On 22 October 2023, an Israeli airstrike hit Ahmed Alnaouq’s home in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza, killing 21 members of his family, including his 75-year-old father, two brothers, three sisters and all of their children.

At the time, Alnaouq was living in London, where he works as a journalist and human rights activist. “It crushed me,” he says of the attack. Unable to return home, he could only watch helplessly from afar and grieve alone. Later, he tells me that it’s not anger or hate that consumes him now, but survivor’s guilt. “All the time I think: ‘Why? Why am I alive? Why wasn’t I killed with my family?’”

The only reason he can think of, he says, is so that he could tell their story to the world.

Eight years earlier, Alnaouq had co-founded a platform to help young Palestinians in Gaza write about their lives for an international audience. I...
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