Amira Hass is an Israeli journalist and photographer who covered the Jerusalem holy site closures and their aftermath. A veteran correspondent with thirty years of experience covering the occupation, she was the only professional photographer present in the street outside the Al-Aqsa compound on 22 March 2028 when Yousef Haddad was shot while holding the Jerusalem Cross flag. Her photograph — showing Haddad with the flag, taken a fraction of a second before the shot was fired — appeared on the front pages of fifty-three newspapers in thirty-one countries within hours and had been seen by an estimated 800 million people within days.
Hass had interviewed Yousef Haddad years before his death, describing him in a subsequent Haaretz essay as a man who chose his words as he chose his materials. She wrote that she did not know what the photograph meant, only what it showed: “a man holding the flag of his people at the door of a holy place that has been taken from him.”