Firing Line: Robert Greenwald Chronicles the Killing of Combat Correspondents and Children in Gaza

Veteran director and producer Robert Greenwald’s new documentary Gaza: Journalists Under Fire opens with a black-and-white photo montage of slain reporters accompanied by what sounds like a pounding heartbeat, then a siren wailing. Alongside the chilling visual and audio, a text caption reads, “178 journalists and media workers killed in Israel-Gaza war and counting.” 

The operative words here are “and counting,” because since Gaza: Journalists Under Fire premiered May 29 at the Busboys and Poets bookstore in Washington, D.C., the killing of journalists in Palestine has continued. On June 30, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) bombed al-Baqa Café in western Gaza City, killing thirty-three civilians and wounding nearly fifty others. The cafe was a popular gathering place for journalists and others looking for reliable Internet service. Among those killed was photojournalist Ismail Abu Hatab, who according to Common Dreams is the 227th journalist killed by Israel since October 2023—that is, as of this writing. 

Gaza: Journalist Under Fire is the latest nonfiction project by the three-time Emmy-nominated Greenwald, who made a remarkable career transformation from his work on films such as the 1980 musical Xanadu and the 1984 television drama The Burning Bed to politically engaged films such as the 2000 Abbie Hoffman biopic Steal This Movie and documentaries such as 2004’s Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism and Uncovered: The War on Iraq. Following a June 26 screening of the film in Culver City, Greenwald confessed that “Making the movie was painful, full of nightmares.” He dismissed charges that he or his film were “antisemitic,” explaining that “As a New York Jew, I’d be a hypocrite if I didn’t take this [subject] on,” and insisted that the contentions in his films are rigorously fact-checked. 

In order to cover the story of the unprecedented decimation of war reporters, Gaza: Journalists Under Fire focuses on three Palestinians, along with details of their deaths in the line of duty, which, Greenwald stresses, “humanizes the journalists” of this unfolding tragedy. They are: Bilal Jadallah, director of the Press House-Palestine, an independent media organization based in Gaza City, who was the forty-ninth reporter killed; Heba Al-Abadla, a radio host and co-founder of the Social Media Club-Palestine, who was the  eighty-fourth media worker killed; and Ismail Al-Ghoul, who worked for Al-Jazeera’s Arabic TV channel, the 126th newsperson to die. It doesn’t matter that these journalists wear press jackets that clearly identify them as members of the media—indeed, the film suggests that these identifiers may actually turn reporters into targets, despite the deliberate killing of journalists being recognized as a war crime under international law.  

In relating the circumstances of their deaths, Gaza: Journalists Under Fire also highlights another harrowing aspect of the humanitarian crisis that has unfolded since October 7, 2023: the deaths of at least 17,000 children in Gaza as of April 2025. According to the film’s press notes, the Israeli airstrike on Khan Yunis that killed Al-Abadla on January 9, 2024, also claimed the lives of other members of her family, including her mother and her five-year-old daughter, Judy. Ismail Al-Ghoul was only twenty-seven when he was killed on July 31, 2024, in an Israeli airstrike, leaving behind a young daughter who, her mother explains, thinks her slain father is calling every time the phone rings and says she wants to “go to heaven to talk with daddy.” Because the IDF controls access to Gaza and bars foreign correspondents who are not embedded with the IDF from entering and reporting from the occupied enclave, Gaza: Journalists Under Fire largely uses images shot on the ground by Palestinian journalists and non-press civilians, giving viewers a rare view of the ongoing warfare from the perspective of those on the ground in Gaza. Alongside its documentary footage, much of which  was obtained from social media, the film includes news clips of notables such as U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (Independent of Vermont), Pope Francis, and Pope Leo XIV, as well as  actors Mark Ruffalo, Cate Blanchett, and Javier Bardem—all decrying the war in Gaza. As MSNBC’s Chris Hayes says in one clip, “These local journalists act as the eyes and ears of the world.”

Sabrine Al-Abadla of Rafah, Heba Al-Abadla’s sister, videotaped herself specifically for Greenwald’s documentary. The Brave New Films crew also recorded original interviews for the film with international expert sources outside of Palestine including Agnès Callamard, secretary general of Amnesty International, Francesca Albanese, United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, and journalistic sources from Reporters Without Borders and the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Gaza: Journalists Under Fire uses cinematic techniques such as split screen to great effect,depicting images of locations in Gaza before October 2023 in stark contrast to shots of the same locales completely obliterated after the hostilities began. The film closes with the shocking text on screen: “Israeli Forces Have Killed More Journalists In Eighteen Months Than Died In U.S. Civil War, World War I, World War II, Korean War, Vietnam War, Afghanistan War. COMBINED.”

If the filmmaking mode of Gaza: Journalists Under Fire is unusual, so is its method of distribution. Through his nonprofit independent production and distribution company Brave New Films, Greenwald has made the film available free of charge, and is allowing screenings to be presented at homes, places of worship, schools, workplaces, and other public spaces at no cost with the aim to raise awareness about the disasters confronting journalists, children, and other civilians every day in the  Gaza Strip. 

 Of all the features and documentaries about Palestine and Israel that I have covered as a film historian and critic, the heartbreaking, well-made, Gaza: Journalists Under Fire is among the best. During his post-screening discussion with Greenwald at the Culver City screening, Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks declared that he “couldn’t stop crying” while watching the film.  I saw others in the audience were weeping as well. I resolved to do what I could to help get word out about this important film in hopes that it would help to stop the ongoing slaughter of journalists, children, and others in Gaza.

Gaza: Journalists Under Fire is one of the most compelling films ever made about the carnage that ensues when, to paraphrase Shakespeare, the dogs of war are unleashed on the watchdogs. 

More information about how to screen Gaza: Journalists Under Fire can be found here.