Plestia Alaqad Zooms me from Beirut, Lebanon, tweaking her black curls and throwing on her jean jacket — after all, “this is for Teen Vogue,” she grins — as we settle in for our conversation. The journalist and author, 23, has a sunny disposition, belying what we are there to discuss: Her first book, The Eyes of Gaza: A Diary of Resilience. The diary entries document the 45 days she spent reporting in her native Gaza on the ground as Israeli forces began their invasion after the October 7 Hamas attack.
“When I was reading my diaries again and again, it was super triggering, because I'm reading real things that happened,” Alaqad recalled of the book’s editing process. In that 45 day stretch, the then-21 year old Alaqad moves from couch to couch, one temporary shelter to another, struggling to keep track of friends and family while unable to take in the horrors she documented on her phone. “Every time I read it, I just feel disbelief, like, is this real? Did I really live that? Are there still thousands of people in Gaza living that?”
Two years later, after relocating to Australia for safety, she’s promoting the book as the death toll still rises, and the starvation campaign that a United Nations-backed initiative called “man-made famine” in August 2025 continues. While the confirmed death toll hovers above 66,000, the number is likely far, far higher; in 2024, there were estimates placing the total anywhere from 80,000 to a projected 335,000 deaths. In recent months, Israel’s attacks on Lebanon, where Alaqad is now based, have increased.
Nonetheless, she continues using her platform to say much of what she’s been saying for the last two years, posting to her over 4 million Instagram followers to share stories of some of the youth included in her book, who struggle to access medical care amid the continued onslaught in Gaza. But even that, said Alaqad, feels compromised, limited, in the face of what it’s in response to.
“It feels like I'm living in two worlds. There's a world where Palestinians are getting killed, and there is you behind the screen, trying to figure out a way to report on it without getting shadowbanned and with actually reaching people,” said Alaqad. “It often feels like it's a dystopian world that we live in, and the only thing that is real is Gaza and what's happening there.”
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
Plestia Alaqad: I can't believe that it's almost — [she pauses] no, it's not almost, it's actually two years. Okay, I can't believe that it's been two years of this ongoing genocide. When I was reporting in Gaza for 45 days, these 45 days felt like 45 years. And now it's 200 days feeling like 200 years for the people who are actually still on the ground facing bombing, displacement and starvation, which is being used as a method by Israel. Israel is literally ethnically cleansing people in Gaza, and we're watching a genocide unfold live on TV.
PA: I find it so cowardly that people — until now — are calling it a conflict. English is my second language, so correct me if I'm wrong, but what I learned in school is [that] a conflict is when, for example, my classmate is sitting next to me and we're fighting over a pencil. That's a conflict. But when you're ethnically cleansing a whole nation, a nation killing them, starving them, that's clearly a genocide, not a conflict.
I don't understand why the media is shying away from calling things what they are. And it's not only about the term conflict or genocide. It's even the term, calling it the Israel-Hamas war. If it was “Israel-Hamas war,” then why are kids and babies, women and elderly people and men getting killed and starved? These terms that they're using, it's really misleading.
PA: I was super ashamed of myself when I was happy that the hospital got bombed in Gaza two years ago. But the only reason I was happy was because I thought, oh, a hospital being bombed means the world will go insane. How is that possible? The genocide will end. But turns out, that's only the beginning.
PA: After everything we've lived and experienced, and after everything we're still seeing, the world still has the audacity to expect [Palestinians] to be the perfect victim.
By the way, there are many interviews that I did and it actually didn't air; and there are some interviews that I did with parts of what I said was being cut off; and there are some interviews that I did where the interviewer asked me questions that I didn't want to answer, because they were super irrelevant. I'm here to talk about us and what's happening. I'm here to talk about the stories of my people.
PA: In class, everyone has different experiences: some people have two years’ working experience, some people don't have working experience. Then there’s you, who has experience reporting in a genocide. That's something no one in class has experience in but me, but I wish I didn't have experience in [it, either].
It feels a bit weird sitting in a classroom right now knowing that Israel bombed and [has even recently bombed] classrooms in Gaza, universities and schools, making education a target. Israel is afraid of Palestinian brains. Israel is afraid of Palestinians graduating, taking their diplomas. Because education is power. That's why Israel is bombing universities and schools, to make us uneducated people.
PA: Seeing everything that the students have been doing, honestly, brought us so much hope, and it felt like these students are the ones who will actually make change.
When you say you're from Palestine, the person in front of you usually hears Pakistan, because they've never heard of Palestine, and they don't know Palestine existed on maps. So now we went from people thinking Palestine is Pakistan, to people knowing where Palestine is on the map, and people knowing Gaza, Deir al-Balah, Khan Younis, and actually knowing places in Gaza.
There was a building [at Columbia] they [named] after Hind Rajab, the young child that Israel shot [at] with [a reported] 335 bullets. This is history. This is change. I'm glad the world now knows about us and about our struggle, but I wish to live in a world where the world didn't need to know us or about our struggles — or for this book not to even be written in the first place.
PA: Ironically, I thought, when I'm outside of Gaza, I'll feel more safe, and I’ll feel I can call things whatever they are, and I can keep talking and advocating about Palestine as much as I want, because there isn't Israel to kill me… But turns out the only place, as a Palestinian person, where you will feel entirely free and you have freedom of speech, is actually Gaza, because outside of Gaza, you're a visitor.
From a young age, my mom raised me in a way, when you're visiting, you stay polite, you can't go to rallies, you can't do whatever you want; because you're on a visa, you're not one of them. The citizens who have a passport, they can do whatever you want, but as a Palestinian person, they can easily deport you — and deport you where?
Deport me to Gaza, but I can't go back to Gaza now... I can't even go to [certain] countries without a lot of documents proving that I'm real and genuine and I'm just a visitor. Right now, I was supposed to be in the US for my book and to talk and raise awareness about it, but I didn't bother trying to apply for a US visa, because the chances are, it will get rejected.
PA: What's happening in Gaza, for me, I can't even understand it, or process how it's real. When I was there reporting and looking at what's happening in front of me — especially when I was looking at the corridor where people are evacuating and getting displaced, walking — I had this flashback of my grandpa telling me everything that happened in 1948 [during the Nakba], narrating the stories. And it was like, now in 2023, and 2025, I'm seeing all these stories live in front of me.
I was trying to process and understand what's happening, so me using references was me trying to process and understand as well.
PA: One thing I think about a lot is how many girls lost their mom before having that first period. I remember, when you're having your first period, you always need your mom beside you — but they don't have their mom next to them. And now there's barely any pads in Gaza. And even if you were to find any pads, they will be super expensive, so not every woman in Gaza has access to them.
The trauma is multi-layered; it's not just about a house being bombed, there is more to it. There is more to a person losing their home, not even finding a tent. There are plenty of people who are sleeping in the streets and not even able to find any tents to sleep in.
You can't find a clean bathroom and access it anytime. So whenever there's plenty of tents, there's a shared bathroom for people who live in these tents, and the line is super long, so you may stay an hour or two hours, just waiting for everyone to enter the bathroom, then for you to enter the bathroom, and it's not a fancy bathroom or a proper bathroom. It's like a built bathroom, same way you built a tent. So this is a struggle that the media doesn't talk about. There's a lot of details in the daily life that people in Gaza are facing.
PA: It's heartbreaking that children aren't allowed to be children and young people aren't allowed to be young people in Gaza, because there's a lot of responsibilities. There's a lot of kids who lost their parents and still have younger siblings, and suddenly, they're 15 years old but they found themselves a parent to their younger siblings.
That's specifically why we need young people from all over the world to talk about what's happening and raise awareness… I actually believe we need more young people to talk about what's happening. As a journalist, growing up watching the news, I always find older people, older journalists, talking about what's happening, but I rarely find young people having this space for them to be on TV, or to have platforms and talk about what's happening and express what's happening. So I'm glad that now there is more awareness, and there are more young people talking and wanting to raise awareness and be part of the change, because I believe if anyone has the power to change, it's the upcoming generations.
PA: For me, there's more to Palestine and Palestinians than Israel killing us. The world knew about us after October 7, but history didn't start on October 7: We had a whole different life before the genocide started. It wasn't the best life, because there was always occupation controlling your life — borders suddenly being open, suddenly being closed. There was always Israel controlling your life. Our life wasn't perfect, but at least, at least we used to... I don't know how to say it in English, but the genocide made us feel grateful for the life before the genocide, even if it wasn't perfect.
Maybe that's the best way to put it into words. We have culture. We have food, we have clothing, we have a lot of culture, and I wish I was able now to talk about Palestinian culture, but you can’t talk about culture and your people in a genocide.
