"Don't mourn my death": Letter from the last journalist killed by Israel to her son

BarcelonaAware that death lurks in every Israeli bombing, many Palestinian journalists working for international media in the Gaza Strip leave farewell letters for their families, in case they are targeted by the military in one of the attacks. It is a ritual also followed by reporter Mariam Dagga, who was killed this Monday in the Double trap attack by Israeli forces against Nasser Hospital, in which around twenty people were killed, including four colleagues. On this occasion, Dagga, who was only 33 years old, wrote an emotional message to her son Gaith, 13, in case she was killed: "I want you to pray for me, do not cry for my death, because I will still be happy."

The journalist and photographer, who collaborated with the American Associated Press and with Independent Arabia, had not seen her son for over a year and a half, who was able to be evacuated to the United Arab Emirates to escape the Israeli offensive in the Strip while she devoted herself body and soul to portraying and explaining the ravages of the bombs and hunger caused by the harsh blockade imposed by the government.

In the letter, Dagga asks her son to make her "proud" by showing who he is and becoming "a businessman" full of success in life. "When you grow up, get married and have a daughter, name her Mariam in my honor," writes the journalist, who does not hold back on affectionate adjectives for the little one: "You are my love, my heart, my support, my soul."

Dagga's colleagues explain that they had rarely seen her emotionally broken, but they had, in a very special way, seen her remembering her son, whom she had raised alone until the war broke out. During these months of destruction and daily killings, the dead reporter had made a name for herself by collecting testimonies of the pain and despair of the citizens of Ghazian, and in recent weeks she had focused on documenting malnutrition and hunger, such as that of the five-year-old boy Jamal al-Najjar, who died just weeks ago.

In her farewell letter, Dagga also left instructions to her colleagues not to cry if she died, but to take advantage of the time to be with her body, talk to her and say their full goodbyes before she was buried, as her 21-year-old journalist friend Samaheer Farhan explains in the pages British newspaper The Guardian. They couldn't fulfill his will.

Following the murder of the five journalists, who were collaborating with various media outlets, Reuters and Al-Jazeera have called for an "immediate" investigation by the Israeli army and government into the double attack on the hospital: the second impact occurred at the same time as the attack, killing the first, and the rescuers of the first victims, in a strategy that Netanyahu's party has repeated on many occasions.

For his part, the Israeli prime minister changed the argument he uses every time his army kills media professionals, accusing them of being Hamas terrorists in disguise. This time, he "regretted" the deaths and called them an "accident." However, condemnation and revulsion over the new murders have multiplied in recent hours, from the UN to Europe and Colombia.