'It’s Bisan from Gaza, And I’m Still Alive': An Aesthetics Of Empathy

“If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” This quote by the African-American revolutionary and civil rights activist Malcolm X appears in the Instagram stories of the Palestinian journalist Bisan Owda. Other stories on her account show the massive fire at the refugee tents in Deir el-Balah’s Al Aqsa Hospital in the late hours of October 13, 2024. The Israeli airstrike on these tents burned the refugees alive. A horror-stricken Bisan relays her shock about the cruelty of the attack to her social media followers through a video.

Since October last year, when the world woke up to Israel’s war on Gaza, Owda has been posting such accounts on the everyday war transpiring around her. Shot from her phone, they are intimate, hand-held videos capturing her in every mood: Sometimes, it’s her pain at the murders that result from an Israeli bomb; sometimes, it’s glee at having found some food during a wave of starvation; at other times, it is her raw rage at the never-ending injustices.

Owda is one of the many Palestinians who left their lives behind to jump into journalism during the genocide of their people. Before October 2023, she was a cultural vlogger and the producer of Hakawatya, a show on Palestinian history and culture. Forced to leave her home behind, she became a refugee in her own land, moving to different parts of the Gaza strip through the year. She encapsulated this journey in her Al Jazeera documentary, It’s Bisan from Gaza, And I’m Still Alive, which won an Emmy in the Outstanding Hard News Feature Story: Short Form category last month.

Bisan won the award amid loud protests from the Creative Community for Peace, a pro-Israel non-profit organisation. Criticising the film’s nomination, it alleged that Owda was a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Her film getting an Emmy despite such a grave allegation proves the powerful work Palestinian journalists, like Bisan, Hind Khoudary, Motaz Azaiza and others, have done—even at the cost of their lives.

Over the past year, they have shared countless videos from the ground, directing millions of eyes towards the decades-long war ravaging Palestine. Though platforms like Instagram, X and Facebook repeatedly take down their videos, they have failed to suppress their voices. Their daily updates have had a visceral impact on social media users. A drastic proximity has emerged from these visuals. Israel’s war in Gaza is not a distant political event anymore; it’s like watching the horror in your backyard.

Yet the resilience of these journalists stands out in these accounts. Facing unimaginable adversities and still remaining upbeat has evoked worldwide inspiration. Bisan’s documentary, too, opens with her buoyant face, even as she talks about the incessant bombing. “I’m smiling because I’m alive,” she says. It’s so simple; yet, so hard.

In a press briefing, Khoudary explained the distinguishing feature of Palestinian journalism: experiential reporting. So when they report on people’s homes being razed down, their own homes are going down, too. When families are stranded in different parts of the Gaza strip, their own kin is separated from them, too. It is this experiential investment in their work that emerges in their videos.

Owda often begins her video explaining how far she has walked to get the Internet, or how she spent the previous night in a tent that collapsed in the rain. She displays the gashes on her skin because of the infection caused by a lack of sanitation and polluted water. She shows the faded shirt with the frayed collar from overuse during the war. It is the materiality of her impossible existence that hooks us. For the viewer then, it’s not just dispassionate consumption of a news report; it’s a persuasive engagement with the people who make up this ‘news’.

Where the CNNs and BBCs suppress narratives from Gaza, voices like Bisan compose an aesthetics of empathy. “We’re just trying to be positive because we felt death hundreds of times,” she says. “So we appreciate that we are alive until now.” Watching her from hundreds of miles away, we come alive a little bit, too.