Amidst the destruction and abuse going on in Syria, Anthony Shadid, a friend, died in an effort to tell the story of what is happening to people under fire. Anthony was in there without approval of the regime, and died tragically from an asthma attack when heading for the border with Turkey (this touches me personally on another level, as I suffer from asthma too).

I first met Anthony on the streets of Ramallah in 2002, when the city was under curfew and a small group of us were challenging the curfew to bring humanitarian aid, to witness and to try to prevent abuses.

That day, we were going to bring journalists over to Arafat's compound (under siege) to try to get them inside and report on the deteriorating conditions there. Before we could leave, I got a call from my friend Badawi who lived a few blocks away, that a unit of Israeli soldiers had arrived at his apartment block, and were calling out all men between 18 and 45, which would include him and his brother. For days, Israeli army units would go around the city and round up men, disappearing many of them to military bases and administrative detention (minimum 3 months of detention without charge - current hunger striker Khader Adnan is in administrative detention).

Huwaida and I decided to walk over (and delay the departure to Arafat's compound) and try to intervene. Only Anthony Shadid of the numerous journalists present (reporting then for the Washington Post) agreed to come with us. While Huwaida and I confronted the soldiers, Shadid was on the phone, calling in the story as it happened. We managed to prevent the soldiers from rounding up the men and they instead searched a few apartments before leaving.

Later that day, Anthony wanted to stay behind at the compound to pursue an interview with one of the employees in the presidential offices - not a leader, but rather an average guy who worked as a clerk and who was stuck during the siege. Anthony came back on his own, and an Israeli sniper shot him in the arm.

About an hour later, from his hospital bed, just after having the bullet removed, he called into CNN International to interrupt an interview with Shimon Peres, who was saying that Israeli troops did not enter hospitals.

At that moment, next to Anthony's bed was a unit of Israeli soldiers with 2 german shepherd dogs. In front of the unit, he challenged the Israeli leader's story and offered the phone to the unit's commander to talk to the politician so he could explain how he was not in a hospital.

Some years later, in 2007, Anthony was the only mainstream journalist covering Iraq who was willing to go to the camps of Palestinian refugees who were fleeing Iraq and who were stuck on the Iraqi-Jordanian border in no-man's-land - an issue I spent years working to alleviate.

His coverage of the region was unique in that he was one of the only reporters working for the New York Times and before that, the Washington Post, who spoke arabic, and therefore could actually talk to his interviewees directly.

Earlier this year, he was kidnapped and physically abused by thugs of the Qadhafi regime while covering Libya.

I didn't know Anthony's family but I have met many journalists and none have left the kind of impression that Anthony did.

Our ability to understand the arab world suffers today as a result of this tragic passing.