Rest in power, Issam
Why do we keep doing this, when so many of us have been killed, or kidnapped or injured multiple times?
On Friday night, I learned that Lebanese journalist Issam Abdullah had been killed in an Israeli airstrike in Southern Lebanon—he was on assignment with several other journalists who were injured in the attack, and was a close friend of several of my dearest friends.
It doesn’t matter who I know or don’t know because the point is everyone who has been killed and injured has known someone, has been the colleague of one of us, has been someone that we drank or laughed or commiserated with, and now they’re gone. Nothing is more haunting than seeing their Instagram story—which couldn’t have been posted more than 24 hours before, simply taking a bit of footage of their assignment (where, I might add, journalists are wearing vests that say PRESS) knowing that they are no longer with us.
It makes me wonder what the point of journalism is—especially news wires—when it is just distorted into disinformation and then my colleagues are going to die. Why do we keep doing this, when so many of us have been killed, or kidnapped or injured multiple times? Anyone who has ever covered a conflict zone will tell you that it is for the civilians—civilians who want us to tell their story, but then it stops short when their story is not used to make policy decisions, when their story is “too depressing” for those of us with the privilege to turn off the news, and the story stops there—told in vain?
One of the posts that broke me the most was one that shared that Issam wanted to quit Reuters soon—he wanted to put together a lifetime of footage that he gathered, risking his life, covering conflicts around the Middle East, and no longer be on the wires. It hit me hard because that’s what I used to do, and I know the feeling of being surrounded by my colleagues on whatever the daily story is, the camaraderie of being together, furiously filing our stories over coffees or beers before hanging out late in the night and waking up to do it all over again, of living and breathing this work in community with one another. I never felt the need for “boundaries” with my colleagues the way that I see in more “normal” office environments in the civilian world, because they weren’t colleagues, or even friends, they were family. We were trained to tie each other’s limbs in tourniquets in case someone got shot, and prepared for emergency situations—but mostly, we were there to understand one another, to understand what it was like to witness and digest history, the thrill, the pain, the moments it felt meaningless and the moments it felt like the only thing we could imagine doing.
Now, I can feel the pain and mourning of Issam—and by extension, the other eleven journalists who have been killed in the past week, senseless deaths doing meaningful work in a world that prefers misinformation and clickbait propaganda over nuanced reporting. I hope—as he is laid to rest, surrounded by the colleagues and community who loved him—that we can commit ourselves to supporting journalists, to supporting civilians trapped in this war, to valuing their stories and doing our best to bring them to the world.
Rest in power, Issam. You seem like a great guy.