Real Lives
Maha Hussaini's Gaza reporting reached the International Court of Justice
Graphic: Times of Palestine
Original Reporting
Most journalists hope their work is read. Maha Hussaini's was entered into evidence at the world court.
Her investigation documenting Israeli field executions of Palestinians was among the material South Africa put before the International Court of Justice in the case accusing Israel of genocide. Very little reporting from anywhere ends up doing that.
The reporter#
Hussaini is based in Gaza and works as strategy director of Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor. She holds a master's degree in political science with a specialism in refugee studies.
She began reporting in July 2014, covering the Israeli assault on Gaza that summer. That is now more than a decade on a single beat, in the one place where the beat cannot be left at the end of a shift.
She files for Middle East Eye and has written for the New Humanitarian and a range of international outlets.
The subjects she chose#
The reporting that made her name is not the reporting that makes headlines. She has concentrated on the parts of a siege that are hard to photograph.
She has written about women giving birth in Gaza without anaesthetic, electricity or a functioning hospital. She has written about what a war does to children over months rather than in the hour after a strike.
In 2020 the Rory Peck Trust gave her the Martin Adler Prize, awarded to local journalists and freelancers working in their own countries — an award specifically designed to recognise the people who do the reporting that visiting correspondents rely on.
The award that was given and taken back#
On 10 June 2024 the International Women's Media Foundation named Hussaini one of its Courage in Journalism Award recipients, citing that body of work.
Eleven days later the foundation rescinded it. The reversal followed an investigation by the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative American outlet, which said her old social media activity contained antisemitic sentiment and expressions of support for Hamas. In withdrawing the award the IWMF nonetheless described her courage as undeniable.
Hussaini rejected the characterisation of her posts and described the campaign as an attempt to discredit reporting rather than to correct it.
The Coalition for Women in Journalism criticised the foundation's decision, arguing it set a precedent under which any journalist covering Palestine could be stripped of recognition by campaign. The episode remains contested, and both the award and its withdrawal belong in the record.
What is not in dispute#
None of it touched the reporting.
No party to the argument alleged that her documentation of field executions was inaccurate, and that documentation went on to be used in proceedings at The Hague. Her hospital and maternity reporting stands. The Martin Adler Prize stands.
That is the durable part. Recognition can be conferred and withdrawn by committee in eleven days; a verified account of what happened to particular people in a particular street cannot.
Hussaini has kept filing from Gaza throughout — a working journalist in her eleventh year on the same story, whose principal professional achievement is that a court of the United Nations found her evidence worth reading.
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