Israelis and Palestinians protest for peace as journalist Mariam Dagga’s family mourns her death

NAZARETH, Israel (AP) — In the streets of Nazareth, Israeli and Palestinian activists wore stickers replicating the ‘Press’ insignia emblazoned on flak jackets and other clothing worn by journalists as they rallied for peace in Gaza. Their message: Journalism is not a crime.

A throng of people wearing blue-and-white ‘Press’ stickers — used to identify journalists in dangerous areas — gathered in the Israeli town on Friday to call for an end to the war in Gaza, which has killed nearly 200 journalists among tens of thousands of others. Some held photos of Palestinian journalists killed.

’’Don’t assassinate the truth,” read a banner the protesters held. Some banged on empty pots to symbolize hunger in the Gaza Strip and protest the killing of journalists.

Mariam Dagga, a 33-year-old who freelanced for The Associated Press, was among the war’s victims. She and four other reporters were killed earlier this week when Israeli forces struck Nasser Hospital in the Gaza town of Khan Younis, along with 17 other people.

Dagga was among a group of journalists who regularly based themselves at the hospital during the war, which began on Oct. 7, 2023, when an attack by Hamas militants inside Israel claimed the lives of 1,200 people and resulted in 251 people being held hostage. Israel’s retaliatory military operation in Gaza has so far killed more than 63,000 people, according to the territory’s health ministry.

Mariam sought to bring to the world the travails of ordinary Palestinians displaced by the war, as well as the work of doctors and nurses treating the wounded or caring for malnourished children.

The Israeli military said it targeted what it believed was a Hamas surveillance camera in the hospital attack, without providing evidence, and that the journalists weren’t the targets. The prime minister called the attack a ‘’mishap.”

All that doesn’t mean much for Mariam’s father, Riyad, sitting in his tent in Khan Younis, nearly 180kilometers (111 miles) away from Nazareth. Poring over the last photos taken by his daughter, he recalled the utter shock he felt when he heard what happened.

“I couldn’t walk. And I didn’t know what was around me when I heard the news,” he told the AP. “The person who told me the news said that Mariam was martyred, and I collapsed,” he said, his eyes welling with tears as he watched a video of his daughter and him.

Mariam’s sister, Nada, was with her at the hospital when she was killed. Nada recalled vividly the last look the two sisters exchanged when the second of two rounds of strikes hit the hospital’s stairwell, where Mariam was killed.

“Mariam, my sister, was on the stairs filming. I watched her and looked at her,” Nada said. “The last look between me and her. She looked at me and smiled.”

It was Mariam’s brother, Mohamed, who rushed into the stairwell in search of his sister, finding her among the bodies of her colleagues.

“I pulled her out and took her from the fourth floor to the operations (room),” Mohamed said. “They told me to go downstairs at the reception until you receive (the body).”

Mariam’s last photos showed the damaged stairwell outside Nasser Hospital, where she would be killed moments later. The photos show people walking up the staircase after it was damaged in the first strike, while others look out the hospital’s windows.