Consider This from NPR - Miles and worlds apart: two NPR reporters on covering the war in Gaza

Episode Date: January 24, 2026

Even before this latest war in Gaza, NPR’s Jerusalem-based Correspondent Daniel Estrin and Gaza reporter Anas Baba had spent years working together in challenging circumstances. Once war broke out, they had to adapt to a situation that made reporting together even more difficult.For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Email us at [e-mail] episode was produced by Linah Mohammed.. It was edited by Adam Raney and James Hider. Our executive producer is Sami Yenigun.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

To do their jobs well, foreign correspondents rely on local journalists, people who know the streets, the politics, the language, the risks. These journalists work to identify stories, line up interviews, navigate permits and checkpoints, translate, and sometimes quite literally get reporters where they need to go. Daniel Estrin is an international correspondent for NPR based in Tel Aviv. Back in 2019, he was trying to find someone inside Gaza to report with. And a mutual friend of ours told me, you really got to check out this guy named Anas. He is young, ambitious, and super talented. That journalist was Anas Baba. He's now NPR's reporter in Gaza.

But he started out as Daniel's producer. And their relationship looked like many others in foreign reporting. Anas helped arrange permits. He knew where to go, who to talk to, how things worked on the ground. Daniel could still enter Gaza. then. He'd make the drive of roughly an hour from his home in Israel, cross the checkpoints, and Anas would meet him on the other side. So the last stop is me saying, welcome to Gaza to Daniel, always. And once we just like get into

Gaza, the real work is starting. They spent long days driving through the strip, reporting on hospitals, cafes, families, stories that showed how policy and politics affected ordinary people's lives. Then came 2021. Some might remember if there was a war that year, too. And a photograph on us took became emblematic of the war. Gaza city in the background, rockets from Gaza by Palestinian militants streaking across the night sky, and Israel's Iron Dome interceptors shooting them down. That photo was iconic, I don't believe, because both sides of the conflict saw it as a photo that they liked.

Palestinians saw themselves standing up to Israel, and Israelis saw their multibillion-dollar defense system working. When the fighting stopped, Daniel crossed back into Gaza on the first day of a ceasefire. And you met me on the other side of the checkpoint. I went that very same day, and we were driving. And suddenly we saw that family all dressed in pink. It was a father, a mother, and his two children, very, very cute children. And they told us that we're going to keep living. That was the rhythm of their reporting then.

Daniel in and out of Gaza, war, then a pause, a fragile norm. see. Until the morning of October 7, 2023, consider this. To tell the full story of the war that followed, NPR had reporters both in Israel and the Gaza Strip, reporting together just miles, but worlds apart, changing their working relationship forever. From NPR, I'm Sarah McCammon. It's consider this from NPR. Even before this latest war in Gaza, NPR's Jerusalem-based correspondent Daniel Estrin and Gaza reporter, Anasbaba, had spent, years working together in challenging circumstances. Once war broke out, they had to adapt to a situation that made reporting together even more difficult.

For this week's reporter's notebook, I asked them to take me to that specific moment, where they each were on October 7th. It was like, when the hell's gates is opened, and you didn't know that this is the doonday. Too many, like we're talking about thousands of rockets, just like being launched from Gaza. I still remember that day was something that no one can even imagine could happen ever. It was a shock. It was something that I'll never forgive my life. It's a day that sticks and will never leave me. I remember waking up at 6.30 that morning in Tel Aviv.

I just happened to wake up. It was a Saturday morning. It was supposed to be a quiet holiday. Saw a text saying that sirens were going off in southern Israel. And then sirens were going off in central Israel. And I ran into the safe room. Many apartments in Israel have safe rooms for when rockets are flying. And we heard the air raid siren and the booms of the iron dome intercepting.

And then I just remember getting straight to work, reporting on an extremely extremely terrifying, intense day. The only thing that we were waiting with was what exactly is going to be the Israeli respond to this. Literally, we were expecting the worst, but we were not expecting anything,

even 1% of what Israel did. I'm just scrolling through our texts from October 7th, 2023. We were texting all day long, exchanging information. and at 11.25 p.m., you texted me, the day still keeps surprising us. And we didn't know at that time how true that would be for the next two years. Those two years brought a war that has left almost all of Gaza destroyed

and severe restrictions on aid that choked off fuel, food, and medicine for much of the population. Entire families killed, neighborhoods reduced to rubble and displacement again and again. It's also become the deadliest conflict on record for journalists anywhere in the world. The Committee to Protect Journalists has documented more than 260 Palestinian journalists killed in Gaza by the Israeli military, and the group has concluded that at least 64 of them were, quote, directly targeted. Anas is one of the few Palestinian journalists working full-time since before October 7th until today with an American news outlet. we are incredibly fortunate to continue to be able to work with him because it's vital. I can't enter Gaza and no international journalists can.

It's been that way for the last two years and counting. And, you know, Sarah, the reporting on this war, you face a lot of pressures from all sides. And you cover things that authorities on all sides don't. want you to cover. And we've covered it all. We have, for instance, we've documented the mass killing of an extended family in Gaza, more than 100 people spanning multiple generations killed in an Israeli strike. We've also documented some rare protests inside Gaza calling for an end the war protesting Hamas. Voices critical of Hamas's decision to launch the war. Anas, why do you stay in Gaza and what does it mean to you to be telling the story from there?

I'm originally a Palestinian, and this conflict is 80 years old. My grandfather was living in a Ludd. It's now an Israeli city. He evacuated a Lod coming to Gaza, and he died here. My father, after that, he's a journalist working with the Agency France Press. He spent most of his life reporting on the Israeli occupation, and after that, and the Israelis taken out of Gaza, and after that Hamas ruling Gaza, and after that the coup that happens here. And once the 2023 or the 7th October War took place, it was the rule of May, the third generation, to stay here and to report

of what is happening here on the ground. How has October 7th in its aftermath changed the way that the two of you do your work and the way that you work together? It's changed everything. I mean, we work from afar, but we work together every day. I call on us or text him every morning.

And if it's not me, then it's our colleague Aya Batrawe in Dubai, or somebody else on our team. We're in constant contact. And we're asking, what's going on today? What are your plans today? What are you hearing? Sometimes it's, unless there's some breaking news,

can you run out and collect some sound? And he'll say, oh, I've already done that all night long. I've recorded the sounds of Israeli bombardment in the middle of the night, and we rushed to get that on the radio for the morning broadcast. And frankly, Sarah, the amount of video and audio that Enos is collecting every day is so immense and so overwhelming and very painful. And it's difficult to put it all together. But we've been going nonstop. Going back to your question, Sarah, maybe as a frontline journalist who's working on a conflict zone for,

almost in years. Maybe the only different between me and Daniel, that's Daniel, when things got truly, truly hard and dangerous, can drive his car, maybe to Bingarion Airport, just show his own passport and get the ticket and fly away.

I can't do that. Because there is no airport. There is no way out. The only thing that I can do is keep reporting nonstop every single day. Daniel Lestrian is a correspondent in Tel Aviv. Anas Baba is a reporter for NPR based in Gaza. Thanks so much to both of you for your reporting and for your time.

Thank you, guys. Thank you. This episode was produced by Lena Mohamed. It was edited by Adam Rainey and James Heider. Our executive producer is Sammy Yenigan. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Sarah McCammon.