Shrouq Al Aila
on behalf of the over 130 journalists killed by Israel during its slaughter in Gaza and Lebanon and the hundreds of brave independent journalists who continue to face very high risks in reporting to the world from the Gaza genocide zone
In recognition of her courage for continuing to report from Gaza even after her husband – Roshdi Sarraj, founder of a Gaza production company, Ain Media – was killed in an Israeli air strike on October 22, 2024.
“Al Aila, 29, quickly picked up where her husband left off and became the head of Ain Media covering the war and displacement of Gaza’s residents,” the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reported earlier this year. “The production company has suffered other losses; early in the war photographer Ibrahim Lafi was killed and Haitham Abdelwahid, also a photographer, went missing along with a close journalist friend, Nidal Al-Wahidi. Sarraj’s founding partner at Ain Media, Yaser Murtaja, was murdered by an Israeli sniper in 2018.”
Israel prohibits foreign journalists from entering Gaza, thus leaving it up to Palestinian journalists to expose the genocide. In October 2024, 65 members of the House of Representatives, led by Congressman Jim McGovern (D-Massachusetts) called on President Biden to push Israel to allow foreign journalists unimpeded access to Gaza.
Palestinian journalists in Gaza face particularly highྭrisks, including devastating Israeli air strikes, famine, the displacement of 90% of Gaza’s population, and the destruction of 80% of its buildings. CPJ is investigating more than 130 additional cases of potential killings, arrests and injuries, but many are difficult to document amid the harsh conditions in Gaza.
“Since the war in Gaza started, journalists have been paying the highest price – their lives – for their reporting. Without protection, equipment, international presence, communications, or food and water, they are still doing their crucial jobs to tell the world the truth,” said CPJ in a statement. “Every time a journalist is killed, injured, arrested, or forced to go to exile, we lose fragments of the truth. Those responsible for these casualties face dual trials: one under international law and another before history’s unforgiving gaze.”
Feroze Sidhwa, MD
On behalf of dozens of doctors and nurses who blew the whistle on the U.S. backed Israeli genocide in Gaza and for all Palestinian healthcare workers, including the more than 1,000 Palestinian healthcare workers killed by Israel in that genocide
In recognition of his courage for publicly organizing fellow doctors and nurses who together blew the whistle on the ongoing U.S.-backed Israeli slaughter and genocide in Gaza.
In April 2024, Dr. Sidhwa, a trauma surgeon based in Stockton, California, spent two weeks as a volunteer at the European Hospital in Gaza. Based on his first-hand knowledge of the U.S. backed Israeli campaign to ethnically cleanse and depopulate the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, he drafted open letters to the Biden administration, signed by dozens of doctors who had worked in Gaza, to bring attention to the ongoing genocide in Gaza. He also co-authored a report published by Politico on the horror conditions in Gaza’s hospitals.
In the July 2024 open letter, the doctors called on President Biden to “withhold military, economic, and diplomatic support from the State of Israel and to participate in an international arms embargo ... until a permanent ceasefire is established, and until good faith negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians lead to a permanent resolution of the conflict.”
Also in July 2024, two of these Gaza doctors, Dr. Sidhwa and Dr. Mark Perlmutter, wrote an article for Politico titled – “We Volunteered at a Gaza Hospital – What We Saw Was Unspeakable.” In October 2024, Dr. Sidhwa wrote an op-ed for the New York Times titled – “65 Doctors, Nurses and Paramedics: What We Saw in Gaza.”
“I worked as a trauma surgeon in Gaza from March 25 to April 8,” Dr. Sidhwa opened his op-ed in the Times. “I’ve volunteered in Ukraine and Haiti, and I grew up in Flint, Mich. I’ve seen violence and worked in conflict zones. But of the many things that stood out about working in a hospital in Gaza, one got to me: Nearly every day I was there, I saw a new young child who had been shot in the head or the chest, virtually all of whom went on to die. Thirteen in total.”
All conscientious Americans are deeply indebted to Dr. Sidhwa and his colleagues for their brave, hands-on documentation of genocidal Israeli terror against Palestinian families.