Farewell To The Last Lens: The Story Of Journalist Yahya Sobeih’s Martyrdom

By Palestinian Journalists Protection Center

On one of Gaza’s heavy mornings, journalist Yahya Sobeih (33) took the hand of his four-year-old son Baraa and walked him to his kindergarten in the Shuja’iyya neighbourhood, east of the city. Though exhausted, he smiled at his child and whispered: "Take care of your mother and your siblings while I’m away." He did not know those few steps would be the last he would ever share with his son.

After saying goodbye, Yahya returned to the field, to the camera that never left his shoulder, to the line of fire where he had always chosen to stand. That same day, he was martyred.

The photographer who chose to stay

Yahya, a photo-journalist for the channel Palestine Post, refused to leave the Gaza Strip despite repeated evacuation calls. He understood that remaining in a besieged, service-cut area posed a real danger to his life, yet he chose to pay that price for the image and for the truth he insisted must stay alive.

He was not only a photographer; he was a witness, a first-aid volunteer, a man with a heart pulsing with mercy amid the destruction. He moved with his camera on one shoulder and chronic kidney pain on the other. Though he needed treatment and clean water, he never thought of leaving. His sister recalls: "He would lean on his friends from the intensity of the pain, but he would not leave the field." She herself had lost her children in a previous air raid, from which Yahya survived by a miracle.

The child who inherited the lens

On the morning of his martyrdom, Baraa returned from kindergarten and told his mother: "I’m happy, Mama, because Dad walked with me today." He did not know his father would never return. A few days earlier Yahya had shown him how to hold the camera and how to look at the world through it. Today Baraa hugs his father’s camera and phone and says: "I will inherit them after him."

That same morning Yahya accompanied his wife Amal to al-Shifa Hospital, where she gave birth to their third child, a baby girl who has not yet been named. He recited the call to prayer in her ear, bought sweets for her, and took her first photo—unaware that this would be his last moment with her.

Amal says: "He filled every gap in the house. He cooked, cared for the children, and thought of us even amid the shelling and danger. I lost everything in an instant… except memories full of love and the camera he left us to stand as a witness."

An eye that fed and documented

Away from the battlefield lens, Yahya formed a volunteer team to distribute food and water to affected families in northern Gaza. He cooked with his own hands, carried the parcels himself, and knocked on doors. Amal recalls: "He fed everyone before eating himself; he cared for people just as he cared for us."

After his martyrdom, the team continued its work in keeping with his will: "Do not stop the aid… people need us."

A lens that still tells the story

Yahya was martyred wearing his blue press vest in a direct strike earlier this May. He was not the first journalist killed in the war, but one of the dozens who have fallen since the assault on Gaza began in October 2023—one of the deadliest wars for media workers in modern history.

Amal says: "He covered the story, and he became part of it. I lost Yahya, but I see him today in our children: Baraa (4), Kenan (3), and our twenty-day-old baby girl, whom he saw for only minutes."

The camera Yahya carried until his last breath has not been switched off. It still tells a tale, bearing a voice that a missile silenced—yet memory has not.

International silence that fuels anger

The Palestinian Journalists Protection Center (PJPC) and several international human-rights organisations have demanded an independent investigation into the targeting of Yahya Sobeih, stressing that "the continued targeting of journalists without accountability constitutes a compound crime and a blatant violation of international humanitarian law."

Even in death, Yahya remains present—in the lens, in memory, and in a small child who now carries his father’s camera and name, to follow a road opened with blood and keep the story alive.

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