What cameras don’t show in the Gaza war

Gaza journalists Shrouq Al Aila and Roshdi Sarraj were on a work trip in Saudi Arabia last fall when their home became a war zone. The married couple quickly returned to Gaza to report and to be with their community. But Sarraj, the founder of local production company Ain Media, would only manage to produce a few reports. On October 22, he was killed in an Israeli airstrike.

Al Aila, 29, quickly took over the leadership of Ain Media, covering the war and displacement of Gaza’s residents. “Something that the camera or the video can’t show is the smell,” she told CPJ from the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where she was sheltering with her young daughter. “I take a picture of something and I look at the real scene in front of me and I feel like 70% of the immensity, the magnitude, and harshness of the scene aren’t reflected in the photo or in the video.”

Al Aila has since moved to a tent in Deir al-Balah to escape Israel’s expanded offensive in Rafah, the family’s third displacement since the war began.

-Why the war’s impact is harder to document
-List of journalist casualties
–Full coverage of the Israel-Gaza war