Documentary reveals deadly peril of journalism in Gaza

Gaza is a laboratory, says Yann Ollivier. He’s not the first to say so. Many have observed that the war in the thin strip of Palestinian land resembles a testing ground for new ways of killing. Human rights organisations say newly developed surveillance technologies, artificial intelligence (AI), algorithms and other digital tools, with names such as Lavender, The Gospel and Where’s Daddy, are being used together to identify targets and victims for the Israeli Defence Force to strike. They have contributed to a death toll of more than 73,000 and climbing. But Ollivier is talking about another laboratory experiment running in parallel, even if it overlaps in terms of its cost in human lives. The documentary producer for Agence France-Presse (AFP) is talking about a radical new approach to controlling the narrative, the flow of information from a battlefield — a central plank of which is the killing of journalists. “I think Gaza is a lab of what can happen when you want to use the possibility of spreading fake news,” he says. Ollivier makes his case in the new documentary Inside Gaza, which has been showing in Auckland and Wellington as part of the DocEdge film festival. He was in Auckland earlier this month to pick up the prize for best documentary in the festival, which qualifies his film for the Academy Awards. There was a standing ovation at the end of the Auckland screening he attended. The festival goes online from Monday, its films available to the wider New Zealand public. The catalyst for his film came in November 2023, Ollivier says, when, ironically enough, he was watching the multi-award winning documentary 20 Days in Mariupol about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. “At that point in time, it was early November, the AFP Gaza office was targeted by an Israeli strike and destroyed.” Israel initially denied the targeting, suggesting the building was damaged by debris from some other explosion, but it would later be reported that the building had been directly hit by tank fire. FactstoryAn AFP journalist films during Israeli airstrikes in Gaza City on October 12, 2023. Photo: Mohammed Abed “I mean, why would an Israeli tank target the office, the empty office of a press agency?” Ollivier asks. “The reason was obvious. They had a live camera working, streaming live on the roof of the AFP office. So, it was really, it was clearly to shut the eyes of the international press. “I had the sense that this war was not only a war between Israel and Hamas, between the Israeli army and Hamas. It was also a war against journalists. Because what else?” The strike on the AFP offices came just an hour after the IDF hit the Palestine Media Group offices in a nearby building. Fortunately, no-one was killed in the strike on the AFP Gaza office, its staff had been evacuated shortly before — the solar powered camera left to provide its stream unattended. But the death toll among journalists in Gaza during the almost three years of the war has been unprecedented. The Committee to Protect Journalists reports that 207 journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza since October 2023, the toll expands to 263 when fatalities in the wider region, Iran, Lebanon and Yemen, are included. As of June 3, 2026, the CPJ has also documented 108 arrests of journalists and a media worker in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, and in the city of Jerusalem. “Israel is engaging in the deadliest and most deliberate effort to kill and silence journalists that CPJ has ever documented,” the organisation says. “Palestinian journalists are being threatened, directly targeted, and murdered by Israeli forces, and are arbitrarily detained and tortured in retaliation for their work. Israel has systematically destroyed media infrastructure in Gaza, and tightened censorship throughout the West Bank and Israel.” A CPJ investigation found 58 of 59 journalists released from Israeli custody had been subjected to torture, abuse or other forms of violence — including electric shocks, beatings and sexual abuse. Ollivier has worked for AFP for 20 years, predominantly in Europe, and four years ago launched the agency’s documentary subsidiary Factstory. Inside Gaza is their fifth film. AFP has maintained a permanently staffed office in Gaza for decades and Inside Gaza focuses on the stories of four of the journalists working there when the war began in October 2023 — Mahmud Hams, a multi-award winning photo-journalist, Adel El-Zaanun, the bureau’s chief correspondent, Mohammed Abed, who had previously covered the Arab revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, and the war in Sudan, winning the World Press Award along the way, and print journalist Mai Yaghi. [Missing Credit]AFP Gaza bureau chief Adel Al Zaanoun. Photo: AFP They were all practised in the work of covering Israel’s 17-year blockade of Gaza, through to 2023, the funerals, deprivation and exit restrictions that punctuated that existence, alongside the periodic outbreaks of fighting — but after October 7, 2023 the conflict was elevated to a new level with serious implications for journalists stationed there. “When you’re a war correspondent, and you’re being sent to a conflict, what happens is that you spend a few weeks and then you go home,” Ollivier explains. “And that’s exactly what did not happen for them when, after October 7, they were trapped there with their families.” [Missing Credit]AFP reporter Mai Yaghi. Photo: Youssef Hassouna Usually, when conflict broke out in Gaza, AFP would also send reinforcements, he says, people from the Jerusalem office or perhaps staff from Cyprus. Other news organisations would do likewise. “But the problem is that they could not enter Gaza because the borders were closed to the international press. So, they had to bear themselves the responsibility of reporting from Gaza alone.” The AFP team were isolated and among a small number of journalists attempting to keep the world informed of what was happening. They were soon accused of staging their coverage. “It would probably not have happened if you had the same images coming from various international colleagues, working together with them in the field,” Ollivier says. These attempts to discredit the work of the AFP journalists mapped the sort of polarisation and disinformation widespread on social media, the way it is used to spread fake news, he says. “Gaza is a lab of what can happen when you want to use the possibility of spreading fake news, because what they do is they prevent international press from coming inside Gaza in order to be able to discredit the local press and say, ‘Yeah, they’re all Hamas, you shouldn’t believe what they say’.” Social media facilitates the circulation of disinformation and makes it easy to cast doubt on anything, he says. “You know, you can just pretend that the photograph depicting a dead child in the arms of its father, you can accuse this of being staged. You can accuse Hamas of using puppets.” Once that disinformation is alive online, it can be difficult to disprove. “There will always be someone to believe this c. . .,” he said. AFPAFP photographer Mohammed Abed takes pictures of buildings destroyed by Israeli bombardment in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, October 31, 2023. Photo: Said Khatib Inside Gaza is an attempt to destroy those false narratives by showing the complexity of the situation in the territory for local journalists. “They tell you in the film, how difficult it is to work under Hamas rules. And by listening to them, by giving a human voice to these journalists, it allows the general public to understand the complexity of the situation and the difficulty of doing field journalism nowadays.” It also underlines the importance of the work of journalists in the field, people on the ground witnessing events at first hand and reporting on them, he says. “It sheds light on the importance of field journalism as a mean to counter attempts of disinformation. “It stresses the importance of field journalism in war zones. And, for everyone, it’s a proof of the fact that we still need independent journalism in the field. Especially today in our polarised world of social media.” While journalists dying in Palestine is not a new phenomenon, Ollivier says the scale of the killing since 2023 is unprecedented. “If you look at the statistics … Reporters Without Borders, the CPJ, are all publishing numbers that no-one has ever seen in any other conflict.” It represents a fundamental shift in terms of the ability of journalists to operate in a war zone. Ollivier compares it to the situation during the siege of Sarajevo, during the wars of the former Yugoslavia. Itself a notoriously fraught environment. However, when the international press wanted to access the city, they just called the Serbian army, he says. The Serbian army would then co-ordinate with Bosnian forces to pause fighting. “They stopped firing and they let the journalists pass. That was a time where journalism was still respected. “This doesn’t happen anymore in any conflict today. But in Gaza, the scale of the targeting of journalists is just unprecedented. It’s something that’s been never seen.” When Israel closed Gaza’s borders in 2023, AFP went to work to get its journalists out. It took seven months to do so, but they finally managed it. During that time, the AFP Gaza team continued with their work, documenting what was happening around them, while struggling alongside everyone else in the territory to find food, fuel and transport. “They were subject exactly like anyone else to the risk of losing their family and relatives within seconds, because they were being bombed as the whole population of Gaza was being bombed.” FactstoryA man holds his mother's body during an Israeli strike on the Bureij refugee camp on November 2, 2023. Photo: Mahmud Hams Those early months were deadly for the press. The CPJ reported that more journalists were killed in the first 10 weeks of the Israel-Gaza war than had been killed in a single country over an entire year. By December 20, 2023, at least 68 journalists and media workers had been killed. In the event, things only changed for the worse in Gaza after the AFP journalists left. The film doesn’t even depict the that phase of the conflict, Ollivier says. The Gaza staff still work for AFP, in exile, based in Cyprus, Egypt and London, in daily contact with stringers who have remained in the territory. This is now how AFP maintains its coverage of events there. It means the Gaza journalists remain intimately connected to events there and the continuing tragedies, if at a remove. One of those AFP stringers died in January, Abdul Raouf Shaat, a photo and video journalist. He was killed alongside two other journalists in an Israeli airstrike. As reported in French newspaper Le Monde, the Israeli military said troops had “identified several suspects who operated a drone affiliated with Hamas in the central Gaza Strip”. The military did not elaborate on what it meant by a “drone affiliated with Hamas”. Ollivier says the journalists at the centre of his film all knew Shaat. “What is terrible for them is that they witnessed this, they witnessed what’s happening in Gaza every day,” he says. “And one must say, despite the so-called ceasefire there, it is still dangerous to be reporting, to be a reporter in Gaza. You can be … targeted by a drone just by operating yourself a drone to film the distribution of humanitarian aid. That’s what happened.” Ollivier remains struck by the commitment and dignity of the people at the heart of his documentary. “What really strikes me is that they were ready to die for testifying to the history. And I mean, this is something that I have a huge respect for.” Their evacuation from Gaza did not mean an end to the trauma. The journalists are of course relieved to be out and to have secured something like a normal life for their immediate families, but they have all left others behind. “So, on the one hand, they are relieved to be out. And on the other hand, they feel guilty because they’re not there to testify anymore. And they are lucky, but their colleagues are not. “So, it’s a very, very difficult position. And if you add to this also the post traumatic syndrome that they all suffer from, it is really not easy.” The film has helped, Ollivier says, recognising the work the journalists did and what they went through. “It’s a recognition that what they’ve been through has not been in vain.” DocEdge Film Festival • The 2026 DocEdge Virtual Cinema goes live from Monday, July 27 through to August 10. Go to https://docedge.nz/