Egypt’s Journalists Syndicate gives Freedom of Press Award to Wael al-Dahdouh

Egypt’s Journalists Syndicate awarded Wael al-Dahdouh the 2024 freedom of press award on Sunday. The Journalists Syndicate awarded Wael al-Dahdouh, Al Jazeera’s Gaza Bureau chief, its 2024 freedom of press award on Sunday for “his resilience and the resilience of Palestinian journalists.” 

It announced the award in the evening, hours after Dahdouh’s eldest son, Hamza al-Dahdouh, was killed along with two other people in an Israeli airstrike that targeted his car in southern Gaza.

Dahdouh, from Gaza City, has been a journalist for over 20 years, reporting throughout the Second Intifada. He began working with Al Jazeera in 2004.

Dahdouh has continued to report throughout the ongoing Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip. In October, four other members of Dahdouh's family were killed, including his wife Amna, his grandchild Adam, his 15-year-old son Mahmoud and seven-year-old daughter Shams in an Israeli strike in Nuseirat refugee camp.

He was wounded while reporting on an Israeli airstrike in December by a targeted strike which led to the death of his colleague and Al Jazeera cameraman, Samer Abu Daqqa.

His son, Hamza, was in a car with other journalists on a road between Khan Younis and Rafah when he was killed, according to news reports. Freelance journalist Mustafa Thuraya was also killed along with the car’s driver, Qusay Salem, and a third journalist, Hazem Rajab was seriously injured.

Dahdouh was nominated by the board of the Journalists Syndicate for his resilience against the “brutal Israeli aggression and its vicious war machine,” the syndicate said. 

The award is granted annually to a journalist who has played a prominent role in defending the freedom of the press, in their writing but also in their stances, initiatives with regard to thought activism or syndicate work.

The statement also said that the award was also for the “martyrs of Palestinian journalism” who paid the price for “relaying the truth, uncovering genocidal crimes against the Palestinian people” and “exposing the false Zionist narrative and the lies of the western media.”

According to the syndicate, 65 headquarters of Palestinian media outlets have been destroyed, 18 journalists arrested and 110 killed so far in Gaza. Some, like Dahdouh, have also had their families targeted.