Anas Baba, NPR producer

Anas Baba is a native of the Gaza strip. He spends his days interviewing his fellow residents about their lives and their losses. 

He told the Washington Post that NPR has encouraged him to take time off but he wants to work every day. “If you give me a day off, you leave me just with my brain, and then I think about all the horror and misery,” he said. “So, no stops.”

Baba himself is starving. He has lost a third of his body weight. “Hunger is a little bit of an addiction,” he reports. “Once it's controlling your own mind, you cannot think straight. Once you feel that your stomach, your brain, your body, are craving something, you will not be afraid of anything. You will do anything to get food.” 

On Monday evening, June 23, Baba joined crowds walking toward a distribution site sponsored by the US and Israel and later reported on his trip for NPR. He encountered an Israeli tank firing at the crowd, killing and wounding many. The Gazas had approached because of a rumor that the distribution site was open – it wasn’t. Later, after the site did open, Baba saw a mother who had managed to get some food. She had her child beside her and a knives in both hands, screaming at people not to touch her son or the food.

Source: Washington Post