Guardian’s former Gaza correspondent named young journalist of the year in UK awards

The UK’s Society of Editors has named Malak A Tantesh, the Guardian’s former Gaza correspondent, as young journalist of the year in the national press category at this year’s Media Freedom awards.

The judges said Tantesh “showed immense talent and bravery in some of the hardest conditions ever faced by a journalist, she continued to report while having to forage for food and facing the constant risk of bombing and the threat of targeted killing”.

Tantesh, 20, reported for the Guardian from Gaza for 18 months. She described the impact of the war, losing close relatives and witnessing the aftermath of bombing first hand. She wrote about her family’s return to her birthplace in Beit Lahia, to find their home in ruins and their orchard destroyed. “My memories are crushed and buried,” she wrote.

In October, Tantesh published an article looking back on two years of war, which took the people of Gaza through a “gateway to hell”. There were times, she wrote, when the surviving members of her family envied the dead.

Tantesh and her father Amjed return to the rubble of their home in northern Gaza. Photograph: Enas Tantesh/The Guardian

According to the UN, at least 248 journalists had been killed in Gaza by September, more than in any other conflict in modern times. There have been repeated allegations that Israel was deliberately targeting journalists. Israel has denied the charge, while claiming that some of the journalists its forces killed had been Hamas operatives.

Receiving the award on Wednesday, Tantesh thanked her parents for “raising me to be the person who I am now”.

“They are still there in Gaza, suffering what I was suffering during the past months,” she said, and went on to thank her sister Enas, who worked alongside her as a photographer in Gaza, and her cousin Seham, who has now taken up her position as correspondent. They had stood with her throughout her time working in Gaza, she said.

Tantesh also acknowledged the support of her editors and colleagues at the Guardian and “all the people who have stood with me all the way”.

The Guardian’s editor-in-chief, Katharine Viner, said: “I am thrilled that Malak’s brave, meticulous, moving reporting, delivered under the most awful of circumstances, has been recognised by the judges. A brilliant journalistic future is ahead of her.”