She’s 23. She’s One of Gaza’s Most Influential Journalists. Now She’s Telling Her Own Story.

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For nearly two years, Gaza has been the deadliest place in the world for journalists. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, hundreds of reporters and media workers have been killed since October 2023, an unprecedented toll in modern conflict. Those who survive continue documenting the devastation while living it themselves, often with the knowledge that rather than being a safeguard, wearing a press vest makes them a target.

Among them is Plestia Alaqad, one of the most widely influential reporters to emerge from Gaza during the war. Just 21 years old and freshly graduated from university on Oct. 7, 2023, Alaqad began broadcasting dispatches that reached millions on social media, offering the world a rare window into daily life under bombardment as the strip remained closed to foreign journalists.

Her upcoming book, The Eyes of Gaza: A Diary of Resilience, out Sept. 30, transforms her private diaries into something more permanent. What begins as raw, poetic notes on survival evolves into a haunting chronicle of a people’s collective experience under unrelenting siege. Alaqad writes with an intimacy that pulls readers close: photographing children in U.N. Relief and Works Agency shelters as she tries to make them laugh; hearing voices cry for help from beneath the rubble and knowing there is nothing she can do; choosing to leave her mother behind to reduce the risk to her as journalists are targeted.

And amid that devastation, she lingers on the smallest reprieves, like finding a pack of cookies; “COOKIES!” she writes, with childlike joy. It’s a fleeting detail, but moments like this, scattered among scenes of horror and grief, are deeply refreshing, reminders that Palestinians are not the unfeeling monsters they’re too often painted to be.

In this conversation, I asked Alaqad why she chose to publish something so intimate, how she balances the brutality she witnessed with the humanity she insists on sharing with the world, and what it means to tell her story as both a journalist and a Palestinian. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Aymann Ismail: You’ve been one of the most influential reporters on the ground in Gaza, and now you’ve written a book. How did that come together?

Plestia Alaqad: I always knew I wanted to write a book, but I never thought it would be about genocide. I’ve been keeping diaries since I was in grade six. My first was a purple notebook my mom gave me. I used to write about random things: my feelings, what happened in my day, my favorite teacher, my favorite band. During the genocide, I found myself doing the same thing and writing in my diaries. I never imagined they’d become a book. A diary is personal, not something you publish. But after almost two years of this war, I realized what I was writing wasn’t just my story. It’s the story of millions of people. That’s when I thought, OK, I need to publish this.

There’s often doubt cast on whether Palestinians, and Palestinian journalists in particular, are seen as credible truth tellers or reliable eyewitnesses. Can you talk about the differences in writing something as a journalist versus writing something like this that feels like reading a diary? Did that perception play a role here?

Growing up, as a Palestinian, I felt like we didn’t get to narrate our own stories. It was always other people telling them. And as you said, if you’re Palestinian narrating your own story, you’re not considered credible. But if someone foreign tells it, then suddenly it’s trustworthy. Now, I see so much online that isn’t true. Even the language. Calling this genocide a “conflict.” That made me think, What’s happening now is history. Who will write it? Who will narrate our stories? I don’t want to open a schoolbook 30 years from now and find something about Gaza written not by us. The story should be told by those who lived it.

Your book begins in October 2023, and you write about people you meet in the worst circumstances, like Motaz, Yara, Dana. It’s a diary, but it doesn’t read like you’re only telling your own story. As a reader, what struck me was how you balance brutality and humanity. On one page you’re describing violence unlike anything else I’ve ever read, and on another you’re writing lines like, “Friendships in Palestine have classifications of their own …” Was it difficult to write about things that are so deeply human and personal, while also carrying the responsibility of documenting what’s happening around you?

Nothing about genocide is about the individual. Even if I write about myself, it’s not just my story. Thousands of people are living the same story, or worse. So when friends or even strangers tell me their stories, I feel like I owe it to them to write it down, too. Friendship, daily life, everything in Gaza feels different because it is shaped by the genocide. It’s always hard to write, but it also feels like a duty.

Toward the end of the book, when you’re at your most emotional, you’re confronted with the opportunity to leave Gaza. That moment feels like a climax in the narrative. Was there anything you left off the page?

The hardest part wasn’t what I left off. It was knowing people would read it. When I wrote, I wasn’t writing to publish. It was personal. Editing meant realizing my thoughts and emotions would no longer be mine. That was the most difficult part.

And yet you include poetry, like when you write about the tragic loss of a friend you’ve known since the fourth grade, whose family sheltered you when you had no place else to go. Especially if you weren’t intending this to ever be read, what does it feel like now to know that someone like me, someone you’ve never met, who lives in America, is reading your story?

It feels wrong to say I’m glad, but part of me is glad people know our names and our stories. But at the same time, it’s the bare minimum. I hate that we live in a world where this book has to exist at all. It’s not fiction, where you’re happy it sold out or that people are reading it. It’s based on reality. So it’s conflicted emotions, to be honest.

Do you see it as a journalistic work?

No. I think of it as a personal project. Even if I weren’t a journalist, I would have written it. It’s not about journalism. It’s about being a Palestinian living through genocide.

As journalists, we say we’re writing the “first draft of history.” That’s how I think of your book. Which is why I’d argue it is journalism.

[Laughs] Maybe. But for me, it’s still personal.

I have a Palestinian friend who told me Palestinians don’t really have the choice between being activists and being journalists, that just by being Palestinian you’re forced into both. What do you think of that?

Activism and journalism are two different things. But in genocide, everyone has the right to narrate their story. Nearly 300 journalists have been killed. [Ed. note: The exact count varies by organization, but there’s consensus among human rights groups that the dead number in the hundreds.] It’s the deadliest time for the press. So we can’t just say only journalists are allowed to talk. Everyone has the right to speak, post, express their story.

I’ve been talking to other journalists from Gaza, like Mohammed Mhawish, who told me that journalists stopped wearing press vests because they felt like targets. That even trying to tell the truth felt hopeless, because their work wasn’t reaching people. Do you feel that?

Yes. I wrote about that in November 2023, after Israel killed Belal Jadallah. Wearing “press” was supposed to protect us, but in Gaza it makes you a threat. Being a journalist is supposed to be noble, but in Gaza it feels like a crime. At the beginning, people saw me in press gear and thanked me, offered me food, told me I was amplifying their voices. But now, almost two years later, people know journalists are targets. That changes everything.

There’s a page I highlighted. On Day 28, Friday, Nov. 3, you wrote: “I don’t have the energy to write every day. I’m posting less on social media because my mental health can’t tolerate this anymore. My heart aches. It’s been 28 days of literal hell.” What is it like to revisit moments like this one for the book?

Believe it or not, I never read it after it was printed. Only the manuscript. Holding the book in my hands felt too triggering. Maybe one day, in a different reality where I no longer relate to it, I’ll read it again.

You also write in the afterword about leaving Gaza and going to Lebanon, only to find the war following you there. Why did you want to end the book that way?Because it shows how little control we have. As a Palestinian, it feels like Israel controls your life. When I left Gaza, I was so excited. I had the Shireen Abu Akleh Memorial Scholarship. I was starting my master’s. I wanted to send a message: Israel is bombing universities, but we’re still learning. But then war followed me to Lebanon. It felt like I couldn’t escape. That’s why I made it the core of the afterword: to show that violence follows us everywhere.

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