Journalism Is Not a Crime is an historic volume honoring the Palestinian journalists who documented the destruction of Gaza, while living through it themselves.  

As international media coverage was banned, many Palestinian journalists and photojournalists turned to Instagram as a direct channel to publish images from Gaza in real time. Their accounts provide an uncensored, visual record of the war: scenes of destruction, displacement, mourning, survival, and daily life under bombardment. Alongside the violence they witnessed, many also shared fragments of their personal lives: their fears, losses, and hopes that the world would continue to see and remember Gaza. Journalism Is Not a Crime draws from these social media archives to preserve the immediacy and humanity with which they were shared.

Spanning from October 7, 2023 through the end of 2025, the 378 pages book brings together 116 photographs and 70 Instagram posts in chronological, visual testimony of war, loss and survival.

Thirty eight living photojournalists and journalists are represented through photographs and personal reflections, while thirty five deceased journalists are commemorated through their images, final messages, wills, and private social media posts; fragments of lives interrupted while reporting from the front lines of history.

To create this unprecedented collection, the editorial team, photo editor Sarah Leen,  researcher and photojournalist Aruallan, and creative director Svetlana Bachevanova reviewed more than 57,000 Instagram posts and online presentations from journalists working in Gaza. The result is an intimate and devastating portrait of journalism under siege, where the act of documenting became inseparable from survival itself. The book was designed by Melike Taşçıoğlu, with an original, calligraphic work created exclusively for the book cover by Palestinian photojournalist and artist Belal Khaled.

Journalism Is Not a Crime is conceived as a permanent record of courage and resistance of Palestinian journalists against attacks on journalists and the erasure of their work. It stands as a living archive of those who risked and, in many cases, gave their lives so the world could witness.

A free PDF edition will be made publicly available.

The hardcover edition helps preserve this archive in permanent physical form.