Janna Jihad Ayyad is only 10 years old, but she's already carved out quite a career for herself. Ayyad, who lives in Nabi Saleh, a Palestinian village in the occupied West Bank, considers herself a journalist — and she's taken on the task of reporting on the conflict between Israel and Palestine.
Ayyad told Al Jazeera that she became interested in reporting on the conflict after two family members in her village — a cousin and an uncle — were killed. She decided to become a journalist at age 7, using her mother's iPhone to capture videos of protests near her home, eventually extending her coverage to include other conflict-related violence and marches outside of her village, in places like Jerusalem and Jordan, to name a few. Her Facebook page, where she shares her videos, has more than 90,000 likes. Ayyad hopes to study journalism at Harvard one day.
"I am proud of my daughter because as a child, she tells her message to the world. She shares her fears, what she feels, and the problems of attending school," Nawal Tamimi, Ayyad's mother, told Al Jazeera. "But I am scared for her, when the army comes in the middle of the night and tear-gases our house, and we wake up in smoke…They attack our people who demonstrate against the settlers and the Israeli occupation."
While reporting on such a heavy conflict might seem odd for a child, Ayyad told Al Jazeera that there's one advantage she has over professional reporters. "The soldiers catch the big journalists and take their cameras," she said. And she feels a responsibility to her community, as well. "Not a lot of journalists are sending our message from Palestine to the world, so I thought, 'Why not send my message…and show them what is happening in my village,'" Ayyad told Al Jazeera.
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