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The Eyes of Gaza: A Diary of Resilience
Plestia Alaqad
4.74
2,264 ratings543 reviews
In early October 2023, Palestinian Plestia Alaqad was a recent graduate with dreams of becoming a successful journalist. By the end of November, her social media posts depicting daily life in Gaza, amid Israel's deadly invasion and bombardment, would profoundly move millions of people. She would be internationally known as the "Eyes of Gaza."
Written as a series of diary extracts, The Eyes of Gaza relates the horrors of her experiences while showcasing the indomitable spirit of the men, women and children who share her communities. From the epicentre of turmoil, while bombs rain around her and devastation grips her people, she is witness to their emotions, their gentle acts of quiet, necessary heroism, and the moments of unexpected tenderness and vulnerability amid the chaos.
Through the raw honesty and vulnerability of a normal 21-year-old woman trying to make her way through a human tragedy, The Eyes of Gaza is a potent reminder of the horrors of violence and a powerful testament to the human spirit. It recounts a harrowing experience, but it is not a heart-breaking lamentation. Rather, it is a deeply intimate love letter to a girl's demolished before her eyes, yes, but forever present in her heart.
GenresNonfictionMemoirAudiobookPoliticsHistoryBiographyWarMiddle EastBiography MemoirJournalism ...show all
171 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2025
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4.74
2,264 ratings543 reviews
Displaying 1 - 10 of 540 reviews
talia ♡
1,303 reviews441 followers
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Want to readJanuary 2, 2025
may 2025 finally be the year we see a free palestine 🙌 🇵🇸
releases-2025
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Sarah ♡ (let’s interact!)
717 reviews314 followers
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September 5, 2025
The blend of hope and pain, in equal measure, woven through Plestia Alaqad’s writing here makes for both a painful and an inspiring read. I had to force myself to take breaks, even though this book is relatively short. The sheer horror and gravity of the genocide that is happening in real-time.
She started documenting the greatest horrors she would ever face from day 1, October 7th 2023, in a journal and decided to publish this for the world to read.
I already follow her Instagram page, known to the world as The Eyes Of Gaza, which currently has over 4 million followers. This shows raw footage, and daily life in Gaza, amidst Israel’s deadly invasion and bombardment.
I implore everyone to read books written by Palestinians, so you can read firsthand their experiences. Also, you will feel in awe of their resilience and sense of community ✊. It is not an easy read if you are a human being with any levels of empathy, but a necessary one.
5 Stars ✨🍉🇵🇸🖤
physical-copy-owned
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h i n d
429 reviews441 followers
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Want to readSeptember 28, 2024
"I stopped posting on Instagram from my journal because I was planning on publishing a book after this gen0c/de ends, I've always wanted to publish a book, I wanted to publish a poetry book, similar to Rupi Kaur's books, she inspires me a lot"
(from Plestia's insta 29 oct 2023)
I'm heartbroken but mostly raging at this world
palestine
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Lilyya ♡
653 reviews3,725 followers
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June 26, 2025
reading 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝐸𝑦𝑒𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝐺𝑎𝑧𝑎 isn’t for the faint-hearted or the detached. Not after months of witnessing the unspeakable—pixel by pixel, breath by breath—through Plestia’s lens on social media since the very beginning of the genocide. and still, nothing prepares you for this: for her diary, her unfiltered sorrow, the trembling spaces between survival and collapse.
here, the journalist steps aside, and the woman remains. inviting us into the rawest parts of her experience: her fears, her grief, her exhaustion. It’s personal, unfiltered, devastating.
It was a deeply moving read. i come from a place where every Israeli transgression against Palestinians has religiously been condemned, where resistance is not only supported, but sacred. I’ve grown up with the names, the stories, the legacy of grief and courage. I’ve always carried the awareness of the occupation. a closeness to the cause.
but awareness is not the same as intimacy.
and reading her words—line after line, page after page—was something else entirely. It felt like standing at the edge of an open wound. because some stories must be read not just with our eyes, but with everything that aches inside us. but it reminded me, once again, that bearing witness is a responsibility. and this book does exactly that.
learn-about-palestine
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Ditte
591 reviews126 followers
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April 17, 2025
"It would seem that the eyes and ears of the world aren’t interested in Palestinian life, only in Palestinian death."
The Eyes of Gaza is a heartbreaking and harrowing account of the genocide in Gaza told through Plestia Alaqad's diary entries as she experienced the events firsthand.
This book is a hard but necessary read. It had me in tears nearly throughout and my heart aching from sorrow, helplessness, and frustration.
Plestia was only 21 years old when the genocide started and she had to watch her people and country being killed. While trying to comprehend the death and destruction amidst the chaos of fear and uncertainty, she still decided to document events on social media for the world to see. She's simultaneously a young woman, journalist, daughter, sister, friend, Palestinian, and a victim of genocide though she expresses her frustrations with how Palestinians are often only seen as the latter; as victims or numbers rather than individual human beings who all have lives, hopes, and dreams. Using her own diary entries and recounting stories from and about the people she interacted with, it's impossible for any reader to think of the many deaths in Gaza merely as numbers.
Plestia's reporting on Palestine in late 2023 meant I already knew of her but reading this book allowed for a more insightful and nuanced understanding of her and what she's gone through. Reading her account of what she experienced, how in a few days she went from worrying about what to wear to being unable to sleep due to all the death she'd seen, how big a toll reporting on the genocide took on her mental and physical health on top of having to live it, and yet how she never stopped was such a testament to her bravery and resilience.
These qualities seem to be shared by the Palestinian people as a whole - their resilience, resistance, and refusal to give up or give in is as admirable as it is sad that it constantly has to be put to the test. The continuous stories of Palestinians coming together to support each other in any way possible, even when they've lost their homes or family members and are in fear of their own lives, speaks to the love and community they feel for their people and their country.
Throughout the book, Plestia's sorrow, fear, fatigue, and frustration with not only the genocide itself but also the international reaction or lack thereof is clear. It's hard to read this book without feeling helpless and sad and reckoning with your own privilege as well as the lack of adequate action by those with power in the international community.
The Eyes of Gaza is a visceral and raw book about a currently ongoing genocide. It's both an on-the-ground account and a plea for justice and for the world to wake up and act! It's a hard but necessary read that underscores the humanity of all Palestinians and the need for a free Palestine!
"For Palestinians, the war is never over—ceasefire is merely the space between tragedies. And in that space, we carry with us the unbearable weight of memories that cannot be undone."
//
"It’s a different type of pain, to see your homeland, once covered with olive and lemon trees, lush, fruitful pastures and the remnants of ancient, beautiful humanity, reduced to rubble, populated by camps and tents. I can’t always gather the strength to film what I see, because my eyes don’t want to believe that what they see is true. So instead, I just walk through the camp, between the tents, watching people’s eyes and trying to memorize their faces, so that somebody will have known them before the end."
Thank you to Pan Macmillan for the ARC
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Brittany (whatbritreads)
972 reviews1,240 followers
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May 16, 2025
I think writing a typical review of this one would be impossible, because I can’t critique a person's diary who has lived through such a harrowing time.
What I will say is that this was so difficult to read, but so necessary. It’s absolutely heartbreaking, but Plestia writes with an essence of hopefulness too which is so admirable. It really gives you a first person perspective on what’s happening and is continuing to happen in Gaza that we can’t even comprehend.
I can’t imagine how difficult this was to write, let alone be vulnerable enough to share with the world. Highly recommend.
Free Palestine.
contemporary memoir non-fiction
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Yasmine Van Den Meersch
Author 3 books753 followers
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October 13, 2025
“Why do we study history when clearly nobody ever learns from it?” 🍉
read-in-2025
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amie
239 reviews551 followers
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April 17, 2025
I don’t really know how to ‘review’ a book like this, so I’ll just say absolutely read it & Free Palestine 🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸
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layan ليان
233 reviews18 followers
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June 5, 2025
*Just a note before we begin—about two months ago, Plestia graciously reposted my review. It was an honor I’ll never forget.
I’m sharing this not for attention, but as a reminder: words are never just words. Never simple. Never small. They carry weight, they carry truth, and sometimes—they carry the whole world :)*
___
Growing up, I never thought I’d witness the journalists I saw on TV — the ones standing in Gaza, speaking from Gaza, of Gaza — become names we mourn on a screen. I never imagined I’d see them die in real-time, their voices cut short. But that’s what’s been happening. Over 200 journalists killed. So, when I held this book in my hands — a story about a journalist from Gaza, living through all of it — I knew I’d hold onto it forever.
There’s something about reading The Eyes of Gaza that hit different. It’s not just tragedy on paper. It’s breath. It’s memory. It’s resistance. It’s tea in the morning with my teta and sedo — those few times a year I got to see them. We’d sit together, talk about life, and somehow, Gaza always came up. My teta had visited Gaza numerous of times when she was younger. She told me if she weren’t from El Khalil, she would’ve chosen Gaza. She said it with such love in her eyes, as if Gaza wasn’t just a place, but a person — someone sacred.
That’s exactly how Plestia writes Her — with a capital H.
Gaza isn’t just a city in this book. She’s alive. She’s resilient. She’s full of pain, but also full of this quiet strength that feels like home 🫀
“And yes, there is death and there is destruction… But that’s not what I see when I look at Her. I see only the unity and resilience of Her people.”
And then there are the quotes that cut so deep you don’t know what to do with them except sit in silence:
“We, Palestinians, all have keys to houses that no longer exist.”
When I read that, I showed it to my teta. I thought she’d cry — but it was me. I was the one sobbing.
“How much trauma does it take to start thinking that bombs are like rain? And how much trauma does it take to consider that funny?”
Sometimes, I feel like people forget that the people of Gaza are not numb. They just don’t have the space to fall apart every day. This book doesn’t let you look away — but it also doesn’t shove pain in your face. It reminds you, in the quietest, heaviest way, what it means to be Palestinian. To love your people while the world watches them die. To keep holding keys, telling stories, brewing tea, and surviving — all in the same breath.
There was a moment in the book that completely broke me. (Bear with me guys haha)
“So I do something embarrassing, and ask a taxi driver if he can drive me to Yara’s for free. He agrees on one condition: ‘When I get killed,’ he says, ‘post a nice picture of me online, and ask people to pray for me.’
Everyone in Gaza knows that they’ll eventually die, and that it’s only a matter of time. I smile at the taxi driver and assent.”
I was reading this part when a close friend of mine from Khanyunis messaged me after being silent for nearly a week or two. Her words still ring in my head: “If I die, remember me. Don’t forget me in your prayers and your dua.”
It wasn’t the first time she’d said something like that to me — not the first time death slipped quietly into our conversations — but I still didn’t know how to respond. What do you say to someone who’s preparing you for their disappearance, just in case?
I couldn’t hold my tears. That scene in the book and that message from her — they came together like grief knocking twice. Once through the page, and once through the screen.
___
I don’t know how to sum this review up — and maybe I’m not supposed to. Maybe no one really can. How do you wrap up a reflection on a book that speaks of a tragedy that hasn’t ended? That still unfolds with every passing day?
But I’ll leave it here: Gaza holds a piece of my heart.
I know I could’ve written this review without getting personal, without bringing in my own memories and pain. But I didn’t want to. I wanted this to be a reminder — for anyone who reads it now, or someday later — that Gaza is still suffering. That Palestine is still bleeding.
Two of the dearest people to me are from Gaza. One of them is my former math teacher. She lost her entire family in one of the worst massacres in Jabalia, in northern Gaza. Every day, I check on her. Every day, I wonder how I can possibly help. I don’t always have the answers, but what I do know is this: Palestine will always be in my very heart and mind.
Gaza is bleeding. The West Bank is hurting. Al-Naqab, Al-Rahat — each carries its own weight of grief. But we are all tied to one land, one wound, and one truth.
إلى بلستيا، اللي كتبت رغم الألم والفقدان، وتركت النا كتاب لا يُقرأ، بل يعاش ويُبكى.
To Plestia, who wrote regardless of the pain and loss —
and left us a book not meant to be read, but wept.
فَصَبْرٌ جَمِيلٌ وَاللَّهُ الْمُسْتَعَانُ
“So patience is most fitting. And Allah is the one sought for help.”
____
PRE READ 🪽🫀
Rarely does a book capture my attention before it’s even published, but The Eyes of Gaza is already stirring something deep within me. Knowing that this work comes from someone who has survived the unimaginable -war and genocide- makes it all the more powerful. This will preserve memories, document the pain, and hope that refuses to die even in the face of darkness.
To read this, is to witness the souls of Gaza.
صوتك وصل لكل قلب، بلستيا، الله يوفقكِ و يهنيكِ.
authors-of-color favorites palestine-and-beyond-فلسطين
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Quinn Hardy
43 reviews1,288 followers
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November 13, 2025
Absolutely heartbreaking. Awful to think of just how many stories were destroyed in an instant.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 540 reviews
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From Australia
Ragraja
5.0 out of 5 stars What the news or social media doesn’t tell you about Gaza
Reviewed in Australia on 6 May 2025
Format: Kindle
A touching and tender recounting of a lived experience amidst a holocaust that is currently happening in real time.
This diary shares thoughts, feelings, reflections and raw human emotions at a time that no one should live through.
A short but deeply rich insight into the life of a native resident of Gaza and the things that we aren’t seeing as these horrors unfolds.
Thank you Plestia for sharing your private thoughts, pain and grief with the world to illuminate what is being hidden from us.
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CarolineT
1.0 out of 5 stars Biased and one sided
Reviewed in Australia on 30 June 2025
Format: Paperback
Biased and inaccurate
One person found this helpful
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From other countries
Kindle Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Enthralling, vivid and important
Reviewed in Spain on 7 December 2025
Verified Purchase
A captivating peek into the realities of life in Gaza in the run up to and post 7.oktober,-
of the human stories behind the headlines.
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Hannah
5.0 out of 5 stars Today’s history, where were you when it happened? Be on the right side
Reviewed in the United States on 11 November 2025
Verified Purchase
You had a real journalist who shares the horror in our today’s horror world sharing real stories and real truth. Amazing and enspiring writer and the experience she went through deserves more than just 5 stars
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Sss
5.0 out of 5 stars 🇵🇸🇵🇸
Reviewed in France on 22 May 2025
Verified Purchase
Five stars even when no rating could ever capture the weight of what you've shared. This isn't just a book, it's a raw, living testimony of pain, strength and survival.
Thank you for letting us into such a private, wounded part of your world. Your words linger deeply like the eyes you described, the one you couldn't forget. I carry them with me now, as I carry the heavy burden of survivor's guilt.
I see you, I see the people you wrote about and I see Palestine.
My heart aches for your loved one but your voice, and theirs through you, are still here.
May we live to see and celebrate a Free Palestine 🇵🇸
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Ikra I.
5.0 out of 5 stars Must Read
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 7 December 2025
Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
Such an eye opening book. A fantastic book illustrating why there needs to be a ceasefire and what these poor people have been through.
2 people found this helpful
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Jehad Abu-Ulbeh
5.0 out of 5 stars The Words Escape Me
Reviewed in Canada on 3 December 2025
Verified Purchase
It's an honest, pure, innocent take on a genocide told by a first-hand account of a young journalist. I lived every story she told and felt many emotions. As a Palestinian myself, this book opened wounds and made me live many past memories of war and displacement. It also gave me hope that young people will never forget Palestine.
Everyone should read this book to understand how it feels to live through war, genocide and injustice.
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Aleksandar Cholakov
5.0 out of 5 stars Ein empfehlenswertes Buch
Reviewed in Germany on 6 November 2025
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
Das Buch ist wirklich lesenswert. Es erzählt vom Genozid in Gaza, vom barbarischen Terror, den Israel dort ausübt. Es handelt von der Stärke des menschlichen Geistes und davon, wie sich die Psyche einer jungen Frau verändert, die den Terror überleben muss und all die Bilder von getöteten und verstümmelten Frauen und Kindern sieht. Es geht um ihre Träume und die Hoffnung auf eine freie und würdevolle Zukunft für die Palästinenser in Gaza.
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Akshay
5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing book
Reviewed in India on 24 October 2025
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
Amazing book, must read
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DSA30
5.0 out of 5 stars Simply wow.
Reviewed in the United Arab Emirates on 28 June 2025
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
What an incredible book.. a must read for anyone witnessing the war, painful to read but a must.
Congratulations Plestia, for the courage, for the effort and for sharing your words. We are all with you.
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