In 2012, photographer and videographer Roshdi Sarraj (Twitter|Instagram) co-founded Ain Media with Yaser Murtaja (Instagram). Both used up-close and drone-mounted cameras to document the life of the everyday life, wartime suffering, and protest movements of Gaza. I became aware of Murtaja and Ain Media’s remarkable work through his last piece, documentary coverage of The Great March of Return, celebrated on this blog as the world’s most daring protest. In footage shot for an envisioned documentary, Murtaja captured the collective organizing, on-site medical care, patient journalism, and defiant risk-taking that made the protest possible.

And he was killed for that journalism, shot by an Israeli sniper beside his collaborator Roshdi Sarraj.

It was Sarraj who narrated Murtaja’s last moments to the world:

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