Youmna ElSayed on Being a Reporter and a Mom in Wartime

BIANNA GOLODRYGA, SENIOR GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: And now, more on the war between Israel and Hamas. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as part of the Biden administration’s efforts to extend the tenuous truce in Gaza. But adding to the already frayed nerves in the region was a fatal shooting in Jerusalem today. Two Palestinian gunmen who Hamas say were members of its military wing opened fire at a bus stop, killing three people. Police say the gunmen were killed by soldiers and a civilian. Meanwhile, living conditions in Gaza continue to deteriorate, as the World Health Organization warns that more people could die from disease than bombings. Youmna ElSayed, an Al Jazeera English correspondent in Gaza and mother of four, has been reporting and experiencing personally these conditions.

Michel Martin spoke with her to discuss what it’s like working as a journalist while navigating day to day survival.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MICHEL MARTIN, CONTRIBUTOR: Thanks, Bianna. Youmna El Sayed, thank you so much for speaking with us.

YOUMNA ELSAYED, CORRESPONDENT, AL JAZEERA ENGLISH: Thank you, Michel, for hosting me in your show.

MARTIN: So, you’ve been reporting on the events since October 7th. But back in October, you’ve written about this, your family received a disturbing phone call from a private number that warned you to evacuate your home immediately. Would you tell us about that?

EL SAYED: Yes, that’s true. My husband received a call from a private number, and he was identified by his full name and he was asked to evacuate. He told him to take your family and evacuate from your homes otherwise, your life is in danger. And we live in a residential building where other residents are with us, other neighbors, no one received a call like that. And usually, when we receive calls from the Israeli army, it was with a number or it was identified. But this call was different. This call identified my husband by his full name, telling him to take his family and evacuate, otherwise, our lives are in danger.

MARTIN: How do you interpret that phone call? Do you interpret that phone call as a threat?

ELSAYED: Well, in the situation that we are in, OK, just a week before that call, less than a week before that call, Wael Dahdouh, my colleague in Al Jazeera Arabi — or Arabic, sorry, his entire family was killed in a bombardment. And they were in Nuseirat refugee camp, that’s south of Wadi, OK, and that’s where people are asked to evacuate. And the fact that we have been witnessing a lot of journalists in Gaza in this war being targeted and killed, over 60 journalists have been already killed in a matter of 50 days, 50 days of war. We got to the point where we’re afraid to put on our press vests because we don’t want to be labeled as journalists because that might put not just my life in danger, but the life of my entire family as well.

MARTIN: So, given that you’re saying that you believe that the IDF is targeting you and other journalists. We know that journalists are not being spared. But how do you know that the IDF is targeting you? Because some might hear what you just said and say that you got a phone call, that it was a legitimate warning to say that your area was being targeted. And so, I guess what I’m asking you is how do you know that you’re being targeted as opposed to that this was a legitimate warning to say you need to leave for your own safety? Do you see what I’m asking?

ELSAYED: I totally understand. But what answers that question are — or this question is facts and figures. Number of journalists that have been killed, most of them in their homes, most of them have been directly targeted. The family of what is being targeted in their home, the calls that I got or my family got was totally different from the evacuation calls.

MARTIN: Was the tone threatening?

ELSAYED: The tone was definitely threatening. When you identify someone with his entire name and tell him that I know you, and you called from a private number where you usually call other civilians and other residents with a number, and it’s usually a recorded message. So, to get the call in that way, in that same way, that is definitely a threat and not a warning.

MARTIN: So, the family did evacuate. Would you just describe what that was like?

ELSAYED: First of all, I wasn’t able to evacuate instantly when I got the call. One of the problems is that the bombardments were very close to my home itself, not just my area or my neighborhood, they were in my neighborhood. And you probably know what happened in Tel al-Hawa neighborhood. That’s my neighborhood. So, the — all the bombardments, all the explosions, all the airstrikes were in that same neighborhood. It was very risky for me to take my children and to go out. Second of all, I was asked to take my children and go to the south on foot. That was something that I couldn’t really — it wasn’t easy for me to decide on, and I felt that it was very risky. Third of all, we’ve seen civilians take that risk and go to the south on foot and get targeted. And even when they were in their cars, they were targeted, including United Nations cars. How can I, as a mother, risk my kids to that extent where I know that I’m throwing them under fire? No, I’m going to stay at home. At least if I die, I’m going to die at home with my kids, right? I’m not going to take them to the street and just risk that I would lose them right there. And I would not find someone to even carry our bodies back. I thought a hundred times before I took that journey.

MARTIN: You did eventually get out of there. You did eventually evacuate. So, what is life now? You’re still working. How are you managing that, both continuing to report and also trying to take care of your family?

ELSAYED: Let me give you like a picture or let me paint a picture of how our day starts, for example, we wake up in the morning and our struggle for finding water starts. So, we have to get our containers and go downstairs and start looking for water. So, that’s usually my husband my 11-year-old son, Muhammad (ph). He goes with his dad and they try to fill a container or two so that we are able to wash up. And then, our second struggle starts with breakfast, finding bread. For a while, before the humanitarian aid started entering in the ceasefire, it was almost impossible to find bread. It was almost impossible to find, flour. The quantities that are entering are very few compared to the number of people. And then, the struggle for lunch. It’s literally six days rice, plain rice, and one day either pasta or bread. So, for me as a mother, you know, like, I tell my kids, don’t be sad, don’t be frustrated. We’re just like million others. You guys are just like thousands of other children. At least you guys get to eat. We’re sleeping together in one room, the six of us, and we have two other families with us in the same apartment where we live, each family with our same struggle. It’s really a nation’s struggle. It’s not just a family or a group of people and so on. At least in this ceasefire, they got to, you know, breathe a little bit without being afraid of hearing the constant bombardments, the constant airstrikes, the constant rockets falling. And the problem with Gaza is that geographically it’s very small. It’s a tiny territory. Homes are very tight, a lot of people everywhere, and that’s why you can’t say that this bombardment, for example, is happening somewhere in the east, and you’re in the west, you can’t hear it. No, you just hear it as if it’s next door.

MARTIN: Are the children upset when you go to work? Do your children ever ask you, why do you have to go? Do they ever ask you that, and what do you say?

ELSAYED: They tell me that every day. They tell me, don’t go to work. Take it off. Why do you have to go and leave us? But I tell them that I have to. This is the only time I can do stories about people. I can move freely in and around the southern area because of the ceasefire. So, I have to use that time wisely. And because, for example, we don’t have electricity, there’s no television, there’s no internet, so they can’t watch me, for example. We got very little essentials with us when we evacuated to the south. And I knew that they were carrying those bags, so I couldn’t put a lot of clothes in it. I didn’t want it to be heavy because I knew that they were going to walk for at least six to seven kilometers. I ended up just getting a little bit of summer clothes that are very light. And now, suddenly, the weather gets — got very colder and it’s getting colder day by day and I can’t even find clothes for them. I mean, this is another challenge for me as a mother. I go to the shops. I go to the market every day. I try to get them anything to keep them warm, but I can barely find. This is tough. This is something, for example — this is a detail, for example, that other people wouldn’t think about. But for me as a mom, it’s killing me that I know that my five-year-old is not warm because I can’t find her clothes. I have the money, but I can’t find the product, right? Other people, they don’t have the money nor the product. But now, we’re all the same, right?

MARTIN: Well, this is interesting because you’re living the story that you’re reporting on. This is your life.

ELSAYED: Exactly. I’m living every single detail in the story of others that I’m reporting about. It’s just that I don’t get to report about my story or I consider that my story is not important. The important thing that I do is to report about others because this is my duty, this is my turn in life. But at the same time, people don’t really know that I’m living all the same struggles, the same challenges, the same pain, the same worry, the same fear, the same everything, helplessness that every single mother and father and child in Gaza are living. And our kids are living the same as well.

MARTIN: We’ve talked about the danger to journalists in the current moment. The Committee to Protect Journalists, it’s an organization that keeps track of dangers to journalists all over the world, says that the war has led to the deadliest month for journalists since the organization began collecting this information more than 30 years ago. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 50 Palestinian journalists, four Israeli journalists and three Lebanese journalists have been killed since October 7th. What — are there any precautions that you can take now? I know — I heard you say earlier that you’re not even sure whether to wear your press vest anymore. What have you decided about that?

ELSAYED: Honestly, Michel, I wear my gear because I have to wear it when I’m working, because my organization forces me to wear it when I’m working. And because legally, at least, if something happens to me, I’m wearing my gear, my protective gear, that levels that I’m a journalist, right? But inside me, I know that it’s not protecting me. It might even be putting my life in danger. Adding to that, media offices since the war, 2021, on — between Israel and Hamas, all media offices in the Gaza Strip, including Al Jazeera and the AP, were destroyed. And when I say all, I mean all, all agencies, all media offices were completely and deliberately targeted and destroyed. And this is not just a coincidence. When everything is destroyed that has to do with journalism in that territory, that it’s a coincidence. It’s a coincidence if it’s one or two or three. And then, just because they were in that building or this building or for whatever reason, whatever justification, but to completely eliminate or wipe out a certain, I don’t know, like, the journalism category from the Gaza Strip, I think that this is totally on purpose and deliberate.

MARTIN: I do have to say — and you are as a journalist, understand that I do have to say that the IDF, the Israeli Defense Forces, explicitly say and have said that they do not target and are not targeting journalists. I — that is their public statement about this.

ELSAYED: I believe facts and figures. I believe reality and I believe what I’m living. I believe what I am seeing. And I believe it’s not — like I can tell you any statement and the numbers and the pictures and the reality shows difference to my story.

MARTIN: So, let me just say that foreign journalists have not been allowed access into Gaza except under very limited circumstances when they have been embedded with the IDF, and it’s a very small number of people under very restrictive circumstances. As a consequence of that, we are relying on you and our colleagues who live in Gaza to bring us this information. You and your other colleagues, the number of people watching your reports has exploded, you know, around the world. Why do you think so many people are now so much more interested, so many more people are interested in your work?

ELSAYED: Because people can see with their own eyes the genocides that are being encountered in the Gaza Strip. They see the numbers of children that are being killed, and they want to know more about that. They’re more interested now about knowing about the Gaza Strip and the people of the Gaza Strip and the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. I think the western people and the western societies are opening their eyes and turning their eyes towards Palestine, towards the Gaza Strip and towards what is happening here. They believe me, so they follow me. And I think that this all has to do with changing the mind of the western societies now, the people in the United States, the people in Europe, how people now — the residents themselves, the civilians, how they deal with the Palestinian narrative and the Palestinian side of the story.

MARTIN: Do you feel like something has fundamentally changed with this conflict, if it’s changed people in any fundamental way that you can see, that you’ve — that you can detect, that you’ve — that you have observed?

ELSAYED: This war has the worst toll of trauma, pain, and loss on the people in Gaza. We’ve been on — like we’ve been through other conflicts and other wars, they were shorter, the casualties were not as many as they are now, the destruction wasn’t as devastating as it is now, and what we are living now is completely different from the suffering that we’ve ever encountered before in our life. And definitely, it has changed people a lot. Because people are now thinking, are we going to survive? This is the first question people ask each other. It’s the same thought that we tell our children every single night, instead of kissing them goodnight and wishing them sweet dreams, we kiss them goodbye, Michel. When you’re a mother, and try to picture that with me, how painful is it? Even if I don’t say it to them, inside me, as a mother, I know that I’m holding them tight and I’m kissing them goodbye because we might just not even wake up, because I might go out to work and not return back, or I might return and do not find them again. So, yes, definitely, it has changed the people, it has changed me, it has changed everyone. The trauma that we’re living with every single thing that we have lost, starting with people, our memories, our lives, our homes, yes, we’re going to live with that trauma for the rest of our lives.

MARTIN: Thank you, Youmna. Thank you for speaking with us.

ELSAYED: Thank you, Michel, for having me.