Having lost his wife, 15-year-old son, seven-year-old daughter and a grandson in Israeli airstrikes since October 7, Wael Al Dahdouh, Al Jazeera's Gaza bureau chief, embodies the painful personal sacrifices that come with the Camouflage accompanied Israel's attack on the Gaza Strip.
“The cost is very high, but at the end of the day we ask ourselves: What is the other option?” he told NBC News' Ayman Mohyeldin. “We sit in our houses waiting for rockets to land, give up this job, give up this humanitarian message that we delivered? That’s definitely not an option.”
In a lengthy exclusive interview with Mohyeldin – his first and only with Western media – Al Dahdouh spoke about reporting on the front lines of the historic war between Israel and Hamas and described the painful emotional toll of an unspeakable personal tragedy.
Al Dahdouh has become a globally recognized symbol of an unprecedented number of victims: 82 journalists have been killed since October 7, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
As if he hadn't suffered enough losses already, Al Dahdouh's 27-year-old son Hamza Dahdouh – also a journalist and cameraman at Al Jazeera – was killed in an Israeli airstrike last week along with his colleague Mustafa Thuraya. They sat in a car and drove near the southern city of Rafah to report.
Al Jazeera journalist Wael Al Dahdouh holds the hand of his son Hamza, who also worked for Al Jazeera and was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Rafah, Gaza, on January 7. Dahdouh lost his wife, two other children and a grandson earlier in the war and was almost killed himself. Hatem Ali / AP
Initially, the Israeli military claimed that the younger Dahdouh and Thuraya were members of Palestinian militant groups.
Al Jazeera released a statement strongly condemning and rejecting Israel's allegedly misleading attempts to justify the murder of its journalists.
Despite his enormous personal losses, Al Dahdouh has remained on the air and maintains his commitment to reporting on the Israeli bombing of the Gaza Strip.
“I didn’t use this platform, this respectful platform, as a platform for revenge,” he said. “The pain was more than I could bear. But at the end of the day I came back and completed my tasks and my job.”
Al Dahdouh says he is perseverant because his family made many sacrifices so that he could do this difficult and dangerous job, including his fatherly duties.
“You barely saw me,” he said. “They got used to it and suffered from it. This is a very big sacrifice that they have made, and they have made this sacrifice to enable me to continue my work.”
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“So when the time comes and her blood is shed and her life is sacrificed, should I leave her and give up this job? Never,” he added.
Journalists and press freedom groups around the world have issued statements of solidarity and denounced what the Committee to Protect Journalists has described as “blatant attacks on journalists covering the war” and their families. Although there is some level of support from international journalists, Al Dahdouh says it is not enough to help reporters on the ground who are constantly at risk of being targeted or killed.
“Many Palestinian journalists feel that we have been abandoned, left alone to face this massacre and this carnage, and that the world did not look at the bigger picture and did not really stand with us in the way that we would have liked had,” he said to Mohyeldin. “We feel like we are being killed twice: once by the bombs and once by this silence, this shy way of expressing our support.”
Al Dahdouh says President Joe Biden – “the president of the most powerful state in the world” – should look closely at what is happening on the ground and listen to both sides of the narrative, not just one.
“I paid a very high price for the weapons that targeted my family's location, destroyed it and leveled it without warning,” he said. The Biden administration twice bypassed Congress last month to allow an emergency arms sale to Israel.
“I advise the president to look at what is happening and listen to the people, the ordinary people who are bearing the costs. They have every right to secure their rights as human beings, as partners of humanity. Nothing more, nothing less.”
During his recent Middle East trip, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the deaths of Wael Dahdouh's sons and other family members were “the worst loss possible.” Blinken added that he had brought up the deaths of journalists during his trip to the Middle East.
Kristy Hutter
Julia Thomas