Palestine in Focus - Two Palestinian Journalists from Gaza: Insights About their Experiences during the Genocide
Amal Helles and Ahmed Abu Artema are Palestinian journalists from Gaza, who respectively fled Gaza in 2024 and 2025. In this twelfth session of Palestine in Focus, they will speak about their personal and professional experiences during the genocide.
Both Amal Helles and Ahmed Abu Artema have recently contributed to The Correspondent, and Amal Helles is occasionally interviewed for a regular column in the Amsterdam newspaper Het Parool. In Amal Helles’s own words, she continues her journalistic work in exile, dedicated to telling the untold stories of Gaza.
Their presentations will be followed by a Q+A.
Practical
Date 1 December 2025
Time 16:00
Place IISG, Cruquiusweg 31, Amsterdam
Entrance Free admission, but because of the organisation, please send an email to event@iisg.nl if you want to join.
Amal Helles is a Palestinian journalist, born in Khan Younis, Gaza. She began her career in local media in Gaza and became a war reporter on the front lines after October 7, 2023. She reported on displacement, famine, and the daily dangers faced by civilians. In early 2024, she fled Gaza with her two children and moved to the Netherlands. There, she was awarded the one-year Safe Haven Fellowship at NIAS-KNAW (Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study), where she focused on the role of Palestinian female journalists during the war.
Ahmed Abu Artema (born 1984) is a Palestinian journalist, writer, and human rights activist. He has written hundreds of articles for media outlets such as Al Jazeera, Middle East Eye, The Electronic Intifada, and Arabi21. He was one of the driving forces behind the “Great March of Return” during the Gaza border protests in 2018 and 2019. He has lived in Gaza his entire life and came to the Netherlands in August 2025.
