CPJ is honored to present its 2024 International Press Freedom Award to Palestinian journalist Shrouq Al Aila.
Shrouq Al Aila is a Palestinian journalist, producer, and researcher reporting from the Gaza Strip. Al Aila took charge of Ain Media, an independent production company specializing in professional media services, after her husband Roshdi Sarraj – a co-founder of the company – was killed in the ongoing Israel-Gaza war. She continues to cover the war and its devastating impact on Gaza’s residents despite having been displaced several times in an effort to evade Israeli attacks.
Al Aila started working for Ain Media in 2019, later marrying Sarraj. On the morning of October 22, 2023, as the family was about to have breakfast at home, shrapnel from an Israeli missile attack on a nearby house killed Sarraj and injured Al Aila and their infant daughter.
Israel’s attacks on Gaza have taken a record toll on Palestinian journalists, and Ain Media has suffered other losses. Early in the war, photographers Ibrahim Lafi was killed and Haitham Abdelwahid went missing along with a close journalist friend, Nidal Al-Wahidi. And in 2018, Sarraj’s founding partner at Ain Media, Yaser Murtaja, was murdered by an Israeli sniper.
Despite these tragedies and the conditions she continues to endure, Al Aila took on her late husband’s role to become the head of Ain Media, covering the war and displacement of Gaza’s residents. Her story is emblematic of the plight of Palestinian women journalists reporting from Gaza who have endured the unthinkable and continue to report the news for the world to see.
As a woman journalist covering a war in a highly conservative region, Al Aila’s story of survival honors the extraordinary courage and dedication of Palestinian journalists killed or arrested by Israeli authorities.
Shrouq Al Aila was unable to attend the awards ceremony. Leila Fadel, the presenter of the award, spoke on her behalf. The text of her speech, as prepared for delivery, is below.
I came here to present this award to Shrouq Al Aila tonight in person. But I can’t. Shrouq cannot leave the Gaza Strip. Israel has denied her permission to leave for Egypt. She is still scrambling to get the basic necessities of life amid the rubble with her child and trying to stay alive. And despite the dangers and hardship she is carrying on the work that her late husband began with Ain Media.
At least 129 Palestinian journalists and media workers have been killed over the past 13 months, and at least 74 journalists have been arrested.
With no outside news organizations allowed independent access to Gaza, and with many international organizations having pulled what local staff they could from Gaza, those able to report first hand on the war are increasingly few in number. In fact, it was Shrouq and her colleagues at Ain Media who filmed her and the Gaza footage we just saw.
Shrouq’s independent reporting is all the more essential because we, the international press, are not allowed in by Israel. Since she appeared in the video we just watched, Israel has intensified its attacks on journalists and media infrastructure as part of an offensive in the north of the Strip. The Israeli military says it is trying to stop Hamas fighters from regrouping there. The U.N. secretary general, António Guterres, and the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem have called the operation quote “ethnic cleansing.”
The U.N. Human Rights Office says it fears the onslaught could lead to the potential destruction of the Palestinian population.
Those in the north are faced with the choice of staying and starving or fleeing south with no guarantee of finding shelter or safety there either, according to UN officials.
CPJ has contended for many months, and the UN found last week, that Israel’s attacks on the media and media infrastructure, as well as its campaigns to discredit journalists, are a deliberate attempt to conceal what is happening in Gaza from the rest of the world.
For the moment, at least, Shrouq and a handful of Palestinian journalists, like my colleague Anas Baba at NPR, are hanging on to make sure that this censorship does not succeed.CPJ stands with Shrouq and will hold on to this award until she is able to come to New York to receive it in person. She and her colleagues must be protected. Thank you.