Miles and worlds apart: two NPR reporters on covering the war in Gaza

0:00To do their jobs well, foreign correspondents rely on local journalists, people who know the streets, the language, the risks. These journalists work to identify stories, line up interviews, navigate permits and checkpoints, translate, and sometimes quite literally get reporters where they need to go. Daniel Estrin is an international correspondent for NPR based in Tel Aviv. Back in 2019, he was trying to find someone inside Gaza to report with. And a mutual friend of ours told me, you really got to check out this guy named Anas. He is young, ambitious, and super talented. That journalist was Anas Baba.

0:40He's now NPR's reporter in Gaza. But he started out as Daniel's producer, and their relationship looked like many others in foreign reporting. Anas helped arrange permits. He knew where to go, who to talk to, how things worked on the ground. Daniel could still enter Gaza then. He'd make the drive of roughly an hour from his home in Israel, crossed the checkpoints, and Anas would meet him on the other side. So the last stop is me saying welcome to Gaza to Daniel always. And once we just like get into Gaza, the real work is starting. They spent long days driving through the Strip, reporting on hospitals, cafes, families, stories that showed how policy and politics affected ordinary people's lives.

1:25Then came 2021. Some might remember there was a war that year, too. And a photograph Anas took became emblematic of the war. Gaza City in the background, rockets from Gaza by Palestinian militants streaking across the night sky, and Israel's Iron Dome interceptors shooting them down. That photo was iconic, I believe, because both sides of the conflict saw it as a photo that they liked. Palestinians saw themselves standing up to Israel, and Israelis saw their multibillion-dollar defense system working. When the fighting stopped, Daniel crossed back into Gaza on the first day of a ceasefire. And you met me on the other side of the checkpoint.

2:04I went that very same day, and we were driving, and suddenly we saw that family all dressed in pink. It was a father, a mother, and his two children, very, very cute children. And they told us that we're going to keep living. That was the rhythm of their reporting then. Daniel in and out of Gaza, war, then a pause. a fragile normalcy. Until the morning of October 7, 2023. Consider this. To tell the full story of the war that followed, NPR had reporters both in Israel and the Gaza Strip reporting together just miles but worlds apart, changing their working relationship forever.

2:51From NPR, I'm Sarah McCammon.

3:02It's Consider This from NPR. Even before this latest war in Gaza, NPR's Jerusalem-based correspondent Daniel Estrin and Gaza reporter Anas Baba had spent years working together in challenging circumstances. Once war broke out, they had to adapt to a situation that made reporting together even more difficult. For this week's Reporter's Notebook, I asked them to take me to that specific moment, where they each were on October 7th. It was like when the Hell's Gates is opened. And you didn't know that this is the doonday. Too many, like we're talking about thousands of rockets just like being launched from Gaza.

3:43I still remember that day was something that no one can even imagine could happen ever. It was a shock. It was something that I'll never forget of my life. It's a day that sticks and will never leave me. I remember waking up at 6.30 that morning in Tel Aviv. I just happened to wake up. It was a Saturday morning. It was supposed to be a quiet holiday. I saw a text saying that sirens were going off in southern Israel, and then sirens were going off in central Israel. And I ran into the safe room. Many apartments in Israel have safe rooms for when rockets are flying. And we heard the air raid siren and the booms of the Iron Dome intercepting.

4:32And then I just remember getting straight to work, reporting on an extremely, extremely terrifying, intense day. The only thing that we were waiting with was what exactly is going to be the Israeli respond to this. We were literally, we were expecting the worst, but we were not expecting anything, even 1 % of what Israel did. I'm just scrolling through our texts from October 7th, 2023. We were texting all day long, exchanging information. And at 11.25 p.m., you texted me. the day still keeps surprising us. And we didn't know at that time how true that would be for the next two years. Those two years brought a war that has left almost all of Gaza destroyed and severe restrictions on aid that choked off fuel, food, and medicine for much of the population.

5:33Entire families killed, neighborhoods reduced to rubble and displacement again and again. It's also become the deadliest conflict on record for journalists anywhere in the world. The Committee to Protect Journalists has documented more than 260 Palestinian journalists killed in Gaza by the Israeli military, and the group has concluded that at least 64 of them were, quote, directly targeted. Anas is one of the few Palestinian journalists working full-time since before October 7th until today with an American news outlet. we are incredibly fortunate to continue to be able to work with him because it's vital.

6:14I can't enter Gaza and no international journalist can. It's been that way for the last two years and counting. And, you know, Sarah, the reporting on this war, you face a lot of pressures from all sides and you cover things that authorities on all sides don't want you to cover. And we've covered it all. We have, for instance, we've documented the mass killing of an extended family in Gaza, more than 100 people spanning multiple generations killed in an Israeli strike. We've also documented some rare protests inside Gaza calling for an end to the war, protesting Hamas, voices critical of Hamas's decision to launch the war.

7:14Anas, why do you stay in Gaza? And what does it mean to you to be telling the story from there? I'm originally a Palestinian, and this conflict is 80 years old. My grandfather was living in El Lod. It's now an Israeli city. He evacuated El Lod coming to Gaza, and he died here. My father, After that, he's a journalist working with the agency France Press. He spent most of his life reporting on the Israeli occupation. And after that, the Israelis taken out of Gaza. And after that, Hamas ruling Gaza. And after that, the coup that happens here. And once the 2023 or the 7th of October war took place, it was the rule of May, the third generation, to stay here and to report of what is happening here on the ground.

8:05How has October 7th and its aftermath changed the way that the two of you do your work and the way that you work together? It's changed everything. I mean, we work from afar, but we work together every day. I call Anas or text him every morning. And if it's not me, then it's our colleague Aya Batraoui in Dubai or somebody else on our team. we're in constant contact and we're asking what's going on today what are your plans today what are you hearing sometimes it's there's some breaking news can you run out and collect some sound and he'll say oh I've already done that all night long I've recorded the sounds of Israeli bombardment in the middle of the night and we rushed to get that on the radio for the morning broadcast and And frankly, Sarah, the amount of video and audio that Anas is collecting every day is so immense and so overwhelming and very painful.

9:16And it's difficult to put it all together. But we've been going nonstop. Going back to your question, Sarah, maybe as a frontline journalist who's working on a conflict zone for almost 10 years, maybe the only difference between me and Daniel, that Daniel, when things got truly, truly hard and dangerous, can drive his car, maybe to Bingareon Airport, just show his own passport and get the ticket and fly away. I can't do that. Because there is no airport. There is no way out. The only thing that I can do is keep reporting nonstop every single day.

10:03Daniel Estrin is a correspondent in Tel Aviv. Anas Baba is a reporter for NPR based in Gaza. Thanks so much to both of you for your reporting and for your time. Thank you, guys. Thank you. This episode was produced by Lina Mohamed. It was edited by Adam Rainey and James Heider. Our executive producer is Sammy Yenigan.

10:31It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Sarah McCammon.