Lama Abu Jamous has 800,000 followers on Instagram (Al Jazeera)

The Media Part website said that children and youth between the ages of 9 and 25, who have millions of subscribers, have resorted to social networking sites since October 7, 2023, to open the last windows on the Gaza Strip and make the eyes of the world watch the tragedy taking place there.

With this introduction, the site opened - a report written by Joseph Confafro - in which he talked about these young people, starting from the story of Moataz Azaizeh (24 years old), who is followed by 18 million subscribers on Instagram (more than the followers of US President Joe Biden) and was promoted to war correspondent after October 7. October, before he announced his departure from the Gaza Strip and boarded a plane for the first time in his life, heading to Qatar.

But a generation like him remained in the field, such as Lama Abu Jamous (9 years old), the youngest reporter in Gaza and perhaps in the world. She has nearly 800,000 subscribers on Instagram. She presented herself as a “Palestinian journalist” and only published her first photo on the social network. In May 2023.

Since December 9, her publishing rhythm has become daily, and she decided to document her life under bombardment. She photographed the streets of Khan Yunis, saying that she was searching for food. She grabbed Al Jazeera’s microphone and explained that she had decided to cover the war. Two days later, we find her in her childish speech explaining that she is now in Rafah to stay with... Her cousins.

I love journalism

When Media Part contacted her, Lama said, “I love journalism. Before the war, I spoke on a school radio program, and then there was the war. On the day my aunt’s house was bombed and they started killing journalists, I decided to film and report what was happening.”

Through her Instagram account, we see Lama conducting an interview with another young woman who became famous on social media during the war in Gaza, Bisan. Then on December 15, she presented her microphone to Wael Al Dahdouh, the Al Jazeera star who learned live about the death of his wife and children, and asked him what message he would like to send to the world. He replied, “We are suffering greatly with all the martyrs who fall every day, but we will persevere.” As long as there are people like you, we will get there.”

As days passed, Lama began to gain confidence and document her life as a refugee. We find her at times searching for some water for her family, and at other times playing with her doll while interviewing other children in a refugee camp and asking them if they regret not being able to go to school. Then she once shows how preparations are made. Dinner in the courtyard of the Rafah School, which is run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) and is crowded with refugees from northern Gaza.

For his part, Abboud (17 years old), whose Gazan accent made him a star, shined, as his posts became popular because they provided rare opportunities to laugh or smile in the presence of the horrific hell that the Palestinian sector has become.

Abboud is followed by about 3 million subscribers on Instagram. Since the beginning of the Israeli attack, he has presented himself as “the best war correspondent in the world for the year 2023” and “the true heir to Sherine Abu Aqla,” the star of Al Jazeera, who was killed by an Israeli sniper in the spring of 2022. He has added - since he was arrested The occupation army stripped him of his clothes and detained him for a day in northern Gaza - a phrase in his profile: “Liberated Palestinian prisoner.”

Fake microphone

Abboud's first appearance was on October 8, when he appeared from the balcony of the family's apartment in Gaza City with a fake microphone in his hand, which was an electric wire with a lamp on the end. He once wrote that when his mother woke him up at four in the morning, he "thought that Palestine had been liberated," and one day he wrote, " I will quickly film a video for you before the ground war starts.”

Abboud jokingly commented on the statements of Abu Ubaida, spokesman for the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), who announced that the detainees would be fed in the same way as the residents of Gaza are fed. He said, “The poor hostages, their mouths should be on fire,” in reference to To the food in Gaza that is known to be spicy compared to other Palestinian places.

Always with his electrical cord on top of a lamp that is now broken, Abboud leaves his balcony more and more to talk about his daily life, and the necessity of waking up at 5 in the morning to find food, or walking for half an hour to charge his phone.

Abboud photographed people rushing to the site of a house that was completely destroyed by the Israeli bombing, and commented, “There is still a cultural difference. In Tel Aviv, when rockets are fired, everyone heads to the shelters, and here everyone approaches the site of the explosion.”

At the end of November, he commented with black sarcasm, saying that he was born in 2006, and lived through the wars of 2007, 2014, and 2021, “and now this war. Another war, and he entered the Guinness Book of World Records.”

Although Lama and Aboud speak Arabic to a predominantly Palestinian audience, Moataz Al-Azayzeh and many of those who took over Instagram as a new media and political space during the war in Gaza - chose to express themselves in English because their mission is to inform the world about what is happening in Palestine, at a time when International journalists are still denied access.

Among these Instagrammers, two female voices and faces stand out. The first is Belistia Al-Akkad (22 years old) and comes from a large family in Gaza. Before the war, she showed a picture of a huge family library and pictures of herself with her hair blowing in the wind on the Gaza beach or in the Roots Hotel, and described what she called “ Her beautiful life” as a “beautiful prison”.

Sorry to leave

From 4,000 followers before the war, the number of Belistia’s followers now has about 5 million, to the point that she sparked the anger of some Israeli media, who accused her of repeating Hamas propaganda, and then her Instagram account was hacked.

She exceptionally announced in Arabic that she had left Gaza for Egypt after 45 days of war, for fear that her family would be targeted, as happened to many journalists, and she expressed her feeling of extreme guilt because she was able to cross the Rafah crossing while most of Gaza’s residents remained vulnerable to Israeli artillery fire and aircraft.

Bisan Odeh: Every minute that passes for the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip under this genocide is equivalent to a century of torture

As for Bisan Odeh (25 years old), who was not known before October, as she was publishing various stories, she would post pictures of a wedding or boxing lessons, but since October 8, her tone suddenly changed. She did not publish video clips, but rather posted Only messages written in black letters, which said: “Things are happening in Gaza now that you will not see in the newspapers.”

A few days later, she posted a video of herself walking down the street amidst the devastation, then crying in the back of a car with the caption “I lost my dreams, my job, my equipment, my house,” earning her thousands of “likes.” She was evacuated from the elegant Al-Rimal neighborhood in Gaza City to the south.

Bisan passes through the middle of Salah al-Din Road, which connects the northern and southern Gaza Strip, and captions her photo with these words: “It is a shame for all of humanity that reaching a ceasefire takes a long time and gives the occupation forces time to kill more civilians and children and destroy thousands of homes and streets, every minute.” The Palestinians are undergoing this genocide equivalent to a century of torture.”

Source: Mediapart