Gaza Journalist Who Met With Zohran Mamdani Denies Hiding Israeli Hostage Footage: ‘Doing My Job’

Gaza photojournalist Motaz Azaiza is denying burying footage of Israeli hostages being beaten by a Palestinian mob to protect the perpetrators.

Azaiza, 27 — who has met with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and has been honored with a Nobel Peace Prize nomination as well as a spot on the Time100 list — took to Instagram Sunday, September 20, to deny claims that he was doing anything other than his job.

“As for the video I recorded of Israeli hostages being held by Hamas, I filmed it inside Gaza while doing my job as a photojournalist. I chose not to publish it because I feared that revealing the location could put Palestinian civilians in the area at risk,” Azaiza, who has become one of the most famous photojournalists in Gaza, wrote. “Around twenty minutes later, the site was struck by Israeli warplanes, killing the hostages along with Hamas gunmen who were there.”

He also denied any implications that he participated in the October 7, 2023, terrorist attacks, adding, “I was not part of it in any way. I was in Gaza doing my job: documenting what was happening in front of me.”

Azaiza’s post comes after he opened up about the footage on the September 3 episode of the Taqarrab podcast.

“People got out, watched, beat them, hit them, and I followed them and filmed,” Azaiza said, per the New York Post. “But I did not publish those videos.”

“Why? Because I did not want to ruin the lives of the people who were filmed,” the photographer continued. “I understood that Israel would use those videos to identify every person who was there and eliminate them. I did not want to be responsible, even indirectly, for the deaths of those people in exchange for a few likes and views online.”

In the podcast interview, he also touched on a WhatsApp group “Smart” that coordinates coverage in Gaza. While the podcast implies that the group is a Hamas-run organization, in his post, Azaiza said he “never said the journalists in a Gaza WhatsApp group were affiliated with Hamas.”

He continued, “I never said Hamas controlled Gaza’s journalists, directed their work, or that being in that group meant belonging to Hamas. Any claim otherwise is false.”

The WhatsApp group mentioned, Azaiza maintained, was “simply a group where representatives of the Hamas government shared updates about the situation in Gaza.”

“Many journalists participated in it, including me, because receiving updates from the government was part of our work — as it is for journalists across the world,” Azaiza added.

Azaiza went on to note his criticism of Hamas since the October 7 attacks, adding that he has every right to criticize the group, which has served not only as a “resistance faction in Gaza” but a “governing authority” over the Palestinians for quite some time.

“But that criticism must never be twisted into something it is not,” he stressed. “When members of my family were killed, when my friends were killed, when I was threatened and forced to move under constant danger, it was Israel doing the killing.”

“I will not allow my criticism of a Palestinian governing authority to be turned into propaganda for the occupation,” Azaiza wrote before ending the lengthy post. “Criticizing those who govern us is our right. Opposing occupation is our right. One does not cancel the other.”