Gazan photographer and journalist Motaz Azaiza said he filmed Israeli hostages being beaten by a Gazan mob on October 7, 2023, but chose not to publish the footage because he feared it could put the Palestinians involved at risk.
“I saw the vehicle of the Al-Qassam Brigades, and there were Israeli captives there,” Azaiza recalled. “People got out, watched, beat them, hit them, and I followed them and filmed. But I did not publish those videos. Why? Because I did not want to ruin the lives of the people who were filmed.
"I understood that Israel would use those videos to identify every person who was there and eliminate them," he added. "I did not want to be responsible, even indirectly, for the deaths of those people in exchange for a few likes and views online.”
A Nobel Peace Prize nominee and one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world, Azaiza has become one of the most recognizable figures associated with the current war. In an extensive and unusual interview with journalist Ahmed Biqui on the podcast Taqarrab, Azaiza revealed aspects of life in Gaza that his millions of social media followers have not seen.
During the interview, which was published earlier this month, Azaiza also delivered rare public criticism of Hamas's leadership, accusing the group of bringing disaster upon the Gaza Strip.
Azaiza: Hamas 'brought us back to the Middle Ages'
Although Azaiza described himself as a supporter of armed Palestinian resistance, he said such resistance must have limits and serve a purpose.
“I support armed resistance, but one that brings results, or at least gives me the feeling that my life is valuable in the eyes of the resistance. Why should a Palestinian be cheap in the eyes of Palestinians themselves? You are making people hate the resistance with your own hands.”
He also questioned what Hamas’s military campaign has achieved for Palestinians in Gaza since the start of the war, sending a direct message to the group’s leaders.
“From October 7 until today, show me one Palestinian who lives in Gaza and was protected by Hamas’s weapons? No one in Gaza received protection from those weapons.”
Azaiza went on to criticize Hamas’s leadership over its months-long refusal to agree to a deal.
“I am not waiting two years to judge whether Hamas made mistakes. I see the mistake in front of my eyes, when people are dying every day. Now they are talking about an agreement in which they will agree to lay down their weapons. You could have agreed to that already on October 11, 2023. Why was it so important that tens of thousands would be killed? On what table did you put the Palestinian issue? You brought us back to the Middle Ages. You caused women in Gaza to urinate into a plastic bucket. This does not bother you, but what bothers you is if someone suddenly criticizes you?”
Azaiza made these remarks after leaving Gaza. He fled the Strip about four months after the outbreak of the war and currently lives in Qatar.
The photographer said he experienced Hamas’s suppression apparatus firsthand. He described a WhatsApp group called “Smart,” which he said is managed by a Hamas media official at the Rafah crossing and used to organize online campaigns against journalists who challenge the group’s narrative.
“Suddenly I found myself being attacked from all directions,” he recalled. “They take the details of a specific person, publish his phone number in the group and instruct online activists to attack him, curse him and make his life miserable. This is organized behavior, a real mob. When I uploaded a video in which a civilian could be heard cursing Hamas, I faced enormous backlash. Photographers in Gaza have become accustomed to lowering their cameras the moment someone says something bad about Hamas, because anyone who dares to show reality is persecuted relentlessly.”
According to Azaiza, “I lived inside a pressure cooker. The people who controlled us treated our lives as a game. I felt that I had been marked, that at every moment I was walking around with a target on my back.”
Azaiza feels empty, deeply frustrated by internal situation for Palestinians
Despite his international recognition, meetings with world leaders, his highly publicized meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, and the global status he has gained, Azaiza described feeling empty and deeply frustrated by the internal Palestinian situation and his new life outside Gaza.
“I wish I had the ability to sleep and never wake up. It is a genuine desire to die,” he said, describing the psychological toll he has experienced. “I travel around the world, flying from London to New York, speaking in front of thousands of people who buy tickets to hear me, sitting at Nobel ceremonies, and I cannot be happy. I live with constant burning trauma.”
Azaiza described his complicated relationship with Gaza in deeply personal terms.
“Gaza is the most toxic place in the world. You love it, but at the same time you hate it. You love it, but it hurts you and destroys you. The reality there forced things upon me that I never wanted. The price we pay to satisfy leaders who do not count us is simply unimaginable.”