Hamza Elbuhaisi
Hamza Elbuhaisi is a Palestinian journalist, reporter and producer. Currently, he lives in the UK. He has reported for numerous media outlets, including: The VJ Movement, Elaph, Iraqi Albaghdadiya TV channel, Watania News Agency, South Leeds Community Radio
He has worked with Albaghdadiya Iraqi TV Channel where he covered the whole Israeli war on Gaza. As much as, he worked with electronic media such as Elaph Website (The first Arabic Online Newspaper) where he awarded the Arabic Journalism Award in Dubai in 2011. Recently, his (unknown) blog nominated as one of the top ten Arabic blogs in The Deutsche Welle International Blog Awards 2012.
As noticed from some websites, he has produced and directed many films in collaboration with Italian, American, Dutch, and Canadian filmmakers and producers.
Background
Hamza was born in Gaza. He began working in media in 2002. His sister Israa Elbehaisi is a reporter of Alalam TV channel from Gaza.
Awards
In 2012 his personal blog was nominated as one of the top ten Arabic blogs in The Deutsche Welle International Blog Awards.
In 2011 while working for Elaph he was awarded the Arabic Journalism 2011 award.
In 2008 he awarded the Prize of Reuters Murdered Journalist Fadel Shanaa for the best radio feature.
Incidents
Hamas Ministry of Interior summoned Hamza Elbuhaisi after he published an article on torture by Hamas authorities in secret detention facilities, threatened to take legal action against him if he did not publish an apology for the article, and warned him to correct his “biased” reporting.
The day his article was published on Elaph’s website, an official from the Interior Ministry called Hamza and said that [spokesperson] Ihab Al Ghussein wants to meet him at 8:30 a.m. On October 26, Hamza went to Al-Ghussein’s office. Al-Ghussein had printed out Hamza’s article and highlighted sections of it, and immediately began to criticize it and Hamza in a very sharp and aggressive tone and he said to him that the police were thinking to shoot you in your leg but I prevented them to do that to speak with you first.
Here you can find the article of Hamza which has been published at Elaph Arabic Website and the full report by Human Rights Watch regarding the incident. In addetion to Aljazeera report as well.