Podcast Summary: "A Palestinian Journalist Escapes Death in Gaza"

Podcast: The New Yorker Radio Hour
Host: David Remnick
Guest: Mohammad Mawish, Palestinian journalist
Date: August 18, 2025

Episode Overview

This episode of The New Yorker Radio Hour features an interview with Mohammad Mawish, a Palestinian journalist from Gaza City who narrowly survived an Israeli airstrike in December 2023. The conversation explores his personal story of survival, the risks and trauma faced by Palestinian journalists, the broader humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and the ongoing psychological toll on both civilians and mental health workers. Central to the episode is Mawish's recent reporting for The New Yorker on mental health professionals navigating their own trauma while supporting a suffering population.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Life in Gaza Before and After October 7, 2023

• Mawish’s Background:
  • Born and raised in Gaza City; studied literature, became passionate about writing and journalism.
  • Taught literature at Islamic University of Gaza, describing it as “a very beautiful time in my life.” (01:34)
• Daily Reality:
  • Describes Gaza as not simply a “hotbed of militancy,” but as a place with a “determination to live” despite the blockade and severe restrictions.
  • Personal connection: Lost an uncle and an aunt who were unable to leave Gaza for medical treatment.
  • Never allowed to visit Jaffa, ancestral hometown.

    “I'm coming from a place of Jaffa, and I have never been allowed to set foot there.” — Mohammad Mawish (02:22)

2. Displacement and Generational Trauma

• Family displaced from Jaffa in 1948, from Ashkelon in 1967, and finally settled in Gaza—personal story echoes the multi-generational Palestinian experience of displacement. (03:35)

3. October 7, 2023 and Immediate Aftermath

• Describes the attack’s onset:

  “It felt like the whole earth swallowed us whole.” — Mohammad Mawish (04:18)

• Instinct was to protect family, but also compelled to report, initially as a freelance journalist before Al Jazeera English enlisted him. (05:21)

4. Risks of Journalism in Gaza

• Only Palestinian journalists reporting, as foreign press are barred.
• Increasing sense that journalists are deliberate targets:
  • Abandoned his press vest because it marked him as a target, not as protection. (06:20)

  “It did not provide me with the protection that I was hoping to get...it turned into a red target mark.” — Mohammad Mawish (06:41)

• Recounts receiving direct threats via phone and social media from individuals identifying as Israeli military officers ordering him to stop reporting. (07:18)

5. The Airstrike on December 6, 2023

• After a week reporting from Al-Shifa Hospital, returned home seeking rest.
• Received anonymous call warning: evacuate, your house will be bombed in 20 minutes.
  • Didn’t tell his family, thinking it was a scare tactic; decided to simply stop reporting for two weeks.
• House was bombed the next morning; four killed (two neighbors, two extended family members). He, his wife, child, parents and sister survived, though all were trapped under the rubble and seriously injured. (07:50–12:08)

  “In a matter of seconds, I started screaming… Nobody returned my screams. And I thought... that's it. Everybody's dead.” — Mohammad Mawish (09:37)
  “I feel like I'm carrying the guilt of everyone that's been impacted by that strike.” — Mohammad Mawish (12:08)

• Young son, only two and a half, remains severely traumatized.

  “He's triggered… when he sees a helicopter, even a civil plane. He's terrified.” — Mohammad Mawish (12:33)

6. Decision to Leave Gaza

• Returned to reporting a few days after the attack—even after warnings and trauma.
• Once the threats resumed, felt forced to choose “keeping my story or my life,” and decided to leave Gaza. (13:18)

7. Reflections on October 7 and Hamas’s Calculations

• Host raises the moral complexity: IDF responsibility for airstrike, but also Hamas’s willingness to accept large Palestinian casualties for political purposes.
• Mawish: Local shock at the October 7 attack—no broad awareness or approval among most Gazans.

  “For Palestinians inside of Gaza, it was a sense… I remember feeling a sense of shock among the people when it all first started.” — Mohammad Mawish (17:32)

  • Political clues something might happen, but nobody knew what or when. (17:46)

8. The Scope of Destruction and Ongoing Crisis

• Catastrophic scale: nearly all residential buildings in Gaza damaged or destroyed.

  “You could see the entire area, miles and miles ahead, flattened… In entire neighborhoods and blocks, there is no single building that has not been touched by the bombings.” — Mohammad Mawish (19:13)

  • Reports up to 92% of housing damaged or flattened. (20:07)
• Widespread starvation, with fatal incidents as civilians seek food. Mawish and young son suffered severe malnutrition; he recounts desperate efforts to secure food amid humanitarian aid collapse.

  “We were only rationing what we had, including some b of bread. We had contaminated water. We had to, you know, make bread out of animal feed and barley… We were not living. We were only just trying to make every day.” — Mohammad Mawish (21:33)

9. Covering Gaza’s Psychological Trauma

• Focus of recent New Yorker piece: Mental health professionals in Gaza, both helping and suffering.
  • “Mental health is often the most overlooked part of war. We are counting the bodies… but the minds that carry the trauma.” — Mohammad Mawish (22:29)
  • Therapy is almost impossible since providers are themselves traumatized and have lost family, colleagues, clinics.
  • Trauma is continuous, not “post”—cases like a 14-year-old girl alone after family is killed, show the widespread and chronic nature of psychological suffering.

  “It is widespread because there is no post for the trauma there… They’re not having any safe place to turn to or any security.” — Mohammad Mawish (24:44)

10. Hopes for Return and the Legacy of Displacement

• Longs to return to Gaza, Jaffa, and Ashkelon, but feels the pain of being “from a bunch of places, but we belong nowhere.” (25:59)

  “It's part of the emotional toll... to keep thinking of those voices and those places and those people... we have lost... But it's very difficult to keep on doing that.” — Mohammad Mawish (26:16)

  • Writing is both a burden and a means of hope.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Gaza Before the War:

  “People waking up every day facing the worst version of the same challenges and just trying to overcome.” — Mohammad Mawish (02:22)

• On Displacement:

  “We belong nowhere.” — Mohammad Mawish (25:59)

• On Targeting Journalists:

  “I started receiving threatening calls and messages on my own personal number and social media.” — Mohammad Mawish (06:41) “It was either I get to keep my story or my life.” — Mohammad Mawish (13:18)

• On Generational Trauma:

  “It's the same reason that brings me down is writing. It's the same reason that brings me up sometimes and keeps me holding and pushing forward for someday a change.” — Mohammad Mawish (26:47)

Important Timestamps

• 00:11–01:27: Introduction, context of journalist targeting in Gaza
• 01:34–03:27: Mawish’s background, experience of life and movement restrictions in Gaza
• 04:11–05:52: Recounting October 7th and the start of the war
• 06:20–07:48: On being targeted as a journalist and threats from Israeli military
• 07:50–12:32: Personal account of the airstrike, survival, trauma
• 13:13–13:45: Return to reporting and decision to leave Gaza
• 17:01–18:26: Mawish reflects on Hamas’s actions, shock among Gaza population
• 19:00–21:33: Humanitarian disaster—destruction, food, water, survival
• 22:29–25:54: Reporting on widespread psychological trauma in Gaza
• 25:59–27:00: Hopes for return, emotional toll of displacement

Concluding Remarks

The episode provides a harrowing, first-person perspective on the dangers faced by Palestinian journalists, the devastation wrought upon Gaza’s people, and the multi-layered trauma—physical, psychological, and generational—suffered during and after the war. Mohammad Mawish’s testimony illuminates the persistent courage required to report under threat of death, the impossibility of true healing amid ongoing violence, and the heavy legacy of exile. The conversation is deeply personal, candid, and laced with both grief and a persistent, if faint, thread of hope.

For further reading, Mawish’s article “Treating Gaza’s Collective Trauma” is available on newyorker.com.