Amy Goodman
Amy Goodman
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"Watched, Tracked & Targeted": Gaza Writer Mohammed Mhawish on Life Under Israeli Surveillance

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December 12, 2025

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Award-winning Palestinian reporter Mohammed Mhawish, who left Gaza last year, joins us to discuss his new piece for _New York_ magazine about Israel's surveillance practices. It describes how Palestinians throughout the genocide in Gaza have been watched, tracked and often killed by Israeli forces who have access to their most intimate details, including phone and text records, social relations, drone footage, biometric data and artificial intelligence tools.

This all-encompassing surveillance system is "reshaping how people speak, how they're moving, how they're even thinking," says Mhawish. "It manufactured behavior for people, so they shrink their lives to reduce risk, they rehearse what version of themselves feels safest to present, and that creates an enormous psychological burden."

Mhawish also describes the terror of when his family's house was bombed, killing two of his cousins and two neighbors in an attack he says was linked to Israeli surveillance of his reporting activities. "I was being watched and tracked," he says.

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"Watched, Tracked & Targeted"Award-winning PalestinianMohammed MhawishNew YorkMhawish ItDemocracy NowFriday WatchET Subscribe

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"Watched, Tracked & Targeted": Gaza Writer Mohammed Mhawish on Life Under Israeli Surveillance · Amy Goodman · Sentinel