FAce-lIft Gaza: Hassan Majdi Abu Warda

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Exhibit Entry Twenty-Two Distortion Dialogue

They killed the messenger.

There is no such thing as an accidental journalist in Gaza.

There are only witnesses.
There are only people who know that to carry a camera is to carry a target.
There are only those who choose to document truth anyway.

Hassan Majdi Abu Warda was one of them.

Born and raised in the Jabalia al-Nazla neighborhood of northern Gaza, Hassan was deeply rooted in his community. He was not a visiting correspondent. He was not flown in. He was not protected. He was Gaza. Every frame he captured came from inside the siege.

He served as the director of Barq Gaza News Agency, and he was known among fellow journalists as a mentor—an encourager, someone who pushed others to keep going even when the world refused to look.

His journalism was more than profession. It was a vow.
A vow to make the invisible visible.
A vow to show the world what it doesn’t want to see.
A vow that cost him his life.

On May 25, 2025, Hassan was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Jabalia. He was 25 years old. He died with several members of his family. He died doing what he had always done—telling the truth with a lens.

And the truth is this: Israel is killing journalists.

Since October 7, 2023, more than 100 Palestinian media workers have been murdered by Israeli forces. Gaza is now the deadliest place in modern history to be a journalist. And it’s not because reporters are “caught in crossfire.” They are being hunted. Killed in homes, in press vests, in cars clearly marked “media.” Their tools are not weapons—but they are treated as such.

Because when the story is genocide, truth is dangerous.

Hassan was not a household name. He wasn’t profiled in glossy magazines. He didn’t work for Reuters or the BBC. He worked for Gaza. For his people. He reported from the rubble. He filmed in hospitals, shelters, graveyards. Classrooms-turned-morgues. He posted footage not shaped for galleries, but for urgency. For evidence. For the flickering hope that someone, somewhere, might still care.

He wasn’t here to make history.
He was trying to save it.

And that’s what makes this different.

When we talk about war photography, we often think of legacy. Magnum. Capa. McCullin. Men who documented war from the outside—who left with images, stories, awards. Who returned home.

Hassan never got to leave. His home was the war zone. His camera was his last defense.

Palestinian journalists are not distant observers. They are embedded in the destruction. They are grieving neighbors while filming the aftermath. They are pulling family from rubble with one hand while livestreaming with the other. They are not symbols. They are not disposable.

They are the record.

And now Hassan is gone.

Another name on a growing list that should not exist. Another life extinguished not by stray fire, but by the deliberate logic of apartheid. The logic of empire. The logic that says: silence the witness.

But Hassan is not gone.

His work remains. His footage is still being shared. His quiet voice now echoes with millions. He didn’t seek fame—but his integrity made him unforgettable. He helped build a record that cannot be erased. And when we say Face Lift, we don’t mean surface. We mean excavation. We mean memory. We mean: look at what they’re trying to bury.

This is not journalism as spectacle.
This is journalism as survival.
This is what it means to resist.

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