Despite being protected by international law,at least 175 journalistsand media workers have been killed by Israel’s Occupying Forces (the IOF, also known as the IDF) since Aug 08, 2025, when Hamas forces killed 1,200 people in an attack on Israel. This is in addition to Israel killing “more than 400 aid workers and over 1,300 health workers” in Gaza, recently underscored by the discovery of a mass grave containing 15 paramedics and rescue workers who had been murdered execution style. 25-year-old photojournalistFatima Hassouna, subject of thenew documentary filmPut Your Soul On Your Hand and Walk, is the latest victim; she and nine members of her family were killed just 24 hours after learning that her film would be screening as part of the ACID section at theCannes Film Festival.
Hassouna and her family were bombed by the Israeli military, adding to the tens of thousands of civilians who have been murdered since Oct. 7. The exact number is impossible to ascertain at the moment, mainly as a result of Israel refusingaccess to Gazaand journalists being threatened and killed. The official toll of killed Palestinians is roughly 52,000, though it’s likely that more than100,000 have died, while nearly 80% of the area has been bombed into rubble. Reporting about Hassouna’s death, The Times of Israel, often considered to be a propaganda arm of the Israeli military, wrote:
“The IDF says the strike targeted a Hamas operative involved in attacks on soldiers and civilians. ‘Prior to the strike, measures were taken to minimize the risk to civilians, including the use of precision munitions, aerial surveillance, and additional intelligence,’ it says.”
Filmmaker Sepideh Farsi, whose film focuses on Hassouna, her work, and conversations between her and Farsi, learned the news as she was in conversations with the French Embassy about flying Hassouna to Cannes for the screening of their film. “She was such a light, so talented. When you see the film you’ll understand,” Farsi told Deadline. “I had talked to her a few hours before to tell her that the film was in Cannes and to invite her.” Hassouna wanted to attend the screening, but wanted to return to Gaza; despite all the danger and tragedy, this was her home.
She crossed / And I did not cross / My death crossed me / And a sharp sniper bullet / I became an angel / For a city / Huge / Bigger than my dreams / Bigger than this city / I became poetry… —Fatima Hassouna, from the poem “The Man Who Wore Her Eyes”
Farsi continued:
“She said, ‘I’ll come, but I have to go back to Gaza. I don’t want to leave Gaza.' I was already in touch with the French Embassy. We’d just started the process. I was worried about how to get her out and back in safely. I didn’t want to have the responsibility of separating her from her family. Now the whole family is dead. I’m trying to find out if her parents are dead but for sure Fatima and her sisters and brothers are dead. One of the sisters was pregnant. On a video call two days ago, she showed me her belly. It’s so horrible and devastating. Fatima herself had gotten engaged a few months ago.”
‘No Other Land’ Review: 2024’s Best Documentary Shouldn’t Be So Controversial
The incredible documentary just earned an Oscar nomination and may likely win, even though American distributors are afraid of it.
ACID & Cannes Will Continue to Screen ‘Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk’
Journalists and artists shine a light on what Amnesty International, the United Nations, Human Rights Watch, and other organizations correctly call Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people, which makes them a target for the IOF. Farsi, like many others, believes that Hassouna was probably targeted deliberately as a result of her work. This echoes the recenttreatment of Palestinian filmmaker Hamdan Ballal, one of the directors behind theOscar-winning documentaryNo Other Land; he was attacked by Israeli settlers before being detained by Israeli police for no legal reason.
“I was trying to be a voice and accentuate her and now I don’t know. I even feel guilty… maybe they targeted her because the film was announced. I don’t know. We’ll never know.” she said. “The Israeli army said it bombed the house because there was a Hamas officer in there, which is totally false. I know the whole family. It’s nonsense. It’s just so devastating.”ACID released a statement on social mediareading:
“We, filmmakers and ACID team members, met Fatima Hassouna while discovering Sepideh Farsi’s filmPut Your Soul on Your Hand and Walkduring the Cannes programming. Her smile was as magical as her tenacity: testifying, photographing Gaza, distributing food despite bombs, mourning, and hunger. Her narrative reached us, we rejoiced at each of her appearances of living knowledge, we feared for her. Yesterday we learned with fright that an Israeli missile targeted her building, killing Fatem and her family.”
“We had watched and programmed a movie in which the life force of this young woman was [on full display]. It’s no longer the same film that we’ll carry, support, and present in all theaters, starting with Cannes. Each and every one of us, filmmakers and spectators, must be worthy of her light.”
‘The Bibi Files’ Review: Putting the Crooked Netanyahus on Trial
A damning documentary about how the Netanyahu family and their corruption have nearly destroyed Israel and its neighbors.
Who Was Fatima Hassouna?
Filmmaker Sepideh Farsi wrote a tribute to the photojournalist and subject of her film forLiberation, “Fatima Hassouna: The Eyes of Gaza.” Its English translation is reprinted below in its entirety.
I don’t have a CV / To recognize two eyes / Mysterious / And I believe / I do not have a story / One clear for a stranger / To believe it / And he believes / I have no physical characteristics / Complete / To fly / Outside of this gravity / And I believe. / Maybe I’m ushering in my death / Now / Before the person in front of me lifts / His sniper rifle/ And it ends / And I’m done / Silence.
These are the words of Fatima Hassouna (Fatem to her friends), the beginning of a long poem entitled “The Man Who Wore Her Eyes.” It’s a poem that smells of sulfur, smells of death already, but is also full of life, as Fatem was, until that morning of April 16, before an Israeli bomb mowed her down and her entire family, reducing their family home to dust.
She had just turned 25. I had met her by chance from a presentation by a Palestinian friend in Cairo, when I was desperately looking for a way to get to Gaza, encountering blocked roads. I was looking for an answer to a question that was both simple and complex. How do you hold up? How do you live under the bombs? I had just finished my filmThe Mermaid, about the Iraq-Iran war, which had a distant taste of explosion shock waves, and wanted to know what Gazans were experiencing. An answer that I couldn’t find through the news, in the media. I wanted to be there. But with my passport as a French woman born in Iran, the Egyptian administration and the Israeli occupation made it impossible for me to travel.
So, I seized the meeting with Fatem. She became my eyes in Gaza, and I was a window to the world for her, for the duration of these exchanges that lasted just one year.
“What’s it like to be Palestinian?”
“I’m proud of it… Whatever they do, they will not be able to defeat us.
“They won’t be able to defeat you? Do you believe it? Why?”
“Yes. Because we have nothing to lose.”
This is how Fatem was. Often, during this year of daily exchanges, I went to bed sending her a message, and woke up in the middle of the night to check if she had replied to my message. And when the two “ticks” were there, that meant that she had at least seen my message.
Today, when I heard the news, I initially refused to believe it, thinking it was a mistake, like a few months ago, when a family of the same name perished in an Israeli attack. Every day, I thought about the Palestinians outside Gaza, far from their families, and wondered how they could continue to live with such a level of anguish. I often found myself transfixed with fear, at the idea of losing her because of a bomb. And for that too, I had no answer. I told myself that I had no right to be afraid for her, if she wasn’t afraid. I clung to her strength, to her sunny smile.
I was very skeptical when the ceasefire was announced in December, but I told myself that I had no right not to believe in it, if the Palestinians and Fatem believed in it. I swallowed my tongue. We continued our exchanges, but with much more connection difficulties than before the ceasefire, so video calls became complicated, if not impossible.
But I lived with these images, those of our conversations, and her photos, so powerful, marking moments of life and death in Gaza, always under her tender and uncompromising eye. I was still able to call her the day before yesterday and, miraculously, she answered. I wanted to tell her that the film was selected by ACID, that it was going to be shown in Cannes.
“Do you know the Cannes Film Festival?”
“Yes,” she said with a big smile. “But where is Cannes again?”
“Aren’t you afraid sometimes?”
“Afraid of what?”
“That the film puts you in danger?”
“No. And then, you know… Nothing is eternal on this earth. Even this war. It will eventually end.
“Yes, it will end in the end.” But after how many deaths?
She gave me a smile. It is this smile that I keep as the last image of her. To that I cling today. And in her words, when I asked her how she felt when photographing shredded bodies after a massacre: “I want people to see the images of this genocide, to know what we went through and what we went through.”
“If I die, I want a loud death,” Hassouna once wrote on social media. “I don’t want to be just breaking news, or a number in a group. I want a death that the world will hear, an impact that will remain through time, and a timeless image that cannot be buried by time or place.” Hassouna is dead, but do not let her name be buried.
The Academy Slammed by Hundreds of Actors Over Lack of Support for ‘No Other Land’ Director After Attack
Stars like Mark Ruffalo, Penélope Cruz, and Susan Sarandon slam the Academy’s letter for failing to support director Hamdan Ballal after his assault.
Honor Hassouna and See ‘Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk’
You can see some of Fatima Hassouna’s work on her Instagram pagehere. You can see part of the trailer forPut Your Soul on Your Hand and Walkat the beginning of the video below, in which filmmaker Sepidah Farsi speaks with Amy Goodman ofDemocracy Now!We mourn the loss of this young artist, and hope for justice. If you have the means, please consider supportingThe Palestine Children’s Relief Fund,American Near East Refugee Aid,Medical Aid for Palestinians, and thePalestinian Red Crescent Society.
