“If this isn’t genocide, what is?” -Gaza photojournalist Belal Khaled shares his harrowing eyewitness account of the Gaza genocide at a Cape Town event. Instagram/@belalkhaled, June 2025
(The Post News)- The room fell silent as Palestinian photojournalist Belal Khaled took the stage at the Journalism on the Frontline event in Cape Town. What followed was not simply a speech, but a visceral, soul-shaking testimony a raw dispatch from within what he repeatedly, and unapologetically, called the Gaza genocide.
For over 300 days, Khaled has risked his life documenting the devastation wrought on Gaza, capturing the agony of families, the destruction of communities, and the erasure of lives. His presence in South Africa a country that understands both oppression and the struggle for liberation carried enormous symbolic weight. The event, hosted by humanitarian leader Dr. Imtiaz Sooliman, founder of Gift of the Givers, was attended by journalists, media scholars, and human rights activists. While the program included a screening of Eyes of Gaza, a powerful photo exhibition, and a panel discussion on censorship and press freedom, it was Khaled’s testimony that left the deepest mark.
Speaking slowly, with the exhaustion of trauma still in his voice, Khaled made it clear: he did not come to perform or persuade. He came to bear witness.
“We are not just journalists. We are also witnesses. And in Gaza, we are part of the story,” he said. “You don’t just report the news you survive it.”
Khaled returned to Gaza on October 7, the same day Israeli airstrikes began pounding the territory in the wake of Hamas’ attack. From that day forward, he chronicled what he called a systematic campaign of extermination a campaign that has left tens of thousands dead, entire families wiped out, and vast parts of Gaza uninhabitable. The numbers are staggering: over 55,000 people killed, more than 70% of them women and children, according to Palestinian sources. Yet Khaled insists the figures alone can’t convey the depth of suffering.
He described working without the most basic conditions no power, no internet, no food, no shelter. In some cases, no water. He and fellow journalists took refuge in tents or rubble, often filming through the night, knowing the airstrikes could hit them at any moment.
“There was no safe hour,” he recalled. “No morning. No night. Bombs came whenever they wanted. And yet, we kept filming. We didn’t sleep not because we didn’t want to, but because we couldn’t.”
Khaled’s message to international media was forceful. He accused many news outlets of minimizing, distorting, or ignoring the reality in Gaza out of fear or political pressure. His appeal: speak the truth, name the crime.
“More than 55,000 people have been killed. If this isn’t genocide, then what is it? Stop being afraid. This is the Gaza genocide.”
He acknowledged the toll the war has taken on his profession. He has lost dozens of colleagues in the field including close friends he lived and worked alongside. Some died with cameras still in hand.
“These aren’t statistics,” he said. “They were my friends. We shared food, stories, fear. They’re not numbers they were entire lives. Their absence is not a gap; it’s a wound that doesn’t close.”
And still, he says, there was never a choice to walk away. The need to document, to preserve truth, was too great.
“If we turn off our cameras, the truth disappears. If we don’t show the world what’s happening, the silence becomes part of the crime. Journalism is the last defence we have.”
The impact of Khaled’s words was immediate and profound. South African journalists, already critical of global double standards, were stirred to respond.
International correspondent Fahmida Miller reflected on the profession’s failure to speak out sooner.
“There is a hierarchy of whose lives and whose deaths are deemed worthy of outrage,” she said. “Palestinian journalists have been targeted relentlessly, and yet the silence from many of our peers has been deafening. Why did it take so long for our industry to respond?”
Miller also stressed that Gaza represents more than a crisis in the Middle East it reflects the most extreme form of state-sponsored censorship and violence against the press.
“Censorship in Gaza isn’t theoretical,” she said. “It’s physical. It’s fatal. And every journalist attacked there is a warning shot to all of us around the world.”
Kevin Bloom, senior writer at Daily Maverick, took the floor next. His address was deeply personal a reflection on his own upbringing and a stark challenge to South Africa’s Jewish institutions.
“I was raised in a Zionist household. I attended Jewish school. I did IDF training,” he said. “But after October 7, I had to confront everything I had been taught and everything I had ignored.”
Bloom now writes about Israel and Palestine from what he calls a place of accountability. “My family calls me a self-hating Jew. But I don’t care. The truth matters more.”
For many in the room, Bloom’s comments alongside Khaled’s testimony marked a pivotal moment in South Africa’s public reckoning with Israel’s war in Gaza. From a nation that knows the pain of apartheid and the power of international solidarity, the parallels are not lost.
As Gaza remains sealed off from most of the world, Khaled’s message echoed with urgency.
“Each crime must be documented. Even if they kill us, the truth has to survive. Because if it doesn’t then the genocide continues not just in Gaza, but in the world’s silence.”
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