The Electronic Intifada 18 October 2024
Islam Elkhaldy holds up a sandwich. The former journalist has turned to food to provide for her children and her husband, also a journalist, who was injuted earlier in Israel’s aggression
Journalist Islam Elkhaldy has been displaced five times during Israel’s yearlong genocide in Gaza.
Her home in the al-Thalathini area east of Gaza City was destroyed earlier in the war, and she is now in the Mawasi area of Khan Younis.
The area is not safe, she said, pointing out how it is regularly bombed and the displaced people there, risk being massacred in Israel’s indiscriminate violence.
Elkhaldy has worked for Palestinian and Arab news outlets, including Donia Al-Watan, Al-Araby al-Jadeed and Quds News Network. She said she loved writing humanitarian and success stories about people living under siege in Gaza.
But the attacks and forced displacements led Elkhaldy to put away her passion for reporting for now to take care of her children, Seba, 11, and Majd, 5.
She now instead sells sandwiches to other displaced people in the area to help her and her family survive.
This is not the first time she has turned her hand to cooking.
When COVID-19 hit in 2020, Islam started making Arab and Western dishes to sell and promoted them through a Facebook page.
Now, however, she has no modern kitchen. She prepares her food in a tent with a small oven for baking and a bread heater. She offers a variety — cheese, sausages, chicken breasts and other meat — of sandwiches to customers.
“I can’t be a journalist in this war. Journalists are attacked and killed, and I have two children who need daily care, and I need to provide for their needs,” she told The Electronic Intifada. ”Most of the time they stay with me in the tent that I work in.”
Husband’s injury
Islam is married to Muhammed al-Akhras, a television cameraman who was injured while covering the Israeli genocide.
“Due to the ongoing aggression in Gaza at the moment I am suffering deeply with horrible pain,” he wrote for a GoFundMe appeal for his family.
“We are currently living in such extreme conditions and as a journalist I must be on my feet all day and then sleep on the cold concrete in a tent for the night. I am unable to get the necessary surgeries and medical treatment. I need to immediately evacuate Gaza for medical treatment outside,” Muhammad wrote.
His wife’s circumstances is another kind of war story.
“I have used social media to promote my small project, hoping that someone will buy my product,” Islam said. “Now I have become a story like so many other journalists, especially women, who have been forced by the war to endure a lot of difficulties to care for their children.”
She said she tries to buy whatever is available in the market to continue her daily cooking and that sometimes fellow displaced people sell fresh and canned food that she buys for her creations.
“Islam has a talent for preparing Arabic and Western food and dishes, and I supported her project because we don’t want to give up, despite our grief for all those we have lost from our families and the destruction of our house,” Muhammad told The Electronic Intifada.
“I wanted us to remain strong, stay cohesive as a family and not succumb to circumstances.”
Ola Mousa is an artist and writer from Gaza.
