By Mike Joseph
28 Sept 2025
In this extraordinarily candid outpouring of testimony from the head of a family in flight from Israel’s army, Gazan journalist Sami abu Salem talks to film-maker Mike Joseph about his fears for his and his family’s future: it is not only death and humiliation that haunt Sami by the minute, but the aimlessness: go here, go there—Israel’s instructions can kill you if you follow orders and flee, and kill you if you don’t. Wherever you turn there is little food and no shelter. There is also the alarm about the future: what is to come for his children, now two long years without school and beginning to question their father?
16 Sept 2025
There’s a moment at the end of every screening of my film, GAZA A Story of Love and War, after the credits have rolled and the music falls silent, and now it’s the audience’s turn to respond. In that pause, I sense people thinking, I want to know if Sami abu Salem is still alive, but how can I ask that?
I too hesitate every time I think I should contact Sami. On 21 July I opened an exchange of messages, writing,
I am lost for words at your continued suffering. Please know that you are not forgotten, and we hold our governments responsible for failing to act to stop the killing, the siege, the destruction, the inhumanity.
Sami replied –
Thank you very much Mike. Thank you for your efforts. Honestly nowadays I am focusing just on our hunger. We are hungry Mike. Hunger restricts my thinking. Nowadays I do think just of food. We have no food, no flour, no rice, makaroni and all basic things.
Two days later, the Daily Express featured a frontpage picture of emaciated one-year-old Muhammad al-Matouq, and suddenly it was respectable to care about Gazans. Evidently they were not all Hamas fighters. Some were simply hungry children. Within a week, French President Macron, UK Prime Minister Starmer, and Canadian Prime Minister Carney all announced that they would recognise Palestine in September. After explaining for decades that recognition could only come ‘when the time was right’, the image of a starving child proved irresistible.
A month later in August I messaged–
Sami – I am meeting my MP again next Monday. He continues to work with other MPs urging Government for action against Israel. But it is all too slow, too late. Can I give him a message from you please? I know he will listen. I don’t know if he can act.
Sami was sheltering in Gaza City, and I feared for his safety if Israel followed up its threat to invade the city in force. He replied –
I am looking for a place to displace into. Israel is “threatening” to invade Gaza but actually they’ve already begun. Two neighbourhoods (Alzaitoun and Alsabra) are under bombing several days ago. Families killed. Houses destroyed and people are escaping. Orders of evacuation come closer to me. And starving is still hitting Gaza. The pics of food trucks and airdrops deceive audiences.
Last Sunday, 14 Sept, Sami wrote –
I am as a citizen under fire, as a father, I do care but in stopping bombing and displacement. Now my first priority is the life of my family. I want to flee Gaza city but I cannot. No enough transportation.
Honestly, I do not care about the imminent summit of Arab shit leaders nor the EU, because I believe that the result is just statements, no body dare to hurt Israel because it is supported by US … hundreds of thousands are stuck under horrible bombing. Can not leave. Presently I can’t because no enough transportation. Other families because they don’t have money, transportation is too expensive, 500-1000 ISd
Other families didn’t find a place to move to, the Israelis control most of Gaza strip
Other families can not because they have handicapped, elderly, physical disabilities and will never find a proper place for the handicapped to stay
There are some spaces but risky and no sources of life especially water, exactly like sahara desert
Mike, my family and I are still in Gaza city, could be killed any time.
If you have seen my film featuring Sami Abu Salem (GAZA A Story of Love and War) you will know his brilliant journalism, one moment documenting in fine detail what he sees with his own eyes, then suddenly reaching for context in the long history of Palestine since Zionism. He does this now, connecting this fateful moment in 2025 with his mother’s violent expulsion in 1948 from her childhood home, by my uncle’s Haganah militia:
We used to blame our parents and grandparents and tell them “why did you escaped in 1948, if we were you we will never flee… but now we are fleeing, even cannot fleeing, harsher than the 1948 as my mother says.”
Today, 16 Sept, I did not contact Sami, afraid what I would discover as Israel invaded Gaza City with thousands of troops, and people began fleeing the city in numbers. I noticed Sami was on WhatsApp every hour or so. So he is still alive, and now may stay to die in Gaza City.
Tomorrow our King entertains the only man in the world who can stop this, save Sami, save Gaza, stop Israel annexing the rest of Palestine. They will celebrate our special relationship at a Royal Banquet. Apparently this is in Britain’s interest. I find this repulsive, immoral. None of this is happening in my name – but such outbursts show what a poor politician or hopeless diplomat I would be.
Is journalism better? What use is all the journalism in the world if government-imposed famine and genocide continue while we sit down to dinner?
LATER, morning of 18 Sept, Sami abu Salem sent Mike Joseph this update:
SAMI
Hi Mike
I succeeded to flee from Gaza city. Now in Almaghazi refugee camp central Gaza strip.
I began my trip with a strike 30 meters from me (2 killed and I survived)
Crammed in a tuktuk, lots of walking amidst sewage and destroyed roads, and also we were carried in board of tuktuk,
After escalation the wave of fleeing increased. Lots of people escape. Not enough vehicles, so lots escape by walking.
Lots of people still in Gaza and will not leave because they cannot because no money to pay for transportation (a van costs $US1000)
Others need special service like the handicapped, no way
Others do not know where to go…I know lots of friends want to leave but they cannot.
I do not know what to do, I cannot think, we are helpless
MIKE
You are not helpless. Once again you have survived. And we all applaud your strength.
SAMI
Thank you. I am trying to go to Khan Younis. Will be out of internet
MIKE
You are so brave. Once again you rescue your family, and you do your work as a journalist, showing us what is happening. These things should be told, and you are doing it.