The Aftermath: A correspondent's return to Gaza

by Sarah Helm

Sarah Helm worked in Gaza during the 1990s as a correspondent covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, developing a deep respect for the people living there. In the years after she left, violent clashes began to make the events she had reported on look like mere skirmishes. During the summer of 2014, like much of the rest of the world, she watched through the lens of the international media with horror at the prolonged Israeli bombardment of Gaza: which resulted in the death of over 2,200 people, many of them civilians and children.

During a period of relative quiet, Sarah decided to go back to Gaza, and see for herself what had become of the place she reported from two decades ago. This eBook is her personal account of what she found ...

45 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 21, 2015

About the author

Sarah Helm (born 2 November 1956) is a British journalist and non-fiction writer. She worked for The Sunday Times and The Independent in the 1980s and 1990s. Her first book A Life in Secrets, detailing the life of the secret agent Vera Atkins, was published in 2005.

Reviews

[Bookish Bethany · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sarah Helm is a British journalist who visited Gaza in the 90s and after the conflict in 2015. She gives an in-depth, eye opening and objective account of what life looks like in Gaza and the humanitarian nightmare that those living there have endured for generations. She speaks of the pain, the loss, the fear that Palestinian people live with on a day to day basis. Families of 15 reduced to one, children shot by armed Israeli soldiers outside of schools, schools where children were hiding from the conflict bombed, water supplies cut off, no means of escape, a life time essentially in no-mans land. It is horrific beyond all imagination. I can't believe this was written 10 years ago and here we are again, going full circle.

[Colleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very short recollection from journalist Sarah Helm, about her return visit to Gaza in 2014 after last being there in the 1990s. Helm spends her time there interviewing everyone she comes across and contemplating the changes from what she remembers. Helm sticks to a journalist tone, simply conveying what she hears and sees, letting the starkness of her experiences speak for itself.