"There's been no truce. There's bombing everyday"

Democracy Now! producer Anjali Kamat files a report on the state of the Gazan economy, where unemployment and poverty rates are among the highest in the world. Despite international pledges of over $5.2 billion to rebuild Gaza, in the four months since Israel’s assault the siege has not been lifted and only one truck carrying cement and other construction materials has been allowed entry into the Gaza Strip.

Full script here

Introduction by Amy Goodman:
"We turn, though, now to, well, an international story, a report on the state of the Gazan economy, where unemployment and poverty rates are among the highest in the world. Despite international pledges of over $5.2 billion to rebuild Gaza, in the four months since Israel’s assault the siege has not been lifted and only one truck carrying cement and other construction materials has been allowed entry into the Gaza Strip. According to the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, this truck, which Israel permitted in late March, was the first carrying construction materials to be granted entry since last November."

Justice, not charity - by Abu Omar:

We don’t want to beg the world for money. We just want to take those who destroyed our houses to court. If we are really criminals and our houses are terrorist houses, then OK, this is what you get. But if our houses are innocent and our factories are innocent, then the Israelis need to account for what they destroyed. They are the ones who should give us the reparations. Why do we need to rely on the sympathy of the world? We don’t want that. We want the world to stand by our rights. We don’t want their charity, little bits of money and food. We’re full, thank God. We are just asking for our rights, nothing else.

Land of Ruins: A Special Report on Gaza’s Economy

Bloggers bearing witness in Gaza

The relationship between ‘warbloggers’ and journalists is precisely not a peaceful one. It is often caricatured - with some reason - as the encounter of frustrated failed journalists with professional ones jealous of their privileges. Donald Matheson and Stuart Allan** in a chapter entitled ‘War Zone: The Role of Warblogs in Iraq’ are thinking about the collaboration between what they call mediasphere and blogosphere. They say that blogs cannot be separated from the mediasphere to which they respond. In the case of the recent war on Gaza, it seems on the contrary, that the blogosphere was an impulse of news and the main source of information. 

Matheson and Allan’s model, which was applied to the 2003 invasion of Irak, could clearly be inverted as far as the 2008 Gaza offensive is considered.

Their main conclusion is still valid though:

‘the dominant model of the foreign war correspondent, developed during the relatively information-scarce nineteenth-century, relied upon the correspondent having a monopoly of information and the status of an expert by dint of being present on foreign soil and having general journalistic skills. Such a model becomes less tenable when news editors and readers have instant access to multiple voices, both journalist and lay, experiencing the news event in question from an array of perspectives in multiple locations.’ Matheson, Allan (2007, p.87)

Some of these multiple voices are put together on Global Voices, a platform started by the Berkman Centre for Internet and Society at the Harvard Law School. Ethan Zuckerman and Rebecca MacKinnon founded this valuable meeting point in 2004. Four years later, it became a central independent resource for anyone interested in listening others’ voices. MacKinnon told the BBC:

‘If bloggers are out there creating media and talking about things that the mainstream media isn't covering, that may also help push the mainstream media to recognise that there are a lot of things out there that people care about that they've simply failed to cover.’***

From Gaza, with Love is a blog - created on Blogspot - by Mona Al-Farrah, a physician and human rights activist who actually was in Egypt while the bombings started. Her messages revealed though an authentic voice, transmitting directly in the blogosphere the news she received from her friends, before they got into the mediasphere. At least, when they eventually reached it. She was giving her phone number in case someone - journalists? - would like to speak with her. Mohammed Fares Al Majdalawi, film maker and social worker in Gaza strip, published a post on Mona’s blog (4/01/2008):

‘There is a horror in every minute (...) I have two message to the world, (...) to the lovers of peace and freedom in the world. First message: Imagine your life with no electricity, destroyed homes, missiles night and day, no food. Imagine your children and your family telling you they are afraid of the missiles (...) My second message: End the siege and stop the killings, stop the demolitions of our houses.’ ****

The lack of professional mediacy might be considered as an evidence of bias. Technically, however, the blogger is making himself available by putting his mobile phone number online, at the end of his post. Any journalist or any simple reader is invited to check the facts. Many bloggers like Mohammed kept writing, as far as they got an internet access. Hopefully, the mediasphere - not entirely - echoed the cries and stories of the blogosphere. Al Jazeera English, from Gaza, had a Twitter feed which gave the general public an opportunity to follow - and check - the news almost at the same time as a new post was published.

Passing through both mediasphere and blogosphere is a way for the audience to get really involved in the news process instead of absorbing passively the crumbs delivered by mainstream media. It is a chance for professional journalists to share a conversation with this sort of active public, as well as with non-professional writers and witnesses. It is worthwhile noticing how Al Jazeera English, at some point, realized the perfect combination between blogosphere and mediasphere through an experimental platform called ‘War On Gaza. Experimental Beta’. On this website, a map was available and accidents could be submitted through the site, Twitter and mobile phones (SMS). Then, they were checked and possibly validated.

In conclusion, ‘truth in a war zone’ does not depend anymore on the monopoly of information by foreign correspondents. It is more likely a dialogue between an active blogosphere and a open mediasphere that values the intelligence of its audience by putting it in the centre of the news process - in a shared rationality.

---------
References:
** Maltby S., Keeble R. (2007) Communicating War. Memory, Media and Military. Bury St Edmunds: Arima Publishing
*** Boyd C., (2005). "Global voices speak through blogs," BBC NEWS Technology, April 6, 2005.
**** From Gaza, With Love (Mona El-Farra)

This article was first published on Arab Democracy

Super drawing from the super work of Mazen Kerbaj 

UPDATE 5/04/09 : Portuguese translation by Inês Espirito Santo on Spectrum

Gideon Levy: Everyone agrees, war in Gaza was a failure

Article published by Gideon Levy in Haaretz (12/03/2009)

Suddenly we're all in consensus: The recent war in Gaza was a failure. The bon ton now is to list its flaws. Flip-floppers say its "achievements" were squandered; leftists say the war "should never have started" and rightists will say the war "should have lasted longer." But on this they all agree: It was a blunder.

Because we consider the war to have been almost cost-free, with just 13 Israeli dead, it will be the first in 36 years without a Commission of Inquiry formed in its wake.

Of course, the war's blunder was just as serious as its predecessors, but because we did more killing than being killed, because we caused more damage than we sustained, there's nothing deemed worthy of investigation.

It was all in vain: no progress made, no goal achieved, nothing. Deterrence wasn't reestablished, arms smuggling into Gaza was not stopped, Hamas was not weakened and abducted Israel Defense Forces soldier Gilad Shalit was not freed. On these facts we all agree.

Moreover, we paid a huge price: Hamas is stronger, the hurt Palestinian people are even more hateful toward us, and Israel is viewed as a pariah in world public opinion, with rioting on a basketball court in Ankara where an Israeli team played and the banning of spectators from Israel's Davis Cup tennis encounter with Sweden in Malmo, as the last of the rogue states.

Nobody has to answer for all this, neither the politicians who launched this crazy war nor the army commanders who were their contractors. No one will be impeached, never mind tried in court. Israel's aggressive and violent war machine won't even suffer a tiny dent.

And what of the cheerleaders who sat on the sidelines of this hellish nightmare? Perhaps we should at least hold them accountable? They sat in their television studios and at their newspaper desks. Oh, how the commentators were excited and stirred excitement. They goaded and urged, pushed and applied pressure, begging for more and more war. For months they had been clamoring for their "wide-scale operation," their hearts' desire. When their wish came true they cheered in support and whistled in excitement.

Do not take their actions lightly. They could have had an immense influence over the feeble politicians and graying officers. "Strike out at them," their baritone voices echoed from one part of the country to the other. They asserted it was a just and successful war without peer. They covered the brilliant military maneuvers with gusto, iniquitously hid the horrors, presented an unrestrained offensive against a non-existent enemy as a two-sided war, described troops' unchallenged advances as real combat and a military maneuver carried out on the back of a helpless population as a success.

They appeared at their studios with their mouths still covered with foam left over from their previous successful horror show, the Second Lebanon War. The retired generals and Tarzan commentators, whose coverage of the war in Lebanon was an abominable failure, recycled the same cliches and propaganda dictates. No one considered replacing them after their previous failure. They learned nothing and forgot nothing, and the vast majority of us nodded thoughtlessly at their words, as though they came from above.

The deja vu is striking: Again, just like after the Second Lebanon War, they suddenly became the war's biggest critics, only after it already ended - a matter of timing.

Showing no remorse and much vanity, they now shamelessly admit that the war whose praises they sang has failed. Why did it fail? Because we didn't kill enough people, they explain. If we would have given it a little push and killed 200 more children or massacred 500 more women, then we would have achieved victory.

None of them are asked what would have happened had the war continued. Would Shalit have been freed? Would Hamas have waved the white flag? Would the Palestinian people have joined the Zionist movement?

Now, get ready for the next treat. They've already begun to clamor for a new war in Gaza or Lebanon, whichever comes first. When they get what they ask for they will return to their studios. In the beginning they will offer their support for the war, and then come out against it.

No one will hold them accountable for their vile acts, and there will be nothing new under the sun.


Picture: Mazen Kerbaj

T word, poor weather and happy new year

It happened that the first news story I read in 2009 was a piece about Gaza, written by Nidal Al-Mughrabi from Reuters: "Israel rebuffs Gaza truce call, mobilizes troops" (31/12/2008)

Sounds for Palestinians like "Happy new year under siege and bombings"!

And for the simple observer I am like a multiple-choice questionnaire between sarcasm, perplexity and indignation.

The State of Israel threatened by a group like Hamas? 

How the hell can a perfectly organized national army be threatened by some people living under the poverty line with no proper land of their own?

Again, the word "terrorism" is stifling any common sense, any attempt of rational understanding. For calling a group of people "terrorists" simply allows you to treat them as they were not a part of humanity.

"Terrorist" is a concept with no substance, it is only a political choice that makes it meaningful. In France, during the dark times of the Occupation, the Gestapo and the French police used to call "terroristes" the same people others qualified as "Résistants". 

The T word is provoking fear and all the psychological conditions that would make us consent to illegitimate violence - and subsequently give up the use of reason. 

Moreover, according to Reuters:

"The poor weather -- 'a truce imposed by God' as one Palestinian put it -- could delay any push by Israeli tanks into Gaza but forecasters predicted several days of clear skies starting late on Thursday."

Israel-Palestine is probably the only place in the world where weather forecast might be more efficient in bringing peace than UN resolutions.