Maha Hussaini: Undeterred by award loss amid Israeli trolling

On June 19, Palestinian journalist Maha Hussaini noticed she was being smeared by pro-Israel accounts on X. “They’re late this time,” she told fellow journalists, betraying a hint of sarcasm.

Nine days earlier, Hussaini had been awarded the International Women’s Media Fund’s Courage in Journalism Award for her reporting in Gaza.

Now she was at the receiving end of a well-coordinated attack led by a conservative US media outlet: the Washington Free Beacon. They shared old posts by Hussaini, accusing her of being ‘linked to terrorism’ and ‘supporting anti-Semitism’.

“This is very typical,” Hussaini told TRT World. “Every year, dozens of Palestinian journalists are nominated for international awards. Every time, there’s a systematic effort to intimidate us into silence. But I suppose we’re used to it now,” she said.

Hussaini believes the accusations that were made against her are not even worth responding to because they are “misleading”.

“I haven’t said anything that contradicts international law or human rights. I’m talking about facts,” she said.

Back in November 2020, two days after she received the Martin Adler Prize by the Rory Peck Fund, trolls came after her.

“That one (online campaign) was even bigger,” she recalled. “Pro-Israel individuals even approached the institution to rescind the award.”

This time around, however, she was surprised by how quickly IWMF buckled under pressure. She first learned about it through Zionist accounts celebrating the news on social media, even before she was formally contacted by the organisation.

By June 21, the media organisation withdrew the award, all while praising her “undeniable courage” and the “importance of her work in Gaza under dire circumstances.”

“I wasn’t angry or sad at all,” Hussaini said. “If your words are bothering human rights abusers and war criminals, you’re doing something right”.

Multifaceted attack

Outside of Palestine, there have been systematic smear campaigns against other journalists who are considered critical of Israeli policy, or those who simply refuse to follow official narratives. Recent reports uncovered that a public relations firm with links to the Biden administration were hired to target and discredit the Washington Post’s Louisa Loveluck as a “radical leftist.”

Loveluck was last year’s IWMF Courage in Journalism recipient.

For Hussaini, losing the award served as “further proof” of the risks Palestinian journalists face – they are being targeted, “not just physically”, but their moral integrity is under attack as well.

Over the last nine months, Hussaini has been reporting regularly on victims of violence. At least 150 of her colleagues in Gaza have died as a result of Israel’s aerial bombings or targeted attacks. She experienced several displacements herself and has noticeably lost weight.

“Every time I post anything about Israel’s human rights violations, I get targeted. There are dozens of posts, comments and replies from pro-Israel accounts tagging me or my colleagues on a daily basis. They target any journalist whose voice manages to cross over the sealed borders of Gaza—or Palestine, in general—and attempt to silence it,” she said.

“But if you’re making noise, you’re doing something the perpetrators don’t want you to do. So that’s motivation for me to continue, it gives me the strength to keep going.”