The Israel-Palestine conflict has questioned the stance of journalistic neutrality that is prevalent around the world. Nikhila Henry explores the notion that journalism and politics cannot be separated in the context of the carnage….
She sat at her desk, being tensed as she could hear shelling somewhere closeby. But she wanted to talk about what was happening around her as the tanks approached and the soldiers marched, swarming Al-Rimal where she lived. Like all other localities in Gaza this place too was under Israeli attack. Sitting in the midst of all commotion, a 53-year-old researcher and writer of Gazan stories, Amal Abuaisha spoke of her family of four children- one daughter and three sons-none of whom had seen the other side of Palestine, the West Bank. Their lives have been blockaded for the past two decades though she says with resiliencethat one day Palestine will be free of occupation. What distinguishes Amal from other writers of Palestinian conflict around the world is the fact that her life, experiences and writing on what is happening around are all intertwined. There is no difference between her personal world and the worlds of those she writes about. Or the variables are just too similar to distinguish.
But yes, Amal lives in an apartment, has basic amenities which is a rarity for Palestinians and most of her family is still alive and not injured. But she is a Palestinian who chronicles her life along with the lives of those less fortunate than her:the ones who are killed as refugee shelters get bombed. The invisible thread which connects her to others she works for and writes about is the reality of imminent death or injury and that of occupation as the bombs rain over them. “There is no life in Gaza. And there is no way that death can be ignored,” she mouthed.She is both the chronicler and the chronicle of Gaza all rolled into one, an entity which is not allowed to thrive in journalistic writing or research on journalism. Or as others of her kind put it, they symbolically narrate their own story as they write and film those around them.
Reuters, the world’s leading news agency talks of journalistic bias such as, “Reuters would not be Reuters without freedom from bias. We are a “stateless” news service that welcomes diversity into our newsrooms but asks all staff to park their nationality and politics at the door. This neutrality is a hallmark of our news brand and allows us to work on all sides of an issue, conflict or dispute without any agenda other than accurate, fair reporting.” Can this stand which is meant to be the quintessence of journalism be applied in a conflict torn zone like Palestine? Can Palestinian journalists and researchers “park their nationality and politics” outside their work? Is that required of them?
Mohammed El-Madhoun, editor-in-chief of Watania Media Agency, Gaza was quick to respond when asked about neutrality in journalistic reporting which is a form of chronicling the current Gaza siege, “I am not neutral (while reporting) this war. It is an aggression against me and my family. All of us are named threats whereas Israel is a threat to not just Palestine but also to the entire region,” Mohammed said. While he lives in Gaza, he likes referring to Majalal `Asqalan, Hadarom, Israel as his place of origin because his grandfather was “kicked out” of this town in 1948 when the Israel state was created.
As the world around her crumbles, Amal knows that her job as a social worker, researcher and writer, is pivotal to her existence and vice-versa. She pointed out, “Unlike over 50 percent of the Palestinians, I am employed most part of the year.”Aside: The UN data shows 20.9 percent of the labour force in the state is unemployed as against 5.6 percent in Israel, the neighbouring state which is currently hunting down ‘terrorists’ in the whole of Gaza killing over 1,900 and injuring over 8,000.Amalwondered why the international press fails to understand that chronicles of the carnage in Gaza can only be ‘one sided’. “These are not two equal sides,” she said. For her a narrative on Gaza should comprise the years 1948 (formation of the state of Israel), 1967 (extended occupation and war) and 1993 (Oslo accord). If these digits did not figure, the years should still exist at least as collective memory of slaughter, onslaught and resistance in stories on Palestine. Each of the stories on Palestine should contain politics of her people, she said.
Years ago, Rafeef Ziada, the young Palestinian poet and activist passionately rendered her poem,We Teach Life Sir to a largely non-Palestinian audience. About foreign reporters and their want for human yet not political stories of the Palestinian people she recited, “So give us a human story/ Don’t mention the word apartheid and occupation/ This is not political/ So you have to help me as a journalist to help you tell your story which is not a political story.”Amal reflected, “When you bury your dead and write about the Palestinian conflict there is only one side to the story and it is as political as it can get.” Her social networking page is almost always active when there is power at home. Amal’s near safe house on the fifth floor of a seven storied apartment complex gets power supply only for three to six hours a day and she skypes, facebooks and tweets about the carnage unfolding in her city sitting there. Regular updates on the death toll and what the foreign media calls human stories figure on her page. Most updates were in Arabic and most evoked mercy from God.
Is God part of the Palestinian story? “This is not a religious conflict. But people were indeed fasting as they were attacked. Among the buildings which were targeted were 50 mosques and in our reports we do highlight the same as these are places of worship and they should be protected,” said Mohammed. Saba Mahmood in an interview for an anthology, The Present as History, Critical Perspectives on Contemporary Global Power, critiques the presumption that the Western liberal democratic model is the only political model where plurality and coexistence can thrive. Mentioning what she calls the piety movement which comprises a network of charitable organisations that provide welfare services to the poor (often through mosques) even as they aim to make “ordinary Muslims more religiously observant and devout”, Mahmood says that alternate systems which stand outside the rigid ideals of liberalism exist in the non-Western world.
Is it possible for piety to figure in an institution like the media?For most reporters and writers from Palestine, their lives and their writings cannot be removed from what they call the reality of the almighty’s blessings. Yasmen Saqalla, a young freelance journalist who works with Al-Rasallah, talks of the infinite mercy of Allah almost always in her scribbling on a social networking page. Religion or faith is not removed from reality; for most in Palestine these are the rubrics under which lives are lived, at least at a time when the world around them falls apart. And unlike those who wouldn’t want to write on faith, the fact that the current Gaza carnage began during the month of Ramzan did have significance for the Palestinian media. “The Palestinian press implored the believers to hold on to their faith during these troubled times,” Yasmen said. While she lives in Al Karama, Gaza, children in Rafah were playing a game of ‘Janasa’ (funeral procession and in this context for the ‘martyrs’ killed in Israeli attacks) they likedthe most these days. As most mosques were packed with little room to keep the dead safe and as the injured and the dying lay on hospital floors unattended, can the children imitate anything but the carnival of death? “Politics is not a choice here. It is something which one deals with every day. It is something one learns from childhood,” said Mohammed.
The chroniclers were only glad that God was never far away for those who write about their kith and kin dying. “I wrote about my friend Mohammed Dahir’s family. While he survived and is admitted in hospital, six of his family members including his two year old daughter was killed in Israeli shelling,” Yasmen remembered that Mohammed’s family of six was obliterated on July 19th. She prayed for her friend’s wellbeing as he was admitted in Al-Shifa hospital. Five minutes after saying this she wasout on work to cover the next story on the next death in Gaza. The second interview Yasmen agreed to, she kept short. “My friend Mohammed died,” she said on August 7th.
Amal spoke the second time after she and her family suffered a four day power outage as Israel had bombed and destroyed the only power station in Gaza. This talk was mostly about her daughter, Razan, a 22-year-old who has not gone out of Gaza. “She is doing her final year of Pharmacy under graduation and wants to leave the place as there is no mobility in Gaza. But she won’t be able to cross the border even if she manages to get a Visa,” Amal rued. Crossing borders is near impossible from this strip of land in which 1.76 million live and the Palestinian press largely writes about this problem of crossing. But fora 25-year-old journalist, Khaled Kraizim this immobility was not just any story he explored as he too had had a share of this Gazan reality when he tried travelling to Turkey. It was only eight months ago that Khaled moved to Istanbul. The wait to cross borders was the worst thing that could happen to him at a time when he was waiting with a work and study permit. “Getting visa was difficult as only West Bank has an embassy and then the other one is in Jerusalem. And to cross borders I had to wait for a month as Egypt barricadedthe borders for no reason,” he said. It is also such instances of lived experience that makes the chroniclers of a nation living in exile come up with a different genre of stories. “When I cover Palestine I think only about my stolen land and the Israeli occupation. The occupation is not just of the land as the mind too is occupied. Daily life is mixed in it all and it is difficult to describe.” Khaled said.The world press ethics upholds objectivity as a key element in reporting even as Palestinian journalists attempt not to get around their nation’s collective reality. “Neutrality is not possible when it is a conflict between the oppressor and the oppressed. Neutrality is not possible when oppressor stands on one side and the oppressed on the other,” Mohammed from Watania Media Agency said vouching by his eight yearlong journalistic career.
The question does the fourth estate personnel face instances of violence similar to the lay public is sort of rhetorical in Palestine. Is their situation different from that of other Palestinians in life and death? “International press guidelines which give safety and protection benefits to other members of the media are not applicable to Palestinian journalists. They are denied mobility. Even the bombings and bullets target them. Nine press personnel who were clad in distinct press shields were killed in this offensive,” Mohammed said. When those who document the war face the war crisis, stories become what can be called the political kind. “There is a national aspect here. The offensive is against each of us and there are instances when one is passionately involved to bring out the truth,” he said. The news agency that Mohammed works for was targeted in an air strike and a colleague was injured.
Is the Palestinian story and lives of the story tellers different in a less air-raided place, the West Bank? Since occupation is an everydayreality those living there find their plight little different from that of Gazans. A journalist who works with the publication wing of an international peace corps(who spoke on condition of anonymity) said at the end of an interview that was deferred over three days, “My house was raided at 3.30 am by Israeli forces.” Her residence in Bethlehem was occupied for a brief moment. “They do not ask for identity cards and talk in Hebrew. And the ‘visit’ is not pre-warned,” she said. Her work the next day reflected sleep deprivation but the peace-corps she worked for considers this plight apolitical. “The organization I work for has a neutral stand. They focus on the humanitarian situation in Gaza. The focus is on human aspect and suffering,” she said the day after her house was randomly raided. She had much to talk about Hamas even as she said that the topic was political. For her the work Hamas didto aid what the peace agency she works for calls “the humanitarian situation” was commendable. “Hamas workers setup summer camps for children and they worked with the poor. And they won the elections in 2006 for the work they did,” she said. Is it possible to maintain the neutral stand which her organization demands of her even as she holds a strong political stand? “You just have to follow the format to do the work here. But it is a relief that we write about almost all human interest issues,” she said.
For Amal Abuaisha the ‘neutral’ stand which the media all around the world seem to have taken and the Palestinian journalists refuse to take is in fact a pro-Israeli slant. Israel has been creating two separate images for West Bank and Gaza as part of their media strategy to “whitewash their crimes”, she said. Did she mean propaganda is being passed off as neutrality? “Gaza is projected as that part of Palestine which Israel dreads as it is a model of resistance. So they brand Gaza a terrorist haunt. But West Bank is the seat of what they call negotiations as Israeli settlements have occupied most of it,” she rued. The 53-year-old has been working and writing on Palestinian women who get released from Israeli prisons. “The prisoners are always sent back to Gaza. This strip is an open air prison,” she said.
Gaza is still not a burial ground and prison in the memory of the Peace Corps employee who did not want to be named. This strip of land for her will always remain in memory a beautiful city. “I was 10 when I first went to Gaza. It was a beautiful city with a nice beach. I remember the fish and the beach,” she said. Four children of the Bakar family were killed by Israeli gun boats on this same beach as they were playing football. If neutrality should stand above taking a stand, the Palestinians wonder at what cost the world wants to remain objective. Historian and political thinker, Edward Said in his article, Permission to Narrate, writes of amissing Palestinian story. He wrote, “Paradoxically, never has so much been written and shown of the Palestinians, who were scarcely mentioned fifteen years ago. They are there all right, but the narrative of their present actuality – which stems directly from the story of their existence in and displacement from Palestine, later Israel – that narrative is not.” It could be this very narrative of the Palestinians that finds its way out through the chroniclers from Gaza and West Bank. “Perhaps we are writing what is supposed to be written about us and they are writing what they are told to write,” Amal neatly summed-up.
