Yaser Murtaja, 31, a photojournalist……
A live Israeli bullet had penetrated the side of Yaser’s abdomen and the Palestinian journalist succumbed to his injury at a hospital on April 7. Ashraf Abu Amra is still missing his friend, as he is the one who received Yaser’s last mail. “Where there is danger, I will click photos,” wrote Yaser in his mail.
Ashraf – a resident of Deir Al-Balah, a Palestinian city in the central Gaza Strip and the administrative capital of the Deir el-Balah Governorate – and his colleagues are habituated to dealing with the danger. They had prior information that the situation was going to deteriorate in Khan Yunis, a city in the southern Gaza Strip. On April 6 morning, they left Al-Balah for Khan Yunis. Upon their arrival in Khan Yunis, they found that the Palestinian youths and the Israeli forces gathered there. Ashraf and his friends wore blue vests, marked ‘PRESS’ in large black capital letters, so that the Israelis could easily identify them as the ‘third party’.

Yaser Murtaja

They also found that protesters were fully prepared for the protest, dubbed The Great March of Return, as they brought many tires in trucks. Immediately after the Palestinian protesters torched those tyres, the Israeli forces started firing gunshots. Israel also deployed fighter jets to bombard the area and Ashraf’s camera caught those moments. All of a sudden, he discovered that Yaser, who was also present there, fell on the ground after receiving a bullet in abdomen. He was bleeding profusely.

Ashraf Abu Amra

Ashraf told the media: “We were filming, as youths torched tires. We were about 250m from the fence. Israeli forces opened fire and injuries began. Yaser and I ran to film when suddenly Yaser fell to the ground. I screamed to him: ‘Yaser are you alright?’ He didn’t respond and there was blood on the ground underneath him. I knew it was a bad injury and people carried him away.” Yaser, who died in a hospital next day, left behind a wife and a two-year-old son. “The Israeli snipers can see us clearly because they are in a higher position. The Israelis were deliberately shooting at the photographers because we were documenting the crimes of the occupation,” said Ashraf.

The Great March of Return

According to Ashraf, journalists face various problems in Gaza. They are often killed in gunfire or bombing. Sometimes, Israelis (or Palestinians) don’t recognise them as ‘newsmen’. It is to be noted that the general secretary of the International Federation of Journalists accused the Israeli authorities of “fabricating lies to justify murder” of Yaser after Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Liberman claimed that the slain journalist was flying a drone near the border. Furthermore, Gaza journalists are not allowed to visit foreign countries. Ashraf was invited to receive an award during an international photography competition in Russia in 2016. However, the Israeli authorities did not allow him to visit Moscow.
After receiving treatment for long, Ashraf – wearing the navy-blue protective vest marked with ‘PRESS’ – has returned to the ‘battlefield’ once again. This time, Yaser is not with him. And the question still remains what exactly happened on April 6. By the way, Jews and Muslims gathered in Berlin on Sunday to ride bikes together as a sign of unity amid increasing anti-Semitism and Islamophobia in Germany.

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Published by Koushik Das

Koushik Das (born on May 16, 1976 in Kolkata) is a career journalist. Based in the Indian capital of New Delhi, Koushik writes mainly about foreign policies and current geopolitical issues, and rarely about other topics. His own political ideas are highly influenced by Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, Michael Oakeshott and others. English philosopher and political theorist Oakeshott (Dec 11, 1901-Dec 19, 1990) says that “in political activity, men sail a boundless and bottomless sea. There is neither harbour for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither starting-place, nor appointed destination. But we have to keep afloat”. (Rationalism in Politics, 1962) As a student of Political Science, Koushik loves to share his views on issues, which have great impacts on his thought process (and also on India, South Asia and of course on the global community), with his readers through his website – Boundless Ocean of Politics. By doing so, he tries to keep himself afloat. You will find some of his articles in https://inserbia.info/today/ (https://inserbia.info/today/author/kou_das13_i/), as he has been trying to assess the global geopolitics since 2003. You can also mail him at kousdas@gmail.com View all posts by Koushik Das