Samaa Khullar
THE RADICAL FEMINIST; TEEN VOGUE
Wed, May 15, 2024
The Washington Post/Getty Images
In the early hours of May 1, I returned home after an exhausting night of covering the police raid at Columbia University and got a text that devastated me.
At 2:49 a.m., one of my colleagues at the Graduate School of Journalism, who had been trapped in Pulitzer Hall all night, sent an image of four police officers sitting under the memorial wall of images we had set up to honor our fallen colleagues. We created these posters to remember all of the brave journalists, most of whom were Palestinian, who had been killed trying to cover the war in Gaza.
Seemingly unaware of the significance of this memorial, officers rested their batons and helmets on the benches below it.
(Image courtesy of Meghnad Bose)
I couldn’t stop thinking about how, after a long night of arresting students at Hamilton Hall, these officers had walked into our campus building, which was otherwise closed, to rest their legs and check their phones. That picture, and all it represents, is what finally broke me.
Though my Columbia Journalism School professors have offered unwavering support — some have even slept in their offices to make sure we have food and other resources necessary to do nonstop reporting — there’s little they could have done to prepare us for the emotional toll of reporting on these encampments.
It seems to me that the Columbia administration, outside of the journalism school, does not care about its Palestinian students. This is part of why we Arab journalists at the school decided, in October, to put all our other reporting on hold and focus solely on this issue. We wanted the students to get the coverage they deserve. But as we approach the end of the school year, this reporting has broken us down in more ways than one.
I am one of three Palestinians at the journalism school. I used to think we were isolated, but after seeking out other Palestinian student journalists to talk with at dozens of schools around the country, I realized that our school has more representation than most.
I looked up the student newspaper mastheads of almost every university that has an encampment and could barely find any Arab students on staff at most of them, let alone Palestinian reporters. Of the few I could track down, some wanted to speak to me but feared possible professional repercussions. By the end of my search, I was able to talk to only three students: Jude Taha, a Palestinian Jordanian colleague at Columbia Journalism School; Layth Handoush, a Palestinian American writer for The Daily Bruin at UCLA; and Basma, a Palestinian American student who writes for the newspaper at a large public college in Texas (and asked to use a pseudonym for safety reasons).
On April 30, amid arrests of our fellow students, Jude and I were both pushed outside the Columbia campus and onto West 114th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, where we remained trapped in the cold for almost an hour and a half. When we finally reflected on the night, a few days later, she expressed the heartbreak of wanting to accurately represent what was happening but feeling stripped of that choice by the police.
On the same night, on the other side of the country, Layth watched as dozens of masked young men infiltrated the UCLA encampment, taunting and attacking student protesters, as the Daily Bruin reported. (Some 100 counterprotesters were detained.) Layth was not one of the four Daily Bruin writers who got attacked, but he did watch as officers from the Los Angeles Police Department arrested one of his friends. “That was probably one of the hardest nights of my life," Layth recalls. "I don’t think anyone present there is the same.”
Layth works at Prime, The Daily Bruin’s magazine section, where, in the fall, he wrote an op-ed criticizing mainstream media’s biased coverage on the war in Gaza, and explaining how misinformation and use of passive voice in headlines has contributed to the dehumanization of Palestinians on a massive scale. It was the first time he had written so openly about his identity as a journalist and a Palestinian, and it garnered lot of attention for him within the student newsroom.
But that was seven months ago, and the exhaustion from constantly reporting on the trauma in his community has started to catch up to him, just as it has for Jude and me. It’s relatively easy to write an article or two about a topic you have no connection to, but when every day is filled with scrolling through gruesome images and listening to the screams of your people, having to report on it and defend yourself in the newsroom starts to break you down.
Basma, who is majoring in journalism at her school, is happy to explain context and history; she says it’s her responsibility as a diaspora Palestinian. But there is a stark change from the conversations she used to have in Egypt, where she grew up. There, people knew the terminology, were aware of important dates, and what the Nakba meant — her labor as a journalist was to report on unfolding developments. Now she has to fight to provide context for every story.
“Especially around October 7, when everything first happened, I felt very alone in my grief,” Basma says. “None of my American friends really knew anything about it. It felt like they had to go through a whole cycle of learning that I had been raised on to reach the understanding that I already had.”
In addition to sometimes being consulted the way one uses a dictionary, we have also started to be used as “fixers” for news agencies. Publications contact Jude to ask for sources at Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine or Jewish Voice for Peace.
The Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan complained in her column that student protesters are “marching past her” and refusing to talk, but journalists like Noonan haven’t built the same trust as people like Jude, who spent the year covering almost every major protest and fostering essential relationships with sources. These requests of us come as we see how poorly legacy media has been reporting on student encampments.
Of the dozen news outlets that have contacted Jude, only two have offered to pay her for her work, she says. One was for an op-ed, the other for general coverage. Others who make requests treat her as if she is a witness to an event: “I’m not a journalist to them," she says. "I’m just a source.”
Jude continues, “The assumption that I am pro-Palestinian is kind of crazy when I am Palestinian. It’s like asking someone if they’re pro living their life.”
Some of us have been reporting on the encampments 24/7, with context, using precise language. Columbia's student radio station WKCR, undergraduate newspaper The Spectator, and journalism school students have been welcome to photograph and report inside the encampments because we have respected students’ boundaries for the sake of their safety and security.
Around the country people have also started recognizing the integral role of student journalists, those who are allowed access the outside media often can’t get because of our deep relationships and the trust we’ve built. Even the Pulitzer Prize Board issued a statement praising our “extraordinary real-time reporting… in the face of great personal and academic risk.” It is jarring, then, when we’re treated as just sources or the national media drops in and reports without context.
“I feel like the external media don’t have the same kind of courtesy towards what people our age may want,” Layth says. “They’re there for the scoop.” Layth adds that he’s seen very few news outlets operate with respect at UCLA: “I’m afraid I’ve lost a lot of respect for a lot of conglomerates because of how they’ve been reporting.”
What’s most hurtful is that many of us have never been trusted as reporters on this topic and, likely, will still be attacked with charges of bias for anything we write about it. Basma says her identity is often looked down on in newsrooms. “Why would my identity as a Palestinian get in the way of my reporting?” she asks.
In part, it's a problem with the concepts of “bias” and “objectivity,” in general. Basma adds, “It’s an odd experience, for sure, working within an industry that doesn’t look to center your perspective. You kind of have to play to the system while also trying to talk about things that not every news outlet wants to publish.”
Palestinian student journalists have to be perfect, because if we’re not, it feels like our career will be over before it starts. Making our reporting as bulletproof as possible is something we are all taught as journalists, but it’s also something that is drilled into our heads as Palestinians. We worry about being accused of having an agenda.
Then there’s the guilt that comes from finally getting recognition for our reporting, but only because something horrible happened to our community. Journalists will tell you, there's a weird rush that comes from finally getting a story out into the world and getting praise from other writers. In the past two weeks, though, that euphoric feeling for me has lasted all of five seconds before the discomfort sets in.
None of this is fair. I never wanted recognition or bylines this way. Outlets I’ve dreamed of writing for are suddenly reaching out, but I don’t know what to do with all the guilt that comes with these accomplishments. I keep repeating: This is never how I wanted to make my name in this industry. Even writing this article feels self-indulgent and wrong.
Layth feels the same emptiness. After he first published his op-ed at the Daily Bruin, he felt an outpouring of love on Instagram from Palestinians and Jewish students on campus who praised him for his articulate, empathetic writing. “It felt like the moment that I officially became a journalist, in a sense,” he says. “But with that, I was like, Did I just establish myself in this industry through this terrible situation?”
There’s also frustration among many of us that the industry has lost focus on the point of these protests in the first place. On the morning of May 6, I had two breaking news reports on my phone: “Columbia University cancels commencement ceremony following student protests,” and “Palestinians evacuate eastern Rafah ahead of expected Israeli assault.”
Later in the night, half of my Instagram feed was posting Met Gala outfits, and the other half was censored content because first responders were cleaning up the body parts of a victim who was blown up in Rafah. In moments like these, I go numb. Words feel empty and meaningless. I don’t see how anything will fix this situation, how we will ever grieve this catastrophic loss.
Says Layth, he isn’t able to focus on anything at all: “It’s just debilitating. It feels like what I’m currently doing does not matter compared to what’s going on in the world. And in a sense, that’s true,” he explains. “I feel guilty a lot of the time because I’m not the person being physically attacked — like, physically, I’m fine.”
All of us want to keep the focus on Gaza. “I think it’s important to keep centering what all of these protests and encampments are for,” says Basma. The police response and issues of free speech and police brutality on campus are important, but they are indicative of a much bigger problem, she notes. “It does feel like a distraction.”
When Basma thinks of her future career, her only hope is to work for a place that will allow her to do the most for her community in Palestine. It’s difficult for her to swallow working at places that don’t use precise, active language. “Why are you trying to make your headlines 10 words longer just to avoid saying one word?” she asks. “Just say it as it is.”
Says Layth, “It’s incredibly disappointing as a young person trying to make their way in this industry to see the people that you’re supposed to aspire to act in this way.”
But Layth also believes that writing off outlets with reporting they see as lacking will not solve our industry’s problems — and that we can slowly start changing things from the inside. “You can kind of do one of two things," says Layth. "You could be very disheartened and remove yourself from being in the media, which is a completely valid thing to do at this time” or “you can use your writing to correct those errors.”
As for me, I don’t know what the future holds. I chose to pursue this career to make a difference for my people. I wanted to tell their stories. But seven months of reporting on the death and destruction of my homeland has taken a toll on me that feels somewhat irreversible. Pictures like the one of the cops sitting under the memorial wall make me feel as if everything we’ve done is for nothing, that state violence will always win, and that we, as Palestinian journalists, will constantly be disrespected and forgotten.
But then I’m reminded of my conversations with journalists in Gaza. Amid invasions and threats to their physical safety, they message me on Instagram about the encampments, how far they are spreading, and whether this student-led movement means America has woken up to Palestinian suffering. I tell them, yes, I do believe something has fundamentally shifted. I send them pictures of journalists killed in Gaza, like Mustafa Thuraya and Hamza Al-Dahdouh, sitting high on our walls to remind them that we, as aspiring reporters, see the journalists of Gaza as our role models. Their responses fill me with gratitude and the motivation to keep going.
“Thank you for doing this,” Hazem Rajab, a journalist from Gaza, texted me in Arabic after I sent him a picture of the walls. “I am happy there are Palestinian journalists like you in this place [Columbia University]. Thank you for being so interested in us, for honoring them, and for showing that they were not just numbers.”
We as Palestinian journalists will be forever changed by this year, but I refuse to be hardened by these experiences, and I reject efforts by the police and university administration to crack down on our coverage. I don’t have the privilege of giving up.
Originally Appeared on Teen Vogue
The Washington Post/Getty Images
In the early hours of May 1, I returned home after an exhausting night of covering the police raid at Columbia University and got a text that devastated me.
At 2:49 a.m., one of my colleagues at the Graduate School of Journalism, who had been trapped in Pulitzer Hall all night, sent an image of four police officers sitting under the memorial wall of images we had set up to honor our fallen colleagues. We created these posters to remember all of the brave journalists, most of whom were Palestinian, who had been killed trying to cover the war in Gaza.
Seemingly unaware of the significance of this memorial, officers rested their batons and helmets on the benches below it.
(Image courtesy of Meghnad Bose)
I couldn’t stop thinking about how, after a long night of arresting students at Hamilton Hall, these officers had walked into our campus building, which was otherwise closed, to rest their legs and check their phones. That picture, and all it represents, is what finally broke me.
Though my Columbia Journalism School professors have offered unwavering support — some have even slept in their offices to make sure we have food and other resources necessary to do nonstop reporting — there’s little they could have done to prepare us for the emotional toll of reporting on these encampments.
It seems to me that the Columbia administration, outside of the journalism school, does not care about its Palestinian students. This is part of why we Arab journalists at the school decided, in October, to put all our other reporting on hold and focus solely on this issue. We wanted the students to get the coverage they deserve. But as we approach the end of the school year, this reporting has broken us down in more ways than one.
I am one of three Palestinians at the journalism school. I used to think we were isolated, but after seeking out other Palestinian student journalists to talk with at dozens of schools around the country, I realized that our school has more representation than most.
I looked up the student newspaper mastheads of almost every university that has an encampment and could barely find any Arab students on staff at most of them, let alone Palestinian reporters. Of the few I could track down, some wanted to speak to me but feared possible professional repercussions. By the end of my search, I was able to talk to only three students: Jude Taha, a Palestinian Jordanian colleague at Columbia Journalism School; Layth Handoush, a Palestinian American writer for The Daily Bruin at UCLA; and Basma, a Palestinian American student who writes for the newspaper at a large public college in Texas (and asked to use a pseudonym for safety reasons).
On April 30, amid arrests of our fellow students, Jude and I were both pushed outside the Columbia campus and onto West 114th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, where we remained trapped in the cold for almost an hour and a half. When we finally reflected on the night, a few days later, she expressed the heartbreak of wanting to accurately represent what was happening but feeling stripped of that choice by the police.
On the same night, on the other side of the country, Layth watched as dozens of masked young men infiltrated the UCLA encampment, taunting and attacking student protesters, as the Daily Bruin reported. (Some 100 counterprotesters were detained.) Layth was not one of the four Daily Bruin writers who got attacked, but he did watch as officers from the Los Angeles Police Department arrested one of his friends. “That was probably one of the hardest nights of my life," Layth recalls. "I don’t think anyone present there is the same.”
Layth works at Prime, The Daily Bruin’s magazine section, where, in the fall, he wrote an op-ed criticizing mainstream media’s biased coverage on the war in Gaza, and explaining how misinformation and use of passive voice in headlines has contributed to the dehumanization of Palestinians on a massive scale. It was the first time he had written so openly about his identity as a journalist and a Palestinian, and it garnered lot of attention for him within the student newsroom.
But that was seven months ago, and the exhaustion from constantly reporting on the trauma in his community has started to catch up to him, just as it has for Jude and me. It’s relatively easy to write an article or two about a topic you have no connection to, but when every day is filled with scrolling through gruesome images and listening to the screams of your people, having to report on it and defend yourself in the newsroom starts to break you down.
Basma, who is majoring in journalism at her school, is happy to explain context and history; she says it’s her responsibility as a diaspora Palestinian. But there is a stark change from the conversations she used to have in Egypt, where she grew up. There, people knew the terminology, were aware of important dates, and what the Nakba meant — her labor as a journalist was to report on unfolding developments. Now she has to fight to provide context for every story.
“Especially around October 7, when everything first happened, I felt very alone in my grief,” Basma says. “None of my American friends really knew anything about it. It felt like they had to go through a whole cycle of learning that I had been raised on to reach the understanding that I already had.”
In addition to sometimes being consulted the way one uses a dictionary, we have also started to be used as “fixers” for news agencies. Publications contact Jude to ask for sources at Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine or Jewish Voice for Peace.
The Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan complained in her column that student protesters are “marching past her” and refusing to talk, but journalists like Noonan haven’t built the same trust as people like Jude, who spent the year covering almost every major protest and fostering essential relationships with sources. These requests of us come as we see how poorly legacy media has been reporting on student encampments.
Of the dozen news outlets that have contacted Jude, only two have offered to pay her for her work, she says. One was for an op-ed, the other for general coverage. Others who make requests treat her as if she is a witness to an event: “I’m not a journalist to them," she says. "I’m just a source.”
Jude continues, “The assumption that I am pro-Palestinian is kind of crazy when I am Palestinian. It’s like asking someone if they’re pro living their life.”
Some of us have been reporting on the encampments 24/7, with context, using precise language. Columbia's student radio station WKCR, undergraduate newspaper The Spectator, and journalism school students have been welcome to photograph and report inside the encampments because we have respected students’ boundaries for the sake of their safety and security.
Around the country people have also started recognizing the integral role of student journalists, those who are allowed access the outside media often can’t get because of our deep relationships and the trust we’ve built. Even the Pulitzer Prize Board issued a statement praising our “extraordinary real-time reporting… in the face of great personal and academic risk.” It is jarring, then, when we’re treated as just sources or the national media drops in and reports without context.
“I feel like the external media don’t have the same kind of courtesy towards what people our age may want,” Layth says. “They’re there for the scoop.” Layth adds that he’s seen very few news outlets operate with respect at UCLA: “I’m afraid I’ve lost a lot of respect for a lot of conglomerates because of how they’ve been reporting.”
What’s most hurtful is that many of us have never been trusted as reporters on this topic and, likely, will still be attacked with charges of bias for anything we write about it. Basma says her identity is often looked down on in newsrooms. “Why would my identity as a Palestinian get in the way of my reporting?” she asks.
In part, it's a problem with the concepts of “bias” and “objectivity,” in general. Basma adds, “It’s an odd experience, for sure, working within an industry that doesn’t look to center your perspective. You kind of have to play to the system while also trying to talk about things that not every news outlet wants to publish.”
Palestinian student journalists have to be perfect, because if we’re not, it feels like our career will be over before it starts. Making our reporting as bulletproof as possible is something we are all taught as journalists, but it’s also something that is drilled into our heads as Palestinians. We worry about being accused of having an agenda.
Then there’s the guilt that comes from finally getting recognition for our reporting, but only because something horrible happened to our community. Journalists will tell you, there's a weird rush that comes from finally getting a story out into the world and getting praise from other writers. In the past two weeks, though, that euphoric feeling for me has lasted all of five seconds before the discomfort sets in.
None of this is fair. I never wanted recognition or bylines this way. Outlets I’ve dreamed of writing for are suddenly reaching out, but I don’t know what to do with all the guilt that comes with these accomplishments. I keep repeating: This is never how I wanted to make my name in this industry. Even writing this article feels self-indulgent and wrong.
Layth feels the same emptiness. After he first published his op-ed at the Daily Bruin, he felt an outpouring of love on Instagram from Palestinians and Jewish students on campus who praised him for his articulate, empathetic writing. “It felt like the moment that I officially became a journalist, in a sense,” he says. “But with that, I was like, Did I just establish myself in this industry through this terrible situation?”
There’s also frustration among many of us that the industry has lost focus on the point of these protests in the first place. On the morning of May 6, I had two breaking news reports on my phone: “Columbia University cancels commencement ceremony following student protests,” and “Palestinians evacuate eastern Rafah ahead of expected Israeli assault.”
Later in the night, half of my Instagram feed was posting Met Gala outfits, and the other half was censored content because first responders were cleaning up the body parts of a victim who was blown up in Rafah. In moments like these, I go numb. Words feel empty and meaningless. I don’t see how anything will fix this situation, how we will ever grieve this catastrophic loss.
Says Layth, he isn’t able to focus on anything at all: “It’s just debilitating. It feels like what I’m currently doing does not matter compared to what’s going on in the world. And in a sense, that’s true,” he explains. “I feel guilty a lot of the time because I’m not the person being physically attacked — like, physically, I’m fine.”
All of us want to keep the focus on Gaza. “I think it’s important to keep centering what all of these protests and encampments are for,” says Basma. The police response and issues of free speech and police brutality on campus are important, but they are indicative of a much bigger problem, she notes. “It does feel like a distraction.”
When Basma thinks of her future career, her only hope is to work for a place that will allow her to do the most for her community in Palestine. It’s difficult for her to swallow working at places that don’t use precise, active language. “Why are you trying to make your headlines 10 words longer just to avoid saying one word?” she asks. “Just say it as it is.”
Says Layth, “It’s incredibly disappointing as a young person trying to make their way in this industry to see the people that you’re supposed to aspire to act in this way.”
But Layth also believes that writing off outlets with reporting they see as lacking will not solve our industry’s problems — and that we can slowly start changing things from the inside. “You can kind of do one of two things," says Layth. "You could be very disheartened and remove yourself from being in the media, which is a completely valid thing to do at this time” or “you can use your writing to correct those errors.”
As for me, I don’t know what the future holds. I chose to pursue this career to make a difference for my people. I wanted to tell their stories. But seven months of reporting on the death and destruction of my homeland has taken a toll on me that feels somewhat irreversible. Pictures like the one of the cops sitting under the memorial wall make me feel as if everything we’ve done is for nothing, that state violence will always win, and that we, as Palestinian journalists, will constantly be disrespected and forgotten.
But then I’m reminded of my conversations with journalists in Gaza. Amid invasions and threats to their physical safety, they message me on Instagram about the encampments, how far they are spreading, and whether this student-led movement means America has woken up to Palestinian suffering. I tell them, yes, I do believe something has fundamentally shifted. I send them pictures of journalists killed in Gaza, like Mustafa Thuraya and Hamza Al-Dahdouh, sitting high on our walls to remind them that we, as aspiring reporters, see the journalists of Gaza as our role models. Their responses fill me with gratitude and the motivation to keep going.
“Thank you for doing this,” Hazem Rajab, a journalist from Gaza, texted me in Arabic after I sent him a picture of the walls. “I am happy there are Palestinian journalists like you in this place [Columbia University]. Thank you for being so interested in us, for honoring them, and for showing that they were not just numbers.”
We as Palestinian journalists will be forever changed by this year, but I refuse to be hardened by these experiences, and I reject efforts by the police and university administration to crack down on our coverage. I don’t have the privilege of giving up.
Originally Appeared on Teen Vogue
