Freedom Lecture: Amal Helles

When Israel invaded Gaza, Palestinian journalist Amal Helles became a war correspondent overnight. In her Freedom Lecture, Helles will reflect on the war in Gaza and the challenges of reporting from a sealed-off war zone.

With international reporters barred from entering Gaza, local journalists – many of them women – have stepped up. Among them is Amal Helles, who endured months of Israeli bombardment while reporting the horrors on the ground for British newspaper The Times. Earlier this year, she became one of the few Palestinians to escape Gaza. Now, more than a year into Israel’s invasion, Amal Helles reflects on the world she left behind and the challenges of covering Gaza’s war from the inside. How do you report from a sealed-off war zone? And what  impact are Gaza’s many female journalists having on the war reporting?

About the speakers
Amal Helles is from Khan Younis, a city in the south of the Gaza Strip. There she was a journalist for the local outlet White Media. And she reported from Gaza for The Times until the Hamas attack in Israel on October 7, 2023 and the subsequent Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip. At the moment Helles is a Safe Haven Fellow at The Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study (NIAS-KNAW) where she researches the role of women journalists in news coverage of Gaza.

Sander van Hoorn is a Dutch political scientist and journalist for NOS. In the past he was a correspondent for NOS in the EU, the Middle East and Northern Africa, Israel and the occupied territories. Van Hoorn reported on the 9/11 attacks, the Arab Spring and the rise of IS. After the 7th of October 2023, he traveled back to Israel, where he is currently reporting regularly on the war.