The Electronic Intifada 24 March 2025
Wafa Aludaini
Wafa Aludaini dedicated her life to fearlessly defending the Palestinian people and narrating our lived experience in the media.
Her life of courage and dedication ended in seconds last September when Israel bombed her home in Deir al-Balah, the town in central Gaza where she was born in 1985. Wafa’s husband and two of their children – 5-year-old Balsam and 7-month-old Tamim – were also killed. The couple’s two surviving children – Malik and Siraj – are now orphans.
Wafa was no ordinary journalist. She wore a headscarf and face-covering niqab while speaking in English to a Western audience. Steadfast to her principles, Wafa forfeited the job offers, better pay and travel opportunities that would have come her way had she taken off the hijab.
Like Abu Obaida, the iconic spokesperson for Hamas’ Qassam Brigades famous for wrapping his head in a red kuffiyeh, revealing only his eyes, Wafa’s headscarf and niqab were part of her distinctive identity.
Wafa is among the more than 160 journalists who were killed in Gaza between 7 October 2023 and 19 January, when a ceasefire came into effect.
Israel resumed killing journalists after it collapsed the ceasefire nearly two months later. Hossam Shabat, a prominent correspondent for Al Jazeera, was killed in a targeted strike on his car in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza, on 24 March. Mohammed Mansour, a journalist who worked for Palestine Today, was killed the same day in a strike on his home in Khan Younis, along with his wife and son, according to Al Jazeera.
Israel has targeted and killed Palestinian journalists and social media influencers while denying international reporters access to Gaza. They are trying to bury the truth so they can carry out the genocide with minimal international pressure.
First of its kind
Wafa studied English and graduated from Al-Aqsa University and worked for several organizations in Gaza and online, making an impact both locally and internationally.
After Israel’s aggression in winter 2008-2009, Wafa joined Althoraya Training Center. She would commute to Gaza City daily from her home in Deir al-Balah, leaving her husband and children from 8 am to 4 pm.
After a few months of work, Wafa created clear guidelines for engaging with the Western media for a cohort of around 50 Palestinian students with strong skills in communicating in English, according to Diana al-Mughrabi, who was Wafa’s director at Althoraya. The students were selected through personal interviews, a language exam and an exam related to general culture. The project was the first of its kind in Gaza.
The last days of the team’s launch coincided with the completion of a United Nations independent fact-finding mission, headed by South African jurist Richard Goldstone, that probed violations of international law committed during Israel’s 2008-2009 aggression in Gaza.
The mission concluded that the mass destruction of civilian infrastructure and killing of civilians – often amounting to war crimes – “may have constituted military tactics reflective of a broader policy, approved at least tacitly by decision-makers at the highest levels of the Government of Israel.”
The Israeli military offensive, examined in what has become known as the Goldstone report, was unprecedented at the time. It foreshadowed the genocidal aggression that claimed the lives of Wafa and tens of thousands of other Palestinians in Gaza beginning in October 2023.
The findings and recommendations of the Goldstone report were endorsed by the UN Human Rights Council in a resolution adopted on 16 October 2009.
The foreign media team launched by Wafa under the umbrella of the Althoraya Training Center was branded the 16th October Media Group to immortalize the groundbreaking Goldstone report.
Dr. Refaat Alareer, who also mentored countless young writers in Gaza, was among the group’s co-founders. He was assassinated in an Israeli strike in early December 2023.
Basma Al Bayed, a writer, activist and member of the 16th October Media Group, was also killed in 2023, though news of her death did not reach the group until months later.
Conveying the Palestinian narrative
Wafa aimed to train English speakers in Gaza and equip them with the theoretical knowledge and practical skills required to defend the Palestinian cause in the foreign media.
She organized journalism camps in which she invited a group of experts to train English-language and media graduates in the field of journalism. The skills taught included translation and creative writing, the basics of conveying the Palestinian narrative and how to write feature stories and opinion pieces.
Dozens of young women and men who are now working in the field of journalism graduated from these camps, including this writer. She identified and nurtured her mentees’ individual strengths, encouraging us to specialize by focusing on certain skills, whether it be speaking on camera or writing.
Ibrahim Abu Naja worked with Wafa to design events, activities and social media forums, such as Twitter campaigns, meetings and solidarity events. He said that Wafa was a model of “seriousness, diligence, dedication and sincerity.”
While she dedicated herself to advocating for Palestine, Wafa was a champion of humanity above all, always repeating the words “humanity and peace” in her interviews, speeches and lectures, as her friend Bara’ al-Ijla, a journalist and member of the 16th October MediaGroup, said.
Wafa’s brother Alaa said that in September she asked him to transfer money to his other sister and to the displaced citizens in Gaza’s north.
“After Israel killed her, I discovered that she herself didn’t have money to buy milk and Pampers for her newborn kid,” Alaa said. “She always thought of others more than herself.”
Yousef, who declined to give his full name, was a member of the 16th October Media Group. He said that “I still keep her [voice messages] since 2022, when she used to encourage, praise, or even rebuke my writing or reporting. She once said, ‘Is that all your strength? Is it that easy to be depressed? Does learning a simple skill defeat you? Do men of Shujaiya [a town near Gaza City] surrender so easily like this?’”
Yousef added that Wafa “tolerated my weak English and slow learning. She never complained about spending a long time editing my articles and returning home late. I cannot forget how she dragged me out of the mire of despair and into the ocean of optimism.”
Wafa’s influence and impact on social media grew after the launch of Gaza’s Great March of Return in early 2018. Wafa asked this writer to produce a news report about paramedic Razan al-Najjar, who was killed by an Israeli sniper while treating injured protesters on the first day of June that year.
I wasn’t brave enough to participate in the march, but Wafa’s words encouraged me to make a video that later won a local prize. I remember that she paid for everything out of her own pocket to produce the video, starting with the transportation between Gaza City and Khan Younis, where al-Najjar was killed, through to the production and editing.
She was determined to expose Israel’s criminal behavior no matter how much it cost her – and ultimately it may have cost Wafa her life.
Wafa was active on social media and invested in connecting and building relations with pro- Palestinian individuals and institutions abroad, holding online seminars and conferences and conducting interviews with sympathetic journalists and activists.
She was a star contributor to The Palestine Chronicle and a news writer for Middle East Monitor.
“A voice worth millions”
When the war first broke out in October 2023, Wafa participated in an interview with TalkTV presenter Julia Hartley-Brewer. The conservative British presenter pushed back against Wafa’s use of the term “massacre” while describing Israel’s attacks that killed civilians in their homes. Hartley-Brewer repeated Israeli propaganda talking points, falsely claiming that Hamas embeds itself among civilians.
Hartley-Brewer even challenged Wafa’s decision to refuse to heed Israel’s evacuation orders and asked Wafa in a provocative and accusatory manner what a “proportionate response” to Hamas’ 7 October 2023 “massacre” would look like. Hartley-Brewer cut off the interview when Wafa began to place current events in the historical context of Israel’s violent conquest and colonization of Palestinian land since 1948.
Despite the disappointing experience with TalkTV, Wafa didn’t give up. She continued writing about Israel’s plan to force Palestinians out of Gaza, including several pieces documenting war crimes committed during the genocide.
“In Gaza even death is no end to suffering,” was the title for a piece by Wafa published in November 2023. In another article, she described how Israeli troops jeopardized the life of a young woman by using her as a human shield.
Wafa was moved to write her last article, titled “There is no such thing as protective attire for journalists in Gaza,” after the murder of her colleagues Ismail al-Ghoul and Rami al-Rifi. Despite their protected status under international law, Israel was directly threatening and targeting journalists, she explained.
She also contributed a piece to The Guardian profiling the surviving members of three families massacred in Israeli attacks in Gaza.
Even if Israel cut her brilliant life short, Wafa achieved her dream of running a Palestinian website narrating her people’s cause in English to educate the world.
In a Facebook post, Diana al-Mughrabi said that “I will not stop writing about Wafa, who was my companion for more than 15 years in work and life.”
“We lost a voice that is worth millions of voices in influence and reach,” she added.
In perhaps her greatest legacy, Wafa paved the way for all the students she inspired, the graduates she trained and the members of the 16th October Media Group who will carry forward what she began.
Hanin A. Elholy is a researcher, writer and translator based in Gaza.
