Ali Jadallah has done it again. The Gaza photographer whose work has collected an impressive assortment of international awards has now been named Photographer of the Year at the 2026 International Photography Awards, held in Athens on October 11.
He also won the Editorial/Press Photographer of the Year category for a series titled After Two Years of War, Gaza Stands Between Ruins, Hunger, and Loss. The awards organizers confirmed both distinctions.
Looking through the photographs, I can understand their impact. Women and children reaching forward with empty cooking pots, enormous crowds moving along Gaza’s coastline, grieving families and bodies in hospital morgues. These are powerful photographs, composed with the kind of visual precision that makes an international picture editor stop scrolling.
They also tell a remarkably consistent story.
Jadallah works for Anadolu Agency, Turkey’s state-run news organization. Like China’s Xinhua, Anadolu is an international news agency operating within a government-owned media structure. That institutional relationship is relevant when assessing the political environment surrounding its coverage, particularly given Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s repeated accusations against Israel.
In December 2025, Erdoğan personally honored Jadallah with Turkey’s Presidential Culture and Arts Grand Award. During the ceremony, he praised the photographer’s Gaza imagery and presented it as evidence supporting accusations of genocide against Israel.
The relationship went considerably further than an award ceremony.
Jadallah’s wife, children and mother had been evacuated from Gaza to Turkey. His wife, Dua al-Eisawi, accepted the presidential award on his behalf and publicly thanked Anadolu and the Turkish government for helping her family leave the territory. Erdoğan subsequently received the family and spoke with Jadallah by video link.
These details are documented in Anadolu’s own reporting.
There is no suggestion that a photographer’s family should have been denied evacuation. Jadallah suffered devastating personal losses during the war, including the deaths of his father and siblings. But the assistance provided to his surviving family demonstrates the unusually close relationship between this photographer, his employer and the Turkish state.
That relationship was central to my earlier HonestReporting investigation, From Gaza to Ankara: How a Hamas-Linked Photographer Became a State Endorsed Witness Against Israel.
The investigation also examined Jadallah’s family connections.
His brother Salah Jadallah was identified as a member of the Hamas terrorist cell responsible for kidnapping Israeli soldier Nachshon Wachsman in October 1994. Wachsman was subsequently murdered during an attempted rescue operation. Salah Jadallah was killed in that operation.
Other members of the Jadallah family worked in Gaza’s international photographic industry. HonestReporting previously documented occasions when his brothers Suhaib and Mohammed were involved in Hamas-organized events honoring journalists.
None of this establishes that Ali Jadallah himself is a Hamas terrorist or that his photographs are fabricated. His family history cannot substitute for evidence about his own conduct.
But it is legitimate to examine the professional and political relationships surrounding a photographer whose images are distributed internationally and subsequently promoted by a foreign government as evidence against Israel.
Which brings us back to the awards.
The photographs submitted to the International Photography Awards document genuine human suffering. Their emotional force is obvious. But photography competitions also make editorial decisions about what constitutes an outstanding visual account of a conflict.
Jadallah’s winning series presents Gaza through destruction, hunger, displacement and grief. Those subjects deserve documentation, although the photographs alone cannot explain the military and political circumstances that produced the scenes.
Having spent much of my working life selecting photographs for publication, I know how much a picture sequence can communicate through its choices. What is included determines the story an audience sees. What is absent can be equally consequential.
Ali Jadallah has now received another major international honor. His photographs will continue circulating, accompanied by the prestige that such recognition brings.
I wonder how many people applauding those images know about the photographer’s relationship with Anadolu, Erdoğan’s personal endorsement, or the family history that HonestReporting has already documented.
The photographs deserve to be examined. So does the machinery that has made their photographer an international celebrity.
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© Divuach Ne’eman R”A, 2025
