Remembering Fatima Hassouna
Hassouna's work and Legacy in Palestine
A little less than a year ago, I wrote a post about the use of AI and suffering in the context of the “All Eyes on Rafah” post that was seen across social media.
Here’s an excerpt:
“The circulating AI post alienates us from the situation. Reposting a made up image, especially when so many real ones are available, waters down the impact of it and dilutes the human aspect of this humanitarian crisis. The sanitized, almost Pixar like image has its benefits as its fake-ness leads to less diffusion blocks by the social media platforms, but it also facilitates posting to follow a shallow trend.”
This week, this is what Rafah looks like:
The destruction that this genocide has caused is really hard for me to comprehend. I tune into the news and read the headlines, and although I wish I could, I can’t really conceptualize the large numbers I read, and I have a hard time placing the countless images of ruble and dust in a concrete timeline.
I know I’m not alone in this, I think most people reach a level of saturation where the conflict becomes so large that in trying to reach the shore of comprehension you start to drown in the effort. I’ve spent the last year condemning the actions taken by the Israeli government, I’ve been attentive to each cease fire announcement and consequent disappointment, I’ve continued to march with my friends, and glimpses of awful images still make my stomach lurch with disgust towards humanity. But like a candle running out of wax, the fire, the determination, and the hope with which we tackled conversations and demonstrations a year ago, has started to diminish.
I continue doing what I consider to be the bare minimum, (talking and advocating when possible, staying in tune with the news and what’s happening, going to fundraisers, etc…) but the legal and institutional mountain that is keeping this genocide going, the one that I have spent the last three years studying as part of my degree and felt determined to climb and then change, gets taller each day, and I feel myself shrinking.
Then, a couple of days ago, I woke up to the news that Fatima Hassouna had been killed.
After I discovered her work in a Guardian article months ago, I started following Hassouna’s work. Amidst my Instagram algorithm of travel photos and homogeneous lives, her posts kept me in tune with what the day to day in Gaza looked and felt like, especially for the very particularly precarious intersection of being a woman and a member of the press in the most dangerous conflict for journalists ever recorded.
I don’t know anyone in Gaza, I never have, but following Fatima has been the closest I’ve gotten. I saw her devastated when eleven of her family members died, and elated when she got engaged. I gasped at her photos, I admired her writing, and although she had no idea who I was, I felt oddly proud every time one of her images made it into a large publication.
She was just 25, and if it wasn’t for this war, she would have had a full, happy life. She died alongside ten other members of her family, most of them her siblings, after an Israeli airstrike hit her house in northern Gaza. Her wedding was in a few days, her fiancée is devastated, her mother in complete shock.
On social media, she said that she wanted a “loud death” that she didn’t want to be “just breaking news, or a number in a group,” but rather, “a death that the world will hear, an impact that will remain through time, and a timeless image that cannot be buried by time or place.” I want to believe that her work will live on, that her images, in which she captured both suffering and joy amidst war, will continue to inspire those of us not in the conflict to stand up and fight for peace, for a ceasefire, for a fair life for Palestinians.
It is no secret that when you focus on one single story in a large conflict, it suddenly becomes much more tangible. When you can attach a personality and particular memories to a casualty, they’re not just one more on a death toll, they become the symbol for it. Fatima’s story is a tragedy, and what’s worse is that she really is one of millions of Palestinians with a life that has been unfairly, and inhumanely, cut short. Like many journalists in Gaza, she held a mirror up to the world, and most of it looked away.
Everyone in Palestine, deserved a long and fulfilled life. They deserved attention from a world that promised it would not let anything like this happen again. Fatima said her camera was her rifle, the memory card her bullets. She believed in the power of the press, in documenting what was happening. The least we can do is keep looking. Not away, not past her, but through the frame she left behind, and into a future in which images like hers are no longer needed to prove that lives are worth saving.
“I keep thinking about the place where I captured this moment in Jabalia camp, right in front of Uncle Hisham's house. These colors stood tall in the face of the wind and the war, in the face of the entire world, declaring their Palestinian identity. I stood there for a moment, stunned, hesitating before memorizing the scene in my camera. Then I quickly decided, "I must memorize everything. An entire generation to come must know!" I don't know what happened there now, or even if the colors still exist. I could see the devastation of war ahead, and behind me, Palestine in all its colors, its blood and its land, its war and its peace, from the end to the beginning. A complete Palestine that has not yet been partitioned. One Palestine, as its people know it. One Palestine from eternity... until the end of the world.” - Fatima Hassouna, October 8th 2024