Front Burner - A reporter in Gaza’s year of survival

Episode Date: October 15, 2024

Al Jazeera reporter Hani Mahmoud is currently based in Deir al Balah, in central Gaza. He’s spent the last year reporting on Israel’s war against Hamas in the territory.Hani has told the stories of families displaced by the war, struggling to access food and water, and grieving relatives who have been killed, while living those hardships himself.One year into Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, more than 42,000 people have been killed, according to local health authorities. It’s estimated that another 10,000 may be buried under the rubble.Today, father and reporter Hani Mahmoud shares his family’s story of surviving this past year.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem, brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hey everybody, Jamie here. So if you listened last Tuesday, you know that we had been planning to air an episode that day with a man in Gaza. But because of repeated connection problems, we couldn't. We did finally get him though, and you're going to hear that episode now. But also the remaining population, the area gets to be displaced and this is the tragedy of every airstrike.

There is this truly haunting video that I've watched of Al Jazeera reporter Hani Mahmood. It was shot a few months into Israel's military campaign in Gaza. He's reporting live from the city few buildings behind where he's standing. Oh, my God! Are you guys hearing that? Yes, we are hearing that, Hany. Are you OK? Are you in a safe place Yes, we are hearing that, Hany. Are you okay? Are you in a safe place to continue to talk to us?

Wait. Oh, my God. No, no, no, no. This is really bad. This is bad. He keeps reporting. Hany, are you okay to talk to us right now? Because if not, we can come back to you a little bit later.

The important thing is that you stay safe. You and your team there stay safe. Okay. Are you guys seeing this? Yes, as you see, this is a huge, huge, dark cloud of smoke. This is what we were expecting. This is more or less what Hani has been doing for the past year. Even as he's had to flee again and again across Gaza with his young family.

Even as he's lined up for hours to get food and water for his children. One year into Israel's military campaign in Gaza, more than 42,000 people have been killed, according to local health authorities. But they estimate another 10,000 may be buried under the rubble. More than 80% of health facilities are destroyed or damaged, as are more than 90% of roads. Every university in the territory is gone. One UN report said it could take up to 80 years to rebuild all the destroyed homes. And at this point, there doesn't appear to be an end in sight. So today, I'm speaking with Hani Mahmoud, a father and reporter in Gaza, about surviving through the last year.

Hani, hi, I want to thank you so much for being with me today. Thanks for having me. Thank you. I wonder if we could start by talking a bit about your life before October 7th, 2023. Where did you and your family used to live before this military campaign began a year ago? Well, I'm coming from an academic background. I was very much involved with academia, doing research. The last project that I worked on before October 7th had to do with providing jobs for graduates. My wife and I worked on that side by side. hometown, not only for me and my wife, but also for our kids. Everything that we did was evolving around this, what we were working on, academia, but also we have some outdoor activities. And by outdoor, I mean, there isn't a lot of options in terms of outdoors other than the beach or go for

a brief walk in the streets of Galbraith. There were a couple of coffee shops that we would hang out. I remember October 6th, that's like in the evening, the night before October 7th. We planned something to do with the kids, and we planned a picnic on the beach. My second son, a little bit autistic, and once in a while we felt like we needed some outdoor activities to keep him involved in the outside world.

So that's the plan we've had. And we've never done that for almost a year now. I haven't been able to provide him with what he needs in order to continue his therapy. And I feel very much he's been regressing because he's been busy all year just worrying about priorities. Food, water, protection for the whole family and we did not pay much attention to what he needed uh for him to uh to continue i mean how could you right how could you um honey can you tell me more about your kids, about your son, about your other kids? How old are they? What do they love to do?

What did they dream about before October 7th? Well, I have three kids. The oldest is in Brayford. And my second son, Yusuf, is eight. And the little one, Hanin. who's eight, and the little one, Hanin. And Hanin has been my co-journalist for this whole year because every time I'd come home, she wanted to put the vest on. She wanted to sit the helmet.

The helmet's so big, it covers 90% of her head. They've been watching me on my watch phones, and they just want to imitate what they are seeing. When I talk to my wife about my day reporting about what's going on, the literal details that I try as much as I can, kids do not listen to because it's not appropriate for their age to hear about the blood and destruction. And sometimes I get very emotional because there's nothing left for the kids yet.

They're not living a normal life now. Hani says he tries to change the subject every time the war comes up at home. He doesn't want his kids to hear about it all the time. He wants them to focus on school and their future, but that's been pretty much impossible. Their family has been displaced five times. They had to go from the northern part of Gaza City to the southern part of the city,

then later to the Nusayrat refugee camp, which is in the middle of the Strip, and at a later point to Khan Yunus II. They don't talk much about their ambitions and their dreams, the big four-simple evacuation, five times. And that has been very exhausting, very draining for the kids. And every time we move somewhere, our sense of safety is reduced every time. Yeah. Would you tell me more about, you know, when and why you had to evacuate those? I think you just said five times, right to be honest with you, this is more of a, like, enforced internal displacement. And there's literally no safer place across the Gaza Strip. We evacuated all the way from Gaza City to the southern part of Gaza City for about a week. And then we were forced into the central area in Musayrat refugee camp. And then one more time, the Tanyounis city,

and then Chwaka, and then back to the central area, the Deir el-Balak, and any of the times, we are forced into this internal displacement because of the intense bombing campaign across Gaza. Most of Gaza's 2.1 million residents have gone through the kind of internal displacement that Hani's talking about there. According to the UN's humanitarian agency in the Palestinian territories, 90% of people in the Gaza Strip have been internally displaced at least once, and some up to 10 times since October

7th. Hani's whole extended family has been deeply affected by this. He says that some have had to go to overcrowded, unhygienic evacuation centers, and others were killed inside their homes because they didn't have enough time to evacuate. cleansing because what is going on is literally those who do not who do not have the ability to leave these areas including relatives of mine were killed in these neighborhoods because simply they did not have a place to go to do you mind if i ask you what happened to some of your relatives who who died well they were simply like every like every other Palestinian, they were killed inside their home, either while they were excluding or simply because they made a decision of not leaving because they did not know where to go.

They did not have the place to go to. The majority of evacuation centers, it's not a suitable environment where they're packed, they're overcrowded, you know, no space available for the people, let alone the spread of disease, the internal conflicts between families over space.

For a lot of them, the decision to go there was suicidal. So they preferred to stay where they grew up, where they stayed the whole of their life. out where they stayed the whole of their life. Other family members simply were not given enough time to evacuate because some of these evacuation orders are totally enforced displacement orders within minutes of being ordered. Intense bombing campaign, target bombing campaign would start and giving people zero chance of leaving or staying alone. Tens of thousands of civilians are now heading south as the IDF promises to unleash, quote, great force onto areas north of Gaza City, a promise followed through upon just hours after evacuation orders were given. The Israeli army wants these Palestinians to head for a so-called humanitarian zone further south.

Though they frequently bomb the area, and conditions have been described as catastrophic by American diplomats. Honey, how many family members have you lost? Seven. Oh, God. Seven family members. I'm so sorry. But because we lived in one area in one neighborhood

we were very close to each other yeah uh and i kind of missed that our weekly gathering family here i connected to each other I'm going to go. in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income. That's not a typo. 50%. That's because money is confusing.

In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. When you're fleeing with your family, how are you doing that? Are you on foot? Are you packing up all your belongings into a vehicle? How did you do it so many times? Well, the first few times we had vehicles available, the first and the fourth and the fifth time, we did not have that luxury because simply major parts of the doctorate ran out of food. And we ended up leaving on foot. So me, my wife, my two parents were in their late seventies, had some health complications. It was a very long

journey. Every displacement has its cost on a social level, on a financial level, and ultimately the psychological level. You're not as stable. You are running for your life, and it takes part of your sanity away, part of your sense of safety. And on a social level, our family will static right now. It's everywhere across Northern. I have a sister that I haven't seen for a whole year now. A whole year. And it was just a month ago that I knew where she is actually staying with her kids. So, sorry, do you know where she is now?

I know where she is right now. But for a whole year, I mean, that's the disintegration that was inflected on families at the social level. Families are scattered now. Yeah. They're not as they used to be before 12-7. It would begin in central Gaza, where an Israeli airstrike on the grounds of Al-Aqsa Hospital has killed at least four Palestinians and injured dozens. Al Jazeera's Hani Mahmoud joins us live from Dar al-Bala.

That's in central Gaza. Hani, you're just outside Al-Aqsa Hospital. It's where you've been reporting from, and that is where the attack took place yesterday. Can you run us through what happened? When did it happen? Who was in those tents? Yes, sir. Well, I'm standing about 50 meters away from the tent site that was bombed in overnight. Hani is now based in Deir al-Bala in central Gaza. Access to water and food remains extremely

difficult. You have to queue for hours to get basic goods, and you have to pay way above its value. Recent data from Gaza-based aid organizations show that people in Gaza have gone from having an average of two meals a day to just one meal every other day. The United Nations World Food Program says escalating violence in northern Gaza is having a disastrous impact on food security, with no food aid entering since the 1st of October. They say the North is basically cut off, leaving them unable to operate. Hani says in the past year, he's really had to just take things day by day, and has had to rely a lot on family members to help with getting those basic goods.

That reminds me of that. Every evening, I try to go to bed not thinking much about the next morning because that's a new struggle for the next day. The struggle with water and food.

Queuing for a long time to get water, get food in front of a shop, whatever is left. It's a daily struggle and it takes much of my time on a daily basis right now. And because of my work as a correspondent, sometimes I rely on a relative

or one of my younger siblings just to do that. I could live with all of this, with all of this, but you can advantage of the situation where you end up with the stuff that that costs you less than a dollar right now in the black

market because there's only a black wanted running across the right now $10, $15, $20 if you assume I'm able to pay that there are thousands of families who are able to provide you with necessities by being a sun salt and go back to their kids and and their tents or wherever they are sheltering and there's like a multi layer of of misery going on.

For a whole year, people are not, they don't have, they're off their jobs. There's no payroll, what's going on. They don't get paid because there are no jobs. So there's a multi-faceted crisis. That's had us proper right now. Earlier in the conversation, Hani said that he didn't like to bring up the war with his kids. But I wanted to get his thoughts on what he would say when he had to.

Like when his kids would ask him questions about it. And Honey didn't give the answer I expected. I thought he might talk more about immediate things like bombs. But he said that it was important for him to talk to his kids about the history and context of the war and not just about the war itself. about the war itself. That to only hear about the war in isolation would be a recipe for radicalization, which is something that he's seeing and hearing when he's reporting.

Yes, we see it happening every day. And the reason it's hard to challenge it because all we've seen for a whole year, the intense bombing contained the destruction. If I'm saying there is nothing left of God, I'm not exaggerating. This is the reality. And according to the United Nations,

according to European experts, it will take 10 years to revolt God. But the schools, they are the only hope for children here. The schools are gone, all of them. The destruction is done for a purpose, and the purpose is either to drive the population out, to conduct population transfer, or it's just to end the whole society.

Now, when you hear people talk about radicalization, and you know that was the end of all of this. October 7th, as much as I hate it, I don't think it should never happen i think people who are who are behind this should be held accountable that it was not it did not start on october 7th before october 7th there were 16 years of blockade that got us to that point so october 7th was the clinicalnacle of weird military occupation, of the 16 years of trafficking in blood, with basic stuff that were not allowed in Gaza.

It's as simple as toilet paper, sanitary pads. Israel controls everything and everyone that goes out or comes in. And precious little comes in these days. Around 2 million people are stuck here in the Gaza Strip, a tiny shut off piece of land where no one can leave without Israel or Egypt's permission. And most people have never left at all. The very fabric of Gaza is breaking down. The roads have turned into sewers.

The water supply is sporadic, as is electricity. Sanitation is an issue and there is widespread poverty and unemployment. So all of this got us into October 7. Nobody talked about the fact for years the Israeli military dictated every aspect of our life. Who gets a job, who does not get a job. There is economic suffocation. There is political oppression. And if you talk about human rights, there are no human rights at all. No civil rights whatsoever. I mean, we can talk about comments as much as we want.

They're horrible. They're bad. We don't want to see them. But there is a bigger institutional racism, institutional occupation, institutional oppression going on. You need to get rid of that. And then it's easy to get rid of every other byproducts of it. I've seen you standing in front of tent camps, reporting on people who are being forced to flee yet again, reporting on people lining up for hours to get food and water, people desperately trying to protect their children from the bombs,

just like you and your wife and your family are. People mourning their loved ones, just like you and your family. As you see, collapsed fathers, crying mothers, crying mothers here. The tragedy of death that has been happening over and over every single day. We don't recall a day going by without watching this scene happening right here at the courtyard of the hospital. What has it been like for you to report on these things when you yourself are going through them? Well, it has been very, very difficult, very draining, to be honest with you, because as soon as I'm done with my report, I collapse.

And to be honest with you, I start to worry about my well-being and my mental health because my level of response to these events has changed over time. I mean, I used to be very emotional. I cried. I supported families. I sympathized with them. And right now, I think there is something going on wrong in the way I respond to these things. on wrong in the way I respond to these things. I try to come up with a logical explanation. Why am I not responding in the same way? Because I've seen much of it. I'm getting used to the terrible

scene on a daily basis. And I kind of feel bad about doing this, but I'm trying to get out of that area. There's so much, so much sadness, so much tragedy going on. I can talk to you for a day about the many times that I have to sit with only one surviving family, only one of 20 other who were killed or a child who was the only one who's left.

And that's just because that could have been me or my kids or any one of my family members. We're ready. No one is left for a little girl who survived or for a young boy who survived. What kind of life are they looking

ahead of them? How are they going to accept that? I already go into that center. Hani has reported on many tragedies this year, but there's one that's really stuck with him. And that was his experience reporting on the mass graves found at the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Yunus. This is the site of a massive grave that was created by the Israeli military as it formed a hospital within the past. Authorities in Gaza said at the time that they found nearly 400 bodies, including some still wearing surgical gowns. There were reports of bodies found with gunshot wounds to their heads. At the time, the Israel Defense Forces said accusations that they had buried the bodies were categorically false.

Hani spoke to people who thought that their loved ones could be in those graves. Mothers and fathers calling their children's names as they searched body bags. One story we covered, the Matthew Graven of Nasser Hospital left in fine wounds. And that was perhaps the hardest thing that I've ever I mean I've seen people coming into the hospital in pieces or in plastic bags but what I've seen at Nasser hospital the massive grave and they were handcuffed and uh you could clearly see that the bullet that was used to execute them right in their the back their skulls or the back of their back. And sometimes now, if I'm by myself, I go back, it's more of a flash.

I swear I could smell death up till now. I get emotional about it because I remember those mothers and fathers were going to the bags, cursing, calling their children by their name or their relative, whoever, hoping they would have survived this. There's one particular mother that I knew, she searched almost for seeing bags, body bags that were covered from the mask. And she could not find the body of her son until, I don't know, just happened in a blink of an eye, she recognized the body of her son from the

clothes he was wearing. She said that she bought him that clothes. That was something that I remember cutting off the report because I could not really continue. It was too much to handle. Very, very tragic and sad. Unimaginable. I just want to make sure I heard you right. You said just now that you're thinking about getting out of reporting, right? Is that what you, that's what you said?

When the opportunity, when the opportunity allows, I would, I would definitely do that because it's, it's time to, to be with my wife and, and the kids. Yeah. Yeah. I, I am curious. Well, if you don't mind, if I could ask you what has kept you going though, right? As you've just said, you I could ask you, what has kept you going, though, right? As you've just said, you have reported on unimaginable pain and suffering. But also an unprecedented number of journalists have been killed in Gaza over the past year, more than 100, including some of your colleagues at Al Jazeera. Al Jazeera's correspondent, Ismail Al Ghul, we understand has been killed along with his cameraman in Gaza. Since October 7th, at least 116 journalists have been killed and dozens more injured. 53 are in detention. The deadliest conflict for journalists since the Committee to Protect

Journalists began records. Nearly all of them Palestinian. Two were Israeli, killed in the Hamas attack on October 7th. International investigations have suggested that Israel deliberately targeted some of those journalists. And knowing those kind of dangers, what has kept you out there? Part of it is the need for the truth to be told because as of now, I mean, with so much misinformation going on, there is so much misinformation, so much concentration on one particular event, the October 7th, and leaving an entire context of what has led to October 7th, all these years of occupation, all the mistreatment of Palestinians, the illegal settlement,

the closure of the ground, the crossing, the prevention of the Palestinians living a normal life, the disposition of land, all of this, nobody talks about it. So there is a need to talk about it. I lived here. I'm part of this struggle. I'm part of this misery that's been

going on for generations. It has taken already my grandparents, my parents, and my generation. I'm not trying to understand what happened, but to take one single event and just put so much focus on it and leaving everything out is not fair. It's not fair for the civilians who have been struggling on a daily basis. There is a need for a more accurate narrative of what's going on. It's just that's the responsibility that I carry on my shoulders. Honey, I want to thank you so much for this. You're a tremendous journalist. Truly, truly tremendous.

Also, having spoken to you today, an incredible father. And so I hope that your family stays safe. And thank you for your time. Thank you so much, Jamie. All right. That is all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening, and we will talk to you tomorrow. Thank you.