Palestinian journalist Youmna El-Sayed. [Picture: X/@YoumnaElSayed17]
The lives of Gaza’s 2.5 million inhabitants have been dominated by hell, horror and terror. This is the urgent message brought by Youmna El-Sayed to her receptive South African audience.
“What we do see on TV, to many people it’s very horrific. It’s terrifying. It’s a lot of horror. But it does not even reflect 1% of the reality of how terrible, how horrific, the situation in real life is,” said El-Sayed in a TV interview on Wednesday.
The Palestinian journalist arrived in Johannesburg this week. As Al Jazeera’s correspondent in the Gaza Strip, she reported from the frontline of Israel’s genocidal military campaign. Now, she is in SA to narrate the grim reality of life under bombardment.
Since 7 October, the apartheid state has relentlessly pursued its purported goal of eliminating Hamas. It has killed more than 40 000 people in the process, according to the local health ministry.
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Chronicling catastrophe
El-Sayed, who evacuated from the enclave with her family in December 2023, reflected on her experiences as a journalist reporting for duty amidst the genocide.
“I used to go to homes that were bombarded and I used to stand on top of them feeling that I am standing over a grave with people buried alive. You can hear the sound of children screaming from down and there are actually no tools for the civil defence teams which are very few people,” she recalled.
For people who lived thousands of kilometres away from the deadly scenes, she suggested, it would be difficult to comprehend “the sound, the terror, the fear among the children when they run to your arms [and] scream of fear”.
It may be the case that El-Sayed’s televised interview on Newzroom Afrika attracted genocide enthusiasts under that channel’s YouTube upload. However, she will undoubtedly pull scores of sympathisers to the Lakewood Conference Centre, Robertsham, when she kicks off her first public programme Wednesday evening.
