By Nir Hagigi
In October 2023, as Israeli bombs began to fall on Gaza, something unprecedented unfolded. For the first time in history, the victims of mass atrocity —and only the victims— broadcast their own destruction in real time. Unlike previous conflicts where foreign journalists or outside observers mediated what the world saw, in Gaza the task of witnessing fell almost entirely to Palestinians themselves, because Israel barred international media from entering. Through TikTok livestreams, Instagram stories, and Telegram updates, they documented life under genocide with no outside press on the ground. The crisis in Gaza has been called a “livestreamed genocide” in Amnesty International’s annual report, a label that has been used since the start of the war by pro-Palestinian activists in the West.
While wars and atrocities have always been depicted in the media, the immediacy, intimacy, and sheer volume of testimony coming out of Gaza mark a turning point in the politics of witnessing. To understand what makes Gaza different, it helps to place this moment in historical perspective.
The idea that media changes the way people experience war is not new. In the 19th century, the telegraph allowed near-instant communication from battlefields for the first time, which revolutionized journalism during conflicts like the Crimean War. Yet, even then, reports were filtered through war correspondents and often biased to fit political agendas.
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