Nariman Chamaa, journalist
In the world of journalism, the blue vest and heavy helmet marked “PRESS” are strictly identification tools, not defensive shields. They are meant to be a simple signal that the person wearing them is there only to convey the truth. Yet, in Lebanon, these items have been reduced to mere fabric and fragile plastic—offering zero protection against targeted missiles that pierce through concrete fortifications, let alone human bodies. The systematic targeting of the media corps by Israeli occupation forces no longer distinguishes between active frontlines and residential sanctuaries, transforming the practice of journalism into a daily, impossible mission for physical and spiritual survival.
The Geography of Pain: Continuous Trauma and Perpetual Bleeding
The true tragedy of conflict journalism in Lebanon does not end with the fading echo of an explosion or the retreat of an airstrike; it begins in those small, visceral details that lock themselves away in the memory and refuse to leave. Media crews—especially the young female journalists covering the heavy bombardments across South Lebanon and the Bekaa, or running through the dust from demolished buildings in Beirut, live in a state of cumulative psychological trauma born from witnessing daily mortality.
In this line of work, blood is never a dry statistic in a casualty report; it is an overwhelming and bitter reality. The grim details of its pooling on the floors, the scent of charred bodies amid the rubble, and remains of children’s bodies are scenes that imprint themselves on a journalist’s consciousness for years. This pain in Lebanon is cumulative and continuous; media crews do not simply cover a passing event and move on. Instead, they survive a continuous chain of critical crises that makes the tragedy of the profession a living wound, one that is renewed with every fresh moment lived by journalists today, amidst the agony of an entire nation. This reality is reflected in the horrifying general toll documented by the Lebanese Ministry of Health, which has recorded over 3,324 martyrs and more than 10,027 wounded (as of late May 2026).
The Chronicle of witnesses: When the lens becomes a target
Amid this general bleeding, the Lebanese media corps has paid an unprecedented and heavy toll in blood. Since the beginning of the aggression in October 2023 and up to the present day, the Lebanese Press Syndicate and human rights organizations have documented the martyrdom of 27 Lebanese journalists, cameramen, and technicians, alongside dozens of others who have suffered amputations or severe, life-altering injuries.
The transition from reporting the news to becoming the news itself is never a mere coincidence; it is a deliberate assassination of the truth. Those female colleagues who have left the field were not just names on a breaking news ticker; each possessed a story, an ambition, a passion for life, and a family waiting for their return:
- Farah Omar: Killed by a direct airstrike in Tayr Harfa (November 2023) while performing her professional duty at a well-known, public assembly point for journalists. Her cameraman, Rabih Maamari, and a local civilian companion were martyred alongside her.
- Sakina Kawtharani: Struck down before she could complete her message, the bombardment pursued her to the residential building where she had sought refuge in the town of Joun (November 2024). Sakina was killed in a horrific massacre that took her two young children and fifteen members of her extended family, leaving twelve others wounded. Turning the mother and journalist into a body beneath the rubble of her sanctuary.
- Fatima Ftouni: Her press vehicle was torn apart by four consecutive direct missiles in Jezzine (March 2026). Fatima was killed in this media massacre alongside her team: the channel’s South Bureau Director, Ali Shoaib, and cameraman, Mohammad Ftouni, in a clear attempt to obliterate the entire crew despite highly visible press markings on the vehicle.
- Ghada Dayekh: An Israeli airstrike targeted her apartment building in Tyre (April 2026), completely destroying it and killing her instantly inside.
- Suzane Khalil: She was targeted on the same day as Dayekh in a separate airstrike in Kaifoun, where she was covering the situation of displaced people in an area supposedly neutral from the conflict. But this confirms that there is no safe area in Lebanon.
- Amal Khalil: The memory of the South. Her martyrdom in the town of Al-Tiri (April 2026) embodies an incomprehensible brutality. Occupation forces targeted her alongside her female cameraman, Zeinab Faraj, three consecutive times—one of which struck the building where they had sought shelter. Furthermore, they blocked emergency medical teams from reaching them for hours, despite communications by Lebanese authorities through the Liaison Mechanism Committee to mediate for their rescue. Left to bleed under the rubble in a slow, agonizing fight for survival, Amal ultimately succumbed to her injuries, leaving her wounded colleague as a living witness to hours of physical torture and unforgivable international abandonment.
From left to right, the murdered journalists: Ghada Dayekh, Amal Khalil, Farah Omar, Fatima Ftouni, Suzane Khalil i Sakina Kawtharani with her two children: Sarah i Reda.
Why does this pain dig deeper into the subconscious of women?
When analyzing the impact of these atrocities, one cannot diminish the immense grief and suffering experienced by male journalists, human suffering is indivisible. Yet, through an objective sociological lens, the war leaves deeper scars on the lives of female journalists due to structural realities:
1. The double burden of care: A female journalist in Lebanon is frequently the primary caregiver within her household. The internal conflict between intense worry for their families, who may be displaced or in unsafe areas, and their professional duty to cover events from the field under heavy bombardment, creates severe and double psychological stress.
2. Moral and political warfare: Physical targeting is routinely accompanied or followed by coordinated digital violence and character assassination campaigns designed to dismantle the professional authority of female journalists. In the Lebanese context, this defamation takes on dangerous political dimensions; female journalists are systematically targeted and slandered based on their political stances or their employment with media outlets holding editorial lines opposed to the occupation. The attempt to legitimize murder or incite against journalists based on the identity of their employers is a crime in itself, deliberately ignoring international conventions that guarantee the absolute right to freedom of opinion, expression, and political affiliation, and mandate their protection as civilians. Cruelly, this moral assassination does not end at death; it pursues their memory and human dignity even after they are gone.
3. Delayed grief and silent ailments: In times of continuous crisis, women are culturally expected to perform emotional stoicism to hold their families and communities together. Consequently, they “postpone” their own grief and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). These psychological traumas, which began with Lebanon’s consecutive crises and continue to feed on current atrocities, dig deep into the subconscious, calcifying over time into chronic physical and psychological ailments due to a total vacuum of specialized institutional support.
What the media corps truly needs
The legal characterization of what is happening to journalists is unequivocal and needs no cosmetic wording; these are full-fledged “War Crimes” under the Geneva Conventions and the Rome Statute, which strictly define journalists as civilians who must not be harmed.
Therefore, journalists today do not need protocol statements of condemnation or sympathy; rather, they demand decisive and concrete measures to stop the targeting of the media corps, medical teams, and civilians. The inclusion of these three categories in a singular bank of targets proves a deliberate strategy to isolate victims, sever their rescue lifelines, and prevent their human narrative from reaching the world.
Accordingly, international bodies (including UNESCO and the International Federation of Journalists) and human rights networks must assume their legal and moral responsibilities by taking immediate steps:
1. Breaking the cycle of impunity: Moving past the stage of mere “concern” to apply real pressure for independent international criminal investigations, and prosecuting the military commanders responsible for issuing lethal orders so that killing a journalist does not remain cost-free.
2. Medical and field safety protections: Activating direct UN monitoring mechanisms to protect the movement of emergency medical teams and media crews, and classifying the prevention of rescue operations (as occurred with Amal Khalil) as a deliberate execution that requires immediate international criminal accountability.
3. Mandatory psychological support as a professional right: Fully funding and establishing permanent, specialized trauma and rehabilitation centers within Lebanon. Providing psychological aid to journalists is an essential professional safety measure to help them live with these accumulated traumas, not a secondary luxury.
4. Documenting atrocities against journalists, especially gender-based ones: Systematically monitoring and documenting how the targeting of female journalists is deployed as a weapon to terrorize local communities and dismantle the human narrative of war, officially escalating these dossiers to relevant United Nations mechanisms.
The continued silence of the world regarding the scent of death and the viscosity of blood that pursues journalists for years is an unspoken complicity in suffocating the truth. The vest and helmet worn by media professionals are declarations of the global right to know; make them a legal immunity that protects their lives, not a target that ends them.
