A former French cultural attaché in Jerusalem profiles Gaza’s Instagram influencers and content creators, showing how their activities shape the war, report on its horrors and provide a window onto unexpected forms of resilience and resistance
Palestinians’ successful use of social media as a tool to share information (locally and globally), generate concern, and report on the on-the-ground reality of lives often ignored by the mainstream Western media did not begin on 7 October 2023.
As an article by Aude Thepenier in Orient XXI points out, the hashtag #SaveSheikhJarrah has been used a million times in English on Instagram (and nearly the same number in Arabic) since its origination in 2021 in protest against ongoing threats of expulsion of Palestinians from East Jerusalem. WhatsApp and Telegram have become powerful tools of organisation. Palestinian online presence – and posts in perfect English – are one of the reasons, Thepenier suggests, for a shift in sympathy towards the Palestinian plight over several years: “their visibility online has changed the global perception of Palestine.”
But the brutal violence of Israel’s response to the atrocious attacks of Hamas on 7 October 2023, has nonetheless marked a new phase: “the first genocide transmitted live onto the screens of our smart phones.” Through all this, Gaza’s Instagram influencers and content creators have continued, despite intermittent electricity, patchy internet access and the threat of famine. Not all have survived; some are now silent.
In the space of just ten days after 7 October 2023, the following of photojournalist Motaz Azaïza (@motaz_azaiza) grew from 25,000 to 1 million, reaching 9 million by the end of that month, and 16.9 million today. Instagram accounts such as that of storyteller Bisan Owda (@wizard.bisan1), with its daily dispatches, filled the gap left open by mainstream media about what was happening on the ground in Gaza, provoking intense global engagement. We wanted to know more about Bisan’s whereabouts and livelihood. Had she survived the night? How was she coping with the incessant surveillance, the awful living conditions, the forced displacement and bombing? Would we see her again? And so, the world watched the twenty-five-years-olds’ life unfold in real-time.
Motaz Azaïza has become recognisable the world over, in his padded navy-blue body armour with “press” in white lettering. Bisan Owad’s barrel curls have recently trended on TikTok as Bisan Hair. She begins each video post with the same line: “Hi everyone, it’s Bisan from Gaza and I’m still alive”. She has been the subject of an Al Jazeera documentary.
As Thepenier notes, putting a name to a face helps us empathise with Gaza’s’ plight. But there is more to these traditional influencers than their appearance: both Azaïza’s and Owda’s reporting is raw and direct. They don’t mince words when they show us their lived realities amidst famine, forced displacement and lack of hygiene. Whether they bite into their first carrot in months or lament about painful skin diseases, their suffering becomes personal and accessible. This rawness earned Owda an Emmy and being named one of the 25 most influential women of 2024 in the world by the Financial Times.
Yet Thepenier also looks to more unsung heroes: the content creators and influencers that vlog about cooking, fitness, gardening and other everyday activities in the warzone. “Each of them brings a direct and precious perspective on what is happening in Gaza”, notes Thepenier: “with all the daily difficulties, the devastation, the unsustainable aspect, but also the small moments of happiness and humour.”
Each influencer had a different job before the conflict: clothes designer Basma Abu Shahla’s house (@basma_shahla, 635k followers) was partially destroyed in April 2024; now she makes “cocooning” reels with homemade pastries and comfort snacks. Hamada Shaqoura (@hamadashoo, 582k followers) was a food blogger; now he runs Watermelon Relief1 soup kitchen. Well versed in the codes of the gram, they know how to adapt and generate visibility – like the personal trainer Mohamed Hatem (@gym_rat_in_gaza, 221k followers) who provides online fitness classes or Ibrahim Abu Karsh (@ibrahimkarsh, 40.2k followers) whose DIY skills include straining water through filters made from cotton and gauze, making a small auxiliary heater from empty cans, or a candle whose smell repels mosquitos.
They also know, on occasion, how to evince the guilt of the distant voyeurs. Food blogger Shaquoura is so well versed in the kitchen that he doesn’t need to concentrate on the tasks at hand; rather his piercing gaze fixes us through the lens as he prepares food from meagre ingredients as if to say: “look what I’m obliged to do, and under which circumstances!”
Elsewhere, Thepenier mentions child bloggers, including the eleven-year-old Renad (@renadfromgaza, 1.2 million followers) who cooks on a modest stove behind the family tent. She shows us “the Gazan way of cooking.” Her older sister Nour films Renad, dubs the videos in English and posts them on her Instagram account, complete with her trademark interjections: “yallah nbalhes” (“come on, let’s go”) and “wallah tejaaaaanen” (“I swear it’s crazy”).
Not all influencers in Thepenier’s article are still alive, or active. Take for example, the eight-years-old orphan Ahmed whose father passed away earlier this year. Since April 2024, he had continuously updated us about his situation, posting videos of himself gardening on his late father’s account (@tasnemaaed, 1 million followers). We encountered him harvesting corn and onions next to his tent in Rafah; plants he brought with him during his family’s forced displacement. There’s been much less since his father passed.
Then there are the outside comments some influencers receive on their posts, which, in Thepenier’s words, can be “systematic, argumentative or sarcastic.” But these influencers shouldn’t always need to justify “what isn’t shown directly in their daily routines: death, destructions and the difficulties of finding temporary housing or quite simply just looking for water.” Like us, they have the right to post what they want and when; their plight and suffering shouldn’t dictate their content. Not even in a warzone.
Thepenier concludes that often, a prolonged absence suggests their inability to post. But this also binds us to their accounts, as she helplessly notes: “and us, behind our small screens, we can do nothing but hoping they’re safe and sound.”
Original article (“Gaza. Influenceurs par temps de génocide”) by Aude Thepenier first published in French on 2 June 2025.
It’s available here.
OrientXXI is a Paris-based digital platform writing about the Middle East and North Africa.
Summary by ML
