Podcast Summary: The Gist

Episode: Plestia Alaquad: “The Eyes of Gaza,” Witness and Journalist
Host: Mike Pesca
Publication Date: October 9, 2025
Guest: Plestia Alaquad (Journalist, Author of "The Eyes of Gaza")

Episode Overview

In this episode, Mike Pesca interviews Plestia Alaquad, a 23-year-old Palestinian journalist from Gaza, who rose to prominence during the 2023 Gaza War for her firsthand reports on Instagram. The episode explores both the horrors she witnessed and questions the boundaries between witness and journalism. Pesca challenges Alaquad on her journalistic choices, language, and framing, aiming to unpack how narratives are built and disseminated, especially when the reporter is also a central character in the story.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Personal Background and Gaza’s Realities

• Plestia's Age and War Experience
  • Alaquad frames her age as “four Israeli aggressions old” instead of 23, emphasizing life in Gaza is measured by conflict, not years.
    • “It’s rather defined by your experience. And that experience, Israel gives it to you…” (10:06, Plestia)
• Education Opportunities and Restriction
  • She describes the difficulty of travel from Gaza due to border controls, visa complications, and airport bombing.
    • “It's a privilege to be able to do that. It's not something common that everyone can do due to the border situation and due to how expensive it is.” (13:43, Plestia)
  • While some Gazans do study abroad, it’s a rare privilege tangled in bureaucracy.
• Normality Amid Crisis
  • Despite severe restrictions, Gazans try to make their lives beautiful:
    • “We made that open air prison be paradise in our eyes.” (23:07, Plestia)

2. On Journalism and Firsthand Witnessing

• Journalistic Path and Motivation
  • Alaquad found "desk journalism" unsatisfying and wanted to report directly, aiming to represent Gaza in her own narrative, not the Western media’s.
    • “I always wanted to work in an international news outlet, not a local media outlet, because in Gaza we all know the local news. Even children know what's happening. So I wanted to make a difference…” (16:56, Plestia)
• Social Media as Platform
  • Her Instagram reports during the 2023 war made her famous. She focused on humanizing Gazans rather than reducing them to news items.
    • “I always made sure to treat us as stories and for the world to know our names…” (24:36, Plestia)

3. Language, Narratives, and Credibility in Conflict

• Challenging Terminology
  • Pesca repeatedly questions Alaquad’s use of “IOF” (“Israeli Occupation Forces”) instead of “IDF,” and her swift framing of the war as “genocide.”
    • “Part of journalism is to have a shared or agreed upon vocabulary.” (29:48, Pesca)
    • Alaquad argues: “When someone is occupying a land, we call them occupier. That's why it's IOF.” (31:03, Plestia)
• Labeling the Conflict as Genocide
  • Alaquad used "genocide" as early as October 12, 2023; she justifies the term by referencing killing, starvation, and ethnic cleansing.
    • “It's on the scope of killing Palestinians, killing babies, starving them, bombing them, burning them alive, and tents…” (33:58, Plestia)
• Selective Critique and Journalistic Objectivity
  • Pesca presses Alaquad about whether she would ever criticize Hamas. She repeatedly redirects:
    • “My criticism right now is for the occupation and what they're doing. Either I want to criticize Hamas or not... that's an issue that we Palestinians can deal with, but what we're dealing with right now is the occupation.” (38:54, Plestia)

4. Addressing Specific Incidents & Media Critique

• Al-Ahli Hospital Strike
  • Pesca asks about her reporting on the hospital bombing, which mainstream outlets disputed as an errant Palestinian rocket.
    • “As a journalist, I obviously always factor check what's happening. And I believe anyone who's still getting manipulated by Israeli propaganda... just want to be blind and not believe the truth.” (26:13, Plestia)
• Hind Rajab Incident
  • Plestia claims Western outlets referred to a 6-year-old girl killed in Gaza as a "woman." Pesca fact-checks and finds just one brief CNN slip, quickly corrected on air (45:10–47:25).

Notable Quotes & Memorable Exchanges

• “Open air prison. ... But what is mind blowing for me is how us Gazans, we made paradise from that. We made that open air prison be paradise in our eyes.”
  — Plestia Alaquad (23:07)

• “I never treated Gazans as news. I always made sure to treat us as stories and for the world to know our names.”
  — Plestia Alaquad (24:36)

• “I do believe firmly that as a human being, Plestia deserves all of our sympathy... But I also think that as a journalist... Plestia doesn’t necessarily deserve our credence.”
  — Mike Pesca (08:15), previewing his approach

• “My definition of a genocide isn’t only the killing of civilian people. And history didn’t start... in October 2023. What’s happening in Gaza right now is only a continuation of what... [began in] 1948.”
  — Plestia Alaquad (35:11)

• “Are you a critic or a journalist? Because I would think a journalist would take into account all the factors at play.”
  — Mike Pesca (39:12)

Key Timestamps

• 09:53 — Intro of Plestia and the theme of measuring age by conflict
• 12:54 — Gaza’s border restrictions and privilege of travel
• 18:29 — Alaquad’s dissatisfaction with desk journalism
• 22:21 — Gaza described as both “open air prison” and “paradise”
• 24:36 — Rise of Alaquad’s Instagram journalism and focus on individual stories
• 25:54 — The Al-Ahli Hospital incident; credibility and fact-checking
• 29:42 — The debate over “IOF” vs. “IDF” and implications for journalism
• 33:14 — Criteria for calling the war “genocide”
• 38:13 — On Hamas’ restrictions and occupation vs. internal governance
• 41:00 — Accusation that Western media called Hind Rajab a “woman”
• 42:16 — Plestia’s concluding message about Gaza’s overpopulation and evacuations

Takeaways for Unfamiliar Listeners

• The episode is a thoughtful, sometimes tense exploration of what it means to report from within a war as both witness and participant.
• It serves as a case study on the interplay between personal truth and journalistic standards in conflict zones, especially when social media amplifies the first-person narrative.
• The discussion spotlights the complexity of language, framing, and perceived bias, with both host and guest standing firm on their perspectives.
• Plestia’s account gives voice to the lived experiences of Gazans, while Pesca pushes for rigor in clarity, terminology, and balance—highlighting the sometimes uncomfortable (but necessary) questions about sources, influence, and the role of emotion in journalism.

Final Thoughts and Tone

The conversation is both empathetic and challenging. Pesca commends Alaquad’s resilience but insists on scrutinizing her reporting rigor, especially given her vast online influence. Alaquad defends her perspective, foregrounding the urgency and stakes of her lived experience while resisting external pressure to criticize Palestinian authorities or to alter her linguistic framing for neutrality.

This episode probes the difficult but essential question: Who do we trust to tell the story of a war, and what standards should we hold them to?