the same time, the film situates itself as a counter-narrative to “Israel’s Propaganda”. Following the screening of the documentary, there were two speakers at FPM’s event: Dr. Omar Kayed, on Israel’s propaganda tactics, and Iyad Sanded, on how media shapes public discourse today. Dr. Omar Kayed explained how Israel’s three propaganda pillars— victimhood, peace, and legend— structure Western perception. According to Dr. Kayed, Israel positions itself as the eternal victim (drawing on Holocaust memory), as the lone democratic force committed to peace, and as an undefeatable military power. The documentary attempts to dismantle each of those claims through its form: the faces of Palestinian journalists invert the victim narrative; the bombardment of civilian families erases any pretence of peace; and the persistence of Gaza’s reporters undermines the “legend” of an unstoppable army. In this sense, the film is not only documentation, but resistance to erasure.

Yet, this resistance is not without flaws. At times, the documentary overwhelms with grief, leaving the viewer paralysed rather than mobilised. But perhaps paralysis is the point: a demand to sit with discomfort, to refuse the luxury of detachment. Furthermore, the lack of broader historical and political context also means the film leans heavily on the emotional rather than the analytical. It tells us who dies and how, but less about the larger machinery that was briefly or indirectly mentioned that sustains the violence: capitalism, international complicity, and the role of European states.

Even so, the documentary almost weaponises the very image of the press vest and helmet. Instead of protecting, these symbols of neutrality and rights under international humanitarian law are re-coded as targets. By showing journalists in their unmistakable blue vests, the film exposes a dystopian reversal: protection has become vulnerability, and international law “serves for nothing” when ignored with impunity.

Silence was also a huge narrative tool used in this film. And those moments of silence in the documentary sometimes carried more weight than its narration. In that quiet, the absence of the journalists killed was almost tangible. The absence of music, the static after a clip, the sound of children crying beneath rubble: all function as a refusal of cinematic comfort.

In that quiet, the audience feels the weight of the resilience of the journalists as they insisted on continuing their work until the very moment of death. Heba’s haunting question appears on screen: “Hello World. Why are you silent? Who has silenced you?” Silence in the film mirrors what the documentary claims is the silence of governments, international law, and those who know but choose tolerance or negligence.

It is through these narrative choices that the film positions the viewer not as a neutral consumer but as a complicit witness. The comfort of a Maastricht restaurant setting collides with the discomfort of mass graves on screen. In this collision lies the film’s power: to pierce the “bubble” of distance, forcing audiences to confront not only the reality of Gaza but their own role in systems of complicity, capitalism, and silence.

The film’s intimacy is its greatest strength. Yet its advocacy risks preaching to the converted: those already sympathetic, already outraged. The challenge lies in piercing the apathy of those who will not watch at all.

The Weight of Witnessing

The heavy amount of documentation created a feeling of extreme loss of control amongst the audience. Some described being brought to tears, while others could not believe that such suffering is still ongoing.

But most importantly, the feeling of guilt was felt throughout: Either from the inability to make impactful and direct change, from watching the suffering of so many, or even from the realisation that, after the screening, the audience can still go back home, safe and comfortable.

Watching in Maastricht, the audience sat comfortably on borrowed time. The greatest discomfort came not from what was seen on screen, but from the recognition that they could leave, untouched.

The documentary represents a “dystopian reality”: the continuation of such high civilian casualties despite the sheer amount of documentation broadcast globally for all to see. Footage after footage, picture after picture, the audience is forced to sit through the suffering of Palestinian civilians— unable to look away, unable to scroll past.

The screening exposed complicity. As FPM described the involvement of the EU government in continuing trade, arms, sales, and investments, the audience was indirectly confronted by the fact that they, themselves, also consume the war as mediated spectators, with the only difference being distance, bureaucracy, and screens.

Journalists are essential, almost intrinsically connected, to justice. Without them, the truth is even more difficult—  almost impossible—  to uncover.

The film itself did not escape criticism, though. One of the organisers explained that scenes giving space to Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) officials, justifying or denying attacks on journalists, felt unnecessary and even harmful: “Why should the opinion of the oppressor be included?”

They went on further: including such voices risked legitimising propaganda rather than exposing it. More troubling to them still was that the film consistently framed the situation as a “war” or “conflict”, mostly avoiding the word “genocide”. To some in the audience, this linguistic choice felt like a subtle attempt to normalise what international lawyers and human rights groups increasingly identify as ethnic cleansing.

This critique explained the difference between the tone of the film and the tone of FPM’s overall message. The film’s use of language reflects international diplomacy that, the organisers noted, often acts as a smokescreen to maintain political and economic ties with Israel. In this sense, even a film designed to raise awareness risks reinforcing the very frames it seeks to dismantle.

Despite these flaws, the organisers insisted that showing the film was still necessary. “This was the only one available, and in the end, we want to spread awareness,” they explained.

The imperfections of the documentary mirror the imperfections of global discourse itself—  a space where truth competes with propaganda and where the words “genocide” and “war” are in conflict themselves. 

Silence Returns, Lives Remembered Echoes 

As the credits faded, the room filled with applause, but not before a haunting and then almost awkward silence as the muffled restaurant sound slowly crept back in— the clinking glasses, the laughter. And that juxtaposition is the world we live in: one where Gaza burns, and elsewhere people order more drinks.

Some questions still linger: will we let the silence of the dead journalists become the silence of our conscience? Or will we, as witnesses, finally refuse to look away?

For the student journalists questioning how they can use their role to prevent such silence, we asked Palestinian journalist Iyad Sanded (the second speaker at the event) how he sees the power of social media compared to traditional journalism, and what challenges Palestinian reporters face online today. 

He explained that while traditional mass media still reaches those who watch television every day, social media is now the arena where global awareness is truly built. But it is also fraught with obstacles. “Social media is difficult for everyone,” he notes, stressing that using your phone effectively demands knowledge, experience, and relentless consistency. Without constant awareness, journalists risk losing not just their pages but their ability to document at all. 

Sanded’s words resonate beyond Gaza. Just as Palestinian journalists risk their lives to document reality on the ground, student reporters can carry forward the work of bearing witness within safer spaces available to them—  online, in print, and on social media. 

By applying the same principles of consistency, awareness, and ethical storytelling that Sanded describes, they ensure that stories do not vanish and that the deaths of journalists are not in vain. In a digital age, documenting, sharing, and amplifying the voices of all becomes a form of solidarity, keeping the memory and testimony of journalists like Belal, Heba, and Ismail alive even thousands of kilometers away. 

More Information 

If you would like to learn more about the speakers, the documentary and the journalists featured in it, check out our reel on instagram. 

Dr. Omar Kayed is a distinguished journalist with a PHD in Political Philosophy. He has extensive experience in journalism, showcasing deep understanding of international affairs, media ethics, and political analysis. He has also been directly involved in the production of more than 100 documentaries across the globe and has frequented TV channels as a political analyst. 

Iyad Sanded is an experienced Palestinian journalist specializing in social media strategy. He is a Maastricht University alumnus, presenting a new generation of Palestinian voices, showcasing a deep understanding of how media shapes public discourse today.