Global Voices – Informed Comment

Echos of our Lost Home in Gaza

Global Voices — Sun, 24 Mar 2024 04:02:05 +0000

A Palestinian family’s journey from the 1948 Beit Tima massacres to Gaza

By Haneen Abo Soad | –

The author’s four-generation land and home were destroyed by Israeli F16 rockets in January, reducing it to rubble. Photo provided by the author, used with permission.

( Globalvoices.org ) – On January 12, a message arrived from my sister in Gaza, bearing the devastating news: our parents’ home, a sanctuary of memories, had been razed by Israeli F16 rockets, reducing our beloved home to rubble.

This is no ordinary house. Within its walls, I took my first uncertain steps, and my laughter and tears echoed through its very foundations. It was sacred ground, where I grew up alongside my beloved siblings, cocooned in a world of love and safety.

As the weight of this heartbreaking news settled upon me, a storm of rage and frustration brewed within, threatening to consume my very being. Later that day, as more details unfolded, the magnitude of the loss sank in even deeper.

Like most Palestinians, we lived in close proximity to our grandparents and uncles, tending to our land and cherishing our communal bonds. The bomb that shattered my parent’s home also reduced my grandparents’ humble abode to rubble, a dwelling fashioned from straw and clay over seven decades ago. They had built this sanctuary with their own hands, a symbol of resilience and hope forged in the aftermath of escaping the horrors of the massacres in their village, Bayt Tima.

In October 1948, Bayt Tima fell victim to occupation during the brutal Operation Yoav by the Givati Brigade, a Zionist gang marching south and massacring villagers along its path. Bayt Tima, once a peaceful village, became the target of aerial and artillery bombardment, forcing a large exodus of refugees.

Despite the falaheen’s (“villagers”) brave resistance against the Negev Brigade, another Zionist gang that attempted to occupy the village as early as February 1948, even before the Nakba, the Givati Brigade eventually prevailed. Their onslaught claimed the lives of 20 villagers, destroyed the main source of water, and demolished the central granary, striking at the heart of our community’s sustenance and spirit.

Devastated and heartbroken, the Indigenous people of Bayt Tima, who had learnt about other massacres across our beloved Palestine, including the Deir Yaseen Massacre, feared for their lives and those of their families. They were displaced to Gaza.

The tragedy of loss

In their effort to survive and rebuild their lives amidst the trauma and upheaval of forced relocation, my family purchased the land in Gaza and built the house. My grandmother often recalled the fear, uncertainty, and profound sense of loss of that period, but above all, the grief that was most unbearable.

During the cruel and harsh journey, the family lost many of their relatives from the village, including one of their children, my uncle, baby Mohammed, who died on the way, fleeing to Gaza.

My grandmother often recounted the story of my uncle Mohammed, each retelling was a testament to the pain that refused to let go:

“When we were fleeing for safety, I sometimes carried Mohammed on my back and sometimes his father did. He was just 8 months old. We walked for many hours, stopping occasionally under a tree to rest and breastfeed. One of these times, he did not respond to my voice when I tried to wake him up.

I called his father over to check on our child. When he saw him, he said, “Allah Yirhamoh,” (“May God have mercy on him”). I screamed ‘No, no! Not Mohammed.’ My breasts were full of milk for the baby that will never drink it, and my heart was crying for a young man that will never be.

I held him high and prayed to God with a burning heart, ‘Ya Allah, ya Allah.’ I clung tight to my beloved Mohammed for more than six hours, unable to let go or believe what had happened. But when I finally found the strength to let go, his father dug a grave for him, somewhere along the road, under a tree, and we returned him to our mother, the earth.

I pleaded with the earth to treat him kindly. He was a sweet child. I asked her to be gentle with him, for she had taken the most precious thing I owned — the soul of my soul.

We barely had a few minutes to say goodbye, when the Israeli gangs started getting closer and shooting at us. They took away everything from us, even our final goodbye.”

Olive trees and ancestral bonds

My family made it to Gaza, where they remained on this land for over 70 years.

They planted many olive trees, intertwining their roots with those of the trees, forming connection with their ancestors who lived and died on this land for thousands of years. They worked the land for most of their lives, growing their own vegetables and fruit, and raising goats and chickens to sell at the local market.

Over the years, their connection to the land in Gaza deepened, all the while holding onto the dream of one day returning home. My grandmother kept the key to her home in Beit Tima hanging from a necklace close to her heart, until she passed away in 2016.

The home was alive with family gatherings and occasions. This photo was taken during one such gathering in the summer of 2021. Most of the photos of the house were destroyed in that airstrike, erasing the family’s memories. Photo provided by the author, used with permission.

Their home was a vessel that nurtured generations. It began with them raising their children, and as time passed, my uncles and father built their own houses around my grandparents’ home. Together, we formed three generations of a Palestinian refugee family.

Now the fourth generation, which includes my children and my sister’s children, has experienced life on that land. The home stood as a testament to our somoud (“resilience”) in the face of oppression and the enduring bond we share with our ancestral land.

That house was the heart of our family, beating with every family gathering, birthday celebration, late-night laughter, and star-gazing session when there was no electricity. It witnessed our weddings and funerals, holding the essence of our lives.

When I reflect on all these moments, my heart shatters. The bombs not only destroyed our land and houses but also shattered our hopes and soulful memories. Our cherished moments captured in photographs, our books, our beds, our roof, and our beautiful olive tree field — all destroyed.

Memories and trauma in Gaza

The deep-rooted trauma of war and displacement has been a constant in our lives in Gaza. I have experienced four major aggressions on Gaza, having lived there until I left five years ago. Many times, bombs fell near our home, and we lived through the horrors of explosions and the fear of losing our lives.

I vividly remember the 2008 war on Gaza when Israeli airplanes bombed someone who was walking past our home. We were inside when the whole house shook, and smoke filled all the rooms, choking us. Terrified and unsure where to go, we decided to go outside, only to find the burned, lifeless body of the man who was targeted. It was my first time seeing a burned body.

As we ran to my uncle’s house a few meters away, the bombing started again. One of my sisters was injured by a piece of burning debris, screaming in pain. How can we ever overcome such memories?

What affects me most is the targeting of the olive trees. what have the olive trees done? My grandmother planted them over 70 years ago. Four generations of my family have endured the atrocities of occupation and lived under colonial rule.

This knowledge is carried in our bodies. The atrocities we endured are imprinted in our DNA and will be inherited by our children and grandchildren for generations to come.

The Bridge features personal essays, commentary, and creative non-fiction that illuminate differences in perception between local and international coverage of news events, from the unique perspective of members of the Global Voices community. Views expressed do not necessarily represent the opinion of the community as a whole. All Posts

Written byHaneen Abo Soad

Globalvoices.org

A Dictionary for Understanding the War on Gaza

Global Voices — Wed, 06 Mar 2024 05:04:34 +0000

How linguistic warfare manipulates narratives in the ongoing Gaza conflict

Written byCivic Media Observatory

This story is part of Undertones, Global Voices’ Civic Media Observatory‘s newsletter. Subscribe to Undertones.

Welcome back to Undertones, where we study narratives from around the world. Since the end of 2023, the Civic Media Observatory has started a new project focusing on data governance. But we still have some important stories from our Community Observatory to share. One of them comes from our researcher from Gaza, who’s now living abroad but has helped us make sense of the conflict since it started. In December, we published an analysis of critical narratives coming from Israel.

This time, our researcher Haneen Abo Soad and Global Voices’ Middle East and North Africa Editor Mariam A., joined forces to write this piece about finding the right words to describe the conflict that started inside our process within the Observatory.

Decoding language in the ongoing Gaza genocide

( Globalvoices.org ) – In the intricate threads of history, we’ve seen how language has long played a strategic role, especially in the shadows of colonization. Those in power skillfully suppressed native languages to quell resistance. This tactic hasn’t lost its edge; it is alive and well today as contemporary powers manipulate language to “manufacture consent,” justifying oppressive actions and rallying public support.

In the ongoing struggle of our people in Palestine, the dance of words takes center stage. Israel and its supporters wield language, crafting a narrative that strips us Palestinians of our humanity, portraying our resistance as illegitimate, and branding it as either antisemitism or terrorism. Isabella Hammad and Sahar Huneidi, two Palestinian historians, cast light on Israel’s ploy, labeling all our resistance, even peaceful actions like economic boycotts, as terrorism. This characterization extends to the asymmetrical war between Palestinian civilians and the Israeli army, as outlined in a December 21, 2023, article in The Nation.

For us Palestinians, this manipulation of language is not a distant debate, but our daily reality intensified during the current war on Gaza. Israel and its allies wage a multi-layered war, distorting our native words, redefining them, and globally banning them, all to stifle our resistance.

In this tangled linguistic war, Israel and its allies deny the ongoing genocide in Gaza despite the graphic evidence circulating on social media for the whole world to witness.

We selected a few calculated terms used by global media with the aim of shedding light on our perspective. With 75 years marked by ethnic cleansing, 56 years of military occupation, and 17 years of siege on Gaza, we find our people ensnared in an ongoing genocide. The toll is unbearable: more than 30,000 people killed, 70,000 injured, and many more trapped beneath the rubble.

Yet, as we watch our children dying daily of bombs, starvation, and thirst, the global conversation fixates on semantic debates, diverting attention from the urgent realities unfolding on the ground.

Evacuation and Nakbah (‘نكبة’ Catastrophe’)

“Don’t take all the stuff, Um Ahmed. Just grab the essentials. Come on, my dear, walk ahead of me. It’s just two days, and we’ll be back.” — Palestinian author Waleed Saif from the series Palestinian Nakbah.

These words resonate with every Palestinian family in the diaspora and in the refugee camps. Echoed by grandparents and parents, they linger in the air, and yet, here we are, 76 years later, and those two days have not yet found their end.

This is the very reason the term “evacuation” carries the weight of 75 years of displacement and the enduring struggle of millions of Palestinians worldwide. This weight became palpable and pushed itself into our global consciousness on October 13 when Israel ordered 1.1 million people in northern Gaza and 22 hospitals to leave before a ground offensive on besieged Gaza. This directive, condemned by the World Health Organization (WHO) as “a death sentence for the sick and injured” and labeled a potential “war crime” by Amnesty International, carried an immense weight of consequences.

The term “evacuation” typically means moving individuals from danger to safety. In Gaza, some were compelled to comply with the evacuation order, while others refused, recognizing the harsh reality that there is no safe place in Gaza, a truth underscored over the last 145+ days.

This picture was taken today in Khan Yunis.

One of the most cruel pictures ever, how can one picture be so loaded with all this misery!!!

For Palestinians, “evacuation” resurfaces haunting memories of the Nakbah (Arabic for “catastrophe”) in 1948 — a traumatic event that violently displaced 700,000 of our kin from their homes and native lands to pave the way for the creation of Israel. This involved the destruction of our society, culture, identity, political rights, and national aspirations. Since then, we have been denied the right to return home, and for more than seven decades, we have been tirelessly fighting for that right. The resonance of the term extends to the ongoing persecution of Palestinians in the West Bank.

For Gazans, “evacuation” transforms into a chilling echo of history, thrusting them into forced displacement, this time to the Sinai Desert — with no prospects of returning home under the guise of evacuation.

Hostages and Prisoners (سجناء ‘sojanaa’)

“If the prisoner is beaten, it is an arrogant expression of fear.” — Ghassan Kanafani

It’s noteworthy that the terms “hostages” and “prisoners” are used to describe both Palestinian and Israeli captives, carrying different connotations. The aftermath of Hamas’s attack on Israeli settlements, killing 1,139 and capturing 250 individuals, led to a focus on the Israeli “hostages.”

This unfolded as Israel declared war on 2.4 million Palestinians trapped in Gaza, using dehumanizing rhetoric by labeling them “human animals.”

The hostage situation prompted a deal between Israel and Hamas, resulting in a temporary ceasefire and the release of 84 Israeli and 240 Palestinian captives. The ceasefire lasted a week.

Despite being labeled differently, the deal compelled the world to acknowledge the presence of 7,200 Palestinian individuals, including men, women, and children in Israeli prisons.

According to Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, as of November 2023, 4,764 Palestinians were held on “security” grounds, with the majority never having been convicted of a crime. Human Rights Watch reported 2,000 in administrative detention, where the Israeli military detains a person without a trial, presuming they might commit an offense in the future.

Associated Press notes that “over 750,000 Palestinians have passed through Israeli prisons since Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza, and east Jerusalem in 1967,” including children.

Since the second Intifada in 2000, Israeli military authorities have detained, interrogated, prosecuted, and imprisoned around 13,000 Palestinian children, with 86 percent not being informed of the reason for their arrest, as reported by Defense for Children International – Palestine. It is estimated that around 460 children have been detained in the last five months alone.

Furthermore, the conditions within the prisons, the torture, and the degrading treatment of the detainees are highly dehumanizing, constituting a violation of international laws.

On February 1, 2022, Amnesty International issued a report urging accountability for Israel’s crime of apartheid against Palestinians. In this system, the Israeli government has instituted a two-tiered legal and political structure that affords rights to Jewish Israeli settlers while subjecting Palestinians to military rule and control, stripping them of basic rights under international law.

The 2.4 million people in Gaza and the 7,200 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons are, unequivocally, hostages just like the 250 Israelis, and they deserve the same attention.

Turning a blind eye to their plight reveals global double standards. Regardless of which term the world chooses to call them, it is crucial to recognize the fundamental truth that no civilian should be subjected to captivity or utilized as a bargaining chip, irrespective of which side they find themselves on.

Collateral damage and Palestinian shuhada (‘شهداء’)

“And if they ask you about Gaza, tell them that it has a shaheed, a shaheed helps him, a shaheed takes pictures of him, a shaheed bids him farewell, and a shaheed prays over him.” — Mahmoud Darwish, Palestinian poet and author

In the poignant words of Mahmoud Darwish, Gaza is painted with the presence of the “shaheed” (plural, shuhada) — not just martyrs, but witnesses to the profound injustices endured. Often mistranslated, misunderstood, and misused by Western audiences, “shaheed” is commonly translated to mean “martyr,” despite its literal meaning in Qur’anic Arabic being “witness.” It appears 35 times in the Qur’an, primarily as “witness” and only once as “martyr.” The term holds a deeper significance as witnesses who stand before God to attest to the crimes committed against them.

In the Palestinian context, the term encompasses individuals and communities killed by the violence imposed by Israel during the 75 years of occupation. It includes a diverse spectrum, such as resistance fighters, but also grandparents, parents, sons, daughters, siblings, cousins, family members, friends, civil society workers, doctors, teachers, journalists, children, and all innocent civilians impacted by the injustice, irrespective of their religion.

People who were loved, who had lives, dreams, and hopes.

These people are typically dismissed as “collateral damage” by Israel and its allies. This term is grounded in the principle that weighs whether the military advantage achieved from a particular target is “proportionate” or justifies the potential loss of civilian lives.

A recent investigation by the Guardian and the Israeli publication 972+ Magazine has exposed the Israeli army’s use of artificial intelligence (AI) during the latest war on Gaza. Operating through a platform known as “the Gospel,” this AI technology identifies additional potential targets, resulting in expanded authorization for bombing non-military sites. The report reveals a relaxation of constraints regarding expected civilian casualties. According to +972 magazine, the Israeli army maintains files on potential Gazan targets, pre-determining the projected number of civilians likely to be killed in each attack. “This number is calculated and known in advance to the army’s intelligence units, who also know shortly before carrying out an attack roughly how many civilians are certain to be killed.”

The attack near the Jabalia refugee camp, however, has raised concerns about proportionality, with accusations of war crimes and calls for greater efforts to protect civilians.

This linguistic choice challenges terms like “collateral damage” and underscores the importance of each “shaheed,” portraying lives lost as witnesses rather than casualties, emphasizing the profound impact of every human being affected by the ongoing genocide.

In conclusion, the power of language in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict cannot be overstated. Understanding the impact of language is crucial for a nuanced perspective and to acknowledge the ongoing struggle for justice amid the complex realities on the ground. The battle extends beyond the physical realm to the words we choose, emphasizing the profound consequences of linguistic choices in the quest for a just and balanced narrative.

Global Voices special coverage: “Israel’s war on Gaza”

We encourage you to explore our coverage: “Israel’s war on Gaza.”

Global Voices’ statements about the war

Global Voices joined 140+ civil society organizations and activists in calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and Israel. Read the statement.
Global Voices stood alongside 29 human rights organizations expressing deep concerns regarding the systematic targeting of Palestinian journalists by Israeli forces in Gaza. Read the statement.

See the full dataset of the analysis

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Written byCivic Media Observatory

Globalvoices.org

Israel’s War on the Bodies of Palestinian Women

Global Voices — Tue, 20 Feb 2024 05:04:58 +0000

Palestinian women prisoners are subjected to torture, abuse, beatings and threats of rape

Written byRaseef22

Read this post in українська

Freed Palestinian prisoner Ruba Assi was welcomed as a hero upon her release in the prisoner exchange deal last November. Screenshot from a video by medyascope english. Fair use.

This article is written by Hala Al Zuheiri, and was originally published in Raseef22 An edited version is republished on Global Voices as part of a content-sharing agreement.

“They took me and my daughter to a room inside the house, and they brought in a female soldier with a police dog. She ordered us to undress completely. We did. I acted blind, deaf, and mute so that they would not beat my son,” Suhad Al-Khamour, 49, from the Dheisheh refugee camp south of Bethlehem, tells Raseef22.

In late November, Suhad’s home was surrounded by a large number of heavily armed Israeli occupation forces (IOF), who then stormed it and destroyed its contents. Suhad, a mother to three sons and a daughter, spoke with Raseef22 about how the armed soldiers kept her husband and son in the living room while she and her daughter were taken into the bedroom at gunpoint and trailed by a guard dog. Suhad and her daughter were forced to undress before redressing and quickly leaving the house. They went out barefoot, waiting in the cold for the questioning of her husband and her son, Mohammad, 26, to conclude. When they came out, the IOF took her son with them, only to release him two hours later.

On December 4, the IOF raided Suhad’s home again before taking Mohammad to Ofer Prison, near Ramallah. This is not Suhad’s first violent targeting by the occupation forces. Her son Ibrahim, 20, is detained at Nafha Prison, where he is completing a 5-year sentence, whereas her son Omar, 14, died in early 2023, after he was shot in the head by occupation forces. Rona, 24, is the only one of Suhad’s children still with her at home, although her psychological condition is rapidly deteriorating.

Suhad is just one of hundreds of women who have been arrested or have had family members arrested in the West Bank, Jerusalem, and Gaza, and subjected to various forms of humiliation and violence.

According to the Palestinian Prisoners Club and the Commission of Detainees’ Affairs, about 300 female prisoners were arrested in 2023, including 184 after October 7, 2023.

Since October 7, Israel has escalated its campaign of illegal arrests and its targeting of women’s bodies through torture, abuse, strip searches, forcefully removing veils, in addition to starvation, depriving them of basic needs, and detaining them in harsh conditions in prisons and compounds.

Testimonies from Gazan female prisoners similarly reveal use of the same tools of humiliation. Many civilians have been forcibly taken prisoner by occupation forces, and their whereabouts are still unknown.

Reinforcing the occupation by violating the body

Ruba Assi was released on November 28, 2023, in the fifth part of the prisoner exchange deal between Hamas and Israel. Assi spoke with Raseef22 about her arrest after October 7. It was significantly more violent and humiliating than her first arrest and detention in 2020, which lasted for 21 months.

Shortly after the start of the war on Gaza, the IOF blew open the door of Assi’s house in the town of Beit Liqia, west of Ramallah, in the West bank, and stormed inside. Family members were separated into different rooms, and Assi was arrested without being allowed to say goodbye to her family or even wear a jacket.

Occupation forces tied and blindfolded her, before dragging her into a military vehicle. The female soldier assigned to her spoke loudly and aggressively in Hebrew, intentionally provoking her. She also threatened to send her to Gaza to torture her there. After Assi arrived at the Israeli camp, still bound and blindfolded, a group of soldiers approached her, taunting her and insulting her.

She was later transferred to the Hasharon Detention Center, where she was subjected to a strip search by two female guards. “If the prisoner refuses [the search], she will be severely beaten,” Assi explained. Eventually, Assi was placed in solitary confinement at Damon Prison. She shared:

There was not enough food or water. We were deprived of bathing and subjected to violent oppression without any prior justification and at any time. We were deliberately neglected in terms of medical care, and existing health conditions were not taken into account. Even when we were preparing to be released after our names were included as part of the exchange deal, we were subjected to strip searches.

Many testimonies from released female prisoners reveal torture, abuse, beatings and threats, include threats of rape, as well as being taken hostage in order to pressure family members to turn themselves in. Palestinian civilians are also subjected to these methods of torture during home raids, at Israeli checkpoints, and during visits to detained family members.

A longstanding policy

Strip searches are not a new tool of suppression and humiliation for Israel, but they have recently emerged as an integral part of the ongoing violent crusade against and genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

Ismat Mansour, a former prisoner and expert on Israeli affairs, told Raseef22, “In Gaza, we saw how men were stripped down and filmed, in order to strip the person from within and instill a sense of inferiority and helplessness.” Mansour labels strip searches a tool of the occupation used to violate the privacy and desecrate the space of Palestinians, while diminishing their humanity. It is a deeply intentional measure.

The Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association similarly confirmed to Raseef22 that the policy of strip searching is not new. However, since the start of the ongoing war on Gaza, the violence accompanying physical inspections has blatantly increased, according to testimonies from released female prisoners.

Workers at Addameer confirmed, “Female prisoners are subjected to a strip search at the moment of their arrest and at the detention center, and sometimes they are ordered to sit in a squatting position. Male prisoners are also subjected to this– a tool to seize control of the detainee’s body and humiliate and violate their dignity.” Testimonies recorded after October 7 indicate that female prisoners have been threatened with rape and verbal harassment.

Hassan Abed-Rabbo, spokesman for the Commission of Detainees’ Affairs, believes that “this is primarily intended to undermine and harm national and human dignity, as well as to send a message to all Palestinian women that anyone thinking of acting against the occupation will have her dignity violated and her privacy invaded.” He emphasized, “it is an attempt to pressure women and sideline them from their role in the struggle.”

Who will hold Israel accountable for violating women’s bodies?

Dr. Dalal Iriqat, an international law specialist, explained to Raseef22, “When violations against prisoners are systematic and repeated, and laws safeguarding prisoners’ rights are continuously violated, the policy, according to international and legal definitions, escalates into a war crime against humanity.”

Iriqat emphasized that the policy of strip searches violates international law and the Fourth Geneva Convention, stressing that the violations are not limited to this policy but also include depriving female prisoners of basic rights, such as food and a healthy environment. “The Israeli authorities took advantage of the preoccupation of human rights organizations about war crimes in Gaza to further abuse and torment the prisoners,” says Iriqat.

The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor called on the international community to pressure Israel to reveal the fate of Gazan women who have been arrested and whose whereabouts are unknown. Approximately 3,000 Palestinian detainees from Gaza have disappeared, including children and minors. The Human Rights Monitor claims that the Israeli army continues to arrest dozens of women, girls, and infants, all of whom are subjected to humiliating detention conditions, strip searches, the forced removal of their hijab, and threats of rape.

The Palestinian Prisoners Club and the Commission of Detainees’ Affairs state that the intensity of the crimes committed against women is one of the most prominent and dangerous aspects at this stage in the war. This violence is an extension of a long history of Israeli targeting of Palestinian women; Will this war on Gaza be much harsher than any of the previous wars in the history of the occupation?

Written byRaseef22

When Palestinians “Die” and Israelis get “Killed” in the same War

Global Voices — Wed, 22 Nov 2023 05:02:44 +0000

Word choices in the Israel-Gaza conflict reflect systemic media bias

Written bySafa

Written byMariam A.

Federal Building, San Francisco, October 20, 2023. Hundreds of people from many backgrounds came together outside Senator Nancy Pelosi’s office, to paint a giant street mural. The message: BIDEN, PELOSI: DON’T AID AND ABET WAR CRIMES, and calling for a CEASEFIRE! With Jewish Voice for Peace Bay Area, The Peace Poets, Climate Justice Street Mural Arts Project. Photo by Peg Hunter. Flickr. (CC BY-NC 2.0 DEED).

( Globalvoices.org) – Amidst the chaos of Israel’s war on Gaza, truth becomes a casualty in the battleground of information, entangled in a maze of misinformation and biased narratives, eclipsing the reality of the crisis unfolding in Gaza.

In news reporting, every semantic choice, nuanced omission, prioritization, and bias holds the power to shape how readers interpret and absorb information. Systemic issues and marginalized voices are obscured beyond headlines. Cognitive and algorithmic biases manipulate information access, notably in the “fog of war,” as seen in Gaza.

The complex information landscape is shaped by not only misinformation but also by the different narratives employing defamation and dehumanization, mirroring pattern in main stream media coverage of Palestinians and other Black, Indigenous, and People of Color.

Palestinians don’t just die, they get killed

The choice between “died” and “killed” in describing fatalities in Israel’s war on Gaza reflects a subtle yet impactful semantic difference because it shapes how information is perceived.

Merriem-Webster defines “to die” as an intransitive verb, implying an indirect action, potentially linking fatality to natural causes, like old age. Conversely, “to kill” is a transitive verb, suggesting a more direct action, often tied to an unnatural or violent manner of death, such as an airstrike, for instance.

In 2022, Laura Albast wrote in an opinion article in The Washington Post, “This is a pattern we have seen over and over again in media coverage of Palestine. Palestinians are not killed; we simply die.”

This sentiment was echoed recently by journalist Yara Eid when she responded to a Sky News presenter, “I think language is really important to use because, as a journalist, you have the moral responsibility to report on what is happening. Palestinians don’t just die, they get killed.”

Journalist Yara Eid, explains the importance of the use of language when talking about the Israeli war on Gaza. Screenshot from eid_yara Instagram video. Fair use.

News media actively make choices about using passive or active voice, demonstrating a hierarchy in terminology beyond the die/kill dichotomy. Examining language within a news piece exposes framing that reveals inherent bias or perspective.

In one particularly confusing example, a CNN news anchor ambiguously described Palestinian fatalities by saying: “One hospital in Gaza says it received 22 bodies during the intense overnight bombardment along with hundreds of people injured.” There was no further clarification provided about whether those bodies were deceased, who was responsible, and from whom they were received.

The New York Times headline on the November 5 Israeli airstrike hitting the Al Maghazi refugee camp used indirect language, stating, “Explosion Gazans Say Was Airstrike Leaves Many Casualties in Dense Neighborhood.” This phrasing, such as “leaves many casualties” and “dense neighborhood” instead of specifying “a refugee camp,” was ambiguous.

Furthermore, the language used casts doubt about information sources, stating “Gazans say,” without explicitly attributing the airstrikes to Israelis. In the context of Israel’s month-long bombardment on Gaza, such ambiguity seems unnecessary. Notably, this strike was one of three airstrikes hitting refugee camps in Gaza within a 26-hour window.

In a CBS News article, the authors used intense language to describe Hamas’ attack on Israelis as a “murderous rampage.” However, when referring to Palestinian fatalities over the first nine days of the war, they employed comparatively lighter terms like “killed” and “death toll.”

This created a notable hierarchy in the portrayal of violence, which may diminish the impact or severity of the suffering of Palestinians. This discrepancy in language can influence readers’ impressions and create an imbalance in how violence is perceived.

Revealing a systemic issue in newsrooms

Bristol Friends of Gaza protest on the front lawn of BBC Bristol’s headquarters on Whiteladies Road about biased reporting of the 2014 Israel-Gaza war. Photo by Rwendland, July 23, 2014. Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Revealing a systemic issue in newsrooms, this hierarchy of terms and narrative shaping is not unique to Palestinians. The U.S. news media has long faced criticism for racism, particularly in its coverage of police violence against Black Americans, exemplified in the murder of Breonna Taylor.

Author and editor Adeshina Emmanuel pointed out, “Newsrooms often fixate on the moment of death, leaning heavily on police narratives, and — as those narratives often do — assassinate the characters of police violence victims.” This implies a narrow focus on the immediate and often dramatic events rather than the broader context.

The media’s coverage of the war in Ukraine has also raised concerns about racism. Scholar H.A. Hellyer highlighted the racist language used by reporters, emphasizing the dehumanization of non-White populations and its impact on their right to live in dignity. Beyond overtly racist coverage, other major humanitarian catastrophes, such as the war in Sudan, receive minimal attention from mainstream media.

Political influence and pressures on newsrooms significantly influence media narrative-shaping. In May 2023, it is unsurprising that a majority of US journalists expressed concerns about press freedoms. These concerns are supported by instances where numerous journalists were dismissed for expressing pro-Palestinian remarks, a trend that has intensified in recent weeks.

Amid the ongoing Israeli war on Gaza, U.S. Secretary of State Tony Blinken requested the Qatari Prime Minister “to tone down Al Jazeera’s rhetoric” regarding Israel’s action in Gaza. This sentiment was reflected in other newsrooms, as reported by The Intercept: “Leadership at Upday, a subsidiary of the Germany-based publishing giant Axel Springer, gave instructions to prioritize the Israeli perspective and minimize Palestinian civilian deaths in coverage, according to the employees.”

A group of Jewish writers drafted an open letter condemning the notion that criticism of Israel is inherently anti-semitic and noted the pro-Palestine suppressions:

“Now, this insidious gagging of free speech is being used to justify Israel’s ongoing military bombardment of Gaza and to silence criticism from the international community. […] Israeli journalists fear consequences for criticizing their government. […] We refuse the false choice between Jewish safety and Palestinian freedom; between Jewish identity and ending the oppression of Palestinians. In fact, we believe the rights of Jews and Palestinians go hand-in-hand.”

Global calls of solidarity

People in their tens of thousands rally in Melbourne, Australia, in support of Palestine and in solidarity with the Palestinian people. October 15, 2023. Photo by Matt Hrkac, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).

Despite the biased coverage by mainstream news media, the public has become aware of the genocide faced by civilians in Gaza, largely due to on-the-ground journalists providing coverage in English on social media platforms. Journalists such as Motaz Azaiza, Plestia Alaqad, and Bisan Owda, to name a few, have played a significant role in disseminating information.

Since Israel’s war on Gaza began, hundreds of thousands of protestors across major cities, including London, New York, São Paulo, Cape Town, and Kuala Lumpur, have regularly voiced solidarity with Palestinians. They have stepped in to address the failure of mainstream news media to raise awareness about Israel’s war crimes and disproportionate attacks on Palestinians.

These demonstrations align with a growing rift between the Global south and the West, exemplified by a chorus of accusations of hypocrisy from the global south directed at the West. The criticism underscores contrasting policy and media response, highlighting the West’s condemnation of an illegal occupation in Ukraine while staunchly supporting Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

As awareness of media biases grows, people around the world are driven to scrutinize information, demanding a more equitable representation of diverse perspectives. This collective effort signifies a pivotal shift where an informed public actively challenges biases, fostering a space where truth prevails, and marginalized voices resonate.

Written bySafa

Written byMariam A.

Globalvoices.org

Iran’s Women, Digital Rights and Human Freedoms

Global Voices — Mon, 02 Oct 2023 04:04:13 +0000

A year after Mahsa Amini’s death, Iran intensifies surveillance on women

Written byGuest Contributor

This piece was first published by Alliance for Universal Digital Rights (AUDRi), on September 16, 2023, and was written by Emma Gibson, the global coordinator for AUDRi. An edited version is republished here with permission

( Globalvoices.org ) – September 16, 2023, marked a year since the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini following her arrest by the Iranian government’s “morality” police. In the week leading up to the anniversary, human rights organizations Equality Now, Femena, and Centre for Supporters of Human Rights (CSHR), made a joint submission to the UN Human Rights Committee expressing “deep concerns about the condition of women and girls in Iran regarding the continued prevalence of female genital mutilation (FGM), child marriage, and sex-discriminatory personal status laws in the country.”

In recent years, protests against the mandatory hijab or the so-called “morality police” in Iran have made international headlines. The bravery of women, often leading the charge, cannot be overstated. However, these protests are often met with severe consequences, increasingly driven by the government’s sophisticated digital surveillance apparatus.

A controversial new hijab bill includes 70 articles that prescribe harsher penalties for women, as well as severe sanctions against public figures, businesses, and service providers who support them. The bill proposes the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to enforce dress code violations, reflecting a disturbing manifestation of gender-based persecution.

In today’s digital age, Iran’s government has been wielding a two-edged sword: the same technology that has the potential to empower voices is being used to silence them, especially when those voices call for gender equality. Using advanced facial recognition software and tracking online interactions, the government identifies and harasses those who dare to dissent.

This technological might is disproportionately used against women, whose demands for equal rights are seen as direct threats to the state’s ideological foundation.

It’s not just about cameras on street corners or drones in the sky. The real Orwellian nightmare lies in the shadows of the internet. Popular platforms are censored, and encrypted messaging apps, on which protesters often rely to organize, are blocked. Bloggers, influencers, and even ordinary citizens face intimidation, arrest, or worse for simply expressing their opinions online.

Iran Protests,’ Ottawa, Canada, September 25, 2022, by Taymaz Valley on Flickr (CC BY 2.0.).

Perhaps most disturbing is the state’s increasingly invasive eye into private spaces: the cars and walking routes of private citizens.

A chilling testament to this is the fact that, within a mere span of three months, almost a million women were texted warnings from the nation’s police force. Their crime? Being captured by ever-watchful cameras without a hijab, as detailed by a harrowing report from Amnesty International.

According to the report, the police “issued 133,174 SMS messages requiring the immobilization of vehicles for a specific duration, confiscated 2,000 cars, and referred more than 4,000 ‘repeat offenders’ to the judiciary across the country.”

From Iran to the world: An international call to action

Digital rights are, at their core, human rights. A society where individuals cannot communicate freely, privately, and securely is one where fundamental freedoms are under assault.

Digital rights exist alongside the right to peaceful protests in multiple ways. Encrypted communication tools can offer activists and protesters a way to communicate without the fear of government interception or retribution. When mainstream media is censored or muzzled, social media platforms can allow for the rapid dissemination of information, rallying supporters for a cause. Furthermore, the digital realm offers an expansive library of resources on peaceful protest tactics, rights awareness, and international solidarity efforts.

Iran is far from being the only regime restricting digital freedoms while using technology to suppress dissent or co-opting its surveillance. In India, for example, police have made use of an app which allows them to access privately-gathered CCTV footage.

In China, mass surveillance has been used to gather information about the movements and activities of private individuals in a form of “predictive policing.” Across all these examples, there is evidence that surveillance and infringement on privacy rights disproportionately target individuals and groups whose identities make them vulnerable, such as women or minorities, or whose political activities challenge the status quo.

But here lies the challenge: As governments like these become more adept at quelling online dissent, how can activists stay a step ahead?

The international community can play a crucial role. Tech companies must be pressured to safeguard user data and prioritize end-to-end encryption. Digital rights organizations and civil society should be consulted on the threats posed by state-led digital surveillance and censorship and the implications of the technology being produced.

Most importantly, the global community should consistently spotlight abuses, ensuring governments understand that the world is watching. And regulation of the digital space along human rights principles will ensure that this does not become a new environment in which Iranian women, or any others, are vulnerable to abuse and harm.

While the Iranian government’s tactics are emblematic of a more significant global issue, the world must remember and uplift the unique bravery of Iran’s women, who stand tall even when shadows loom large. For Mahsa Amini and countless others like her, we must persist in our shared fight for digital and human rights. Their courage deserves nothing less.

This post is part of Advox, a Global Voices project dedicated to protecting freedom of expression online. A

Via Globalvoices.org

Facebook’s News Retreat: A Death Knell for Independent Mideast Local News

Global Voices — Thu, 28 Sep 2023 04:04:06 +0000

Facebook algorithm change hits MENA independent media audiences hard

( Globalvoices.org ) – Google and Meta, commonly referred to as the duopoly of the internet, dominate online access to information. In a recent showdown with authorities, these tech giants are set to block news on their networks in Canada in response to a new law mandating payment to news publishers.

The decision coincides with broader challenges confronting the media industry worldwide, such as dwindling advertising revenues and heavy reliance on social networks for readership.

In the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region for example, Facebook’s evolving relationship with the news industry, algorithm adjustments, and their repercussions on local media outlets add complexity to the landscape of news dissemination, particularly affecting smaller, independent publishers.

Facebook uncertain relationship with the news industry

Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has faced numerous criticisms for disseminating fake news and hate speech. The recent withdrawal from news is part of a broader shift towards prioritizing user-generated content. However, this is not the first time Facebook has vacillated over the role news should play on its platform. After going as far as collaborating closely with the news industry, injecting millions in funding, and providing media training through its Journalism Project, Facebook backpedaled.

Image by Saoussen Ben Cheikh. Used with permission.

In 2018, under public and regulatory pressure, Mark Zuckerberg first announced they would be “making a major change to how we build Facebook,” resulting in users seeing less public content, such as posts from businesses, brands, and media outlets. Over the years, the platform has been notoriously opaque about when and how it changes its algorithm, the set of rules that defines what posts are seen in what used to be called the newsfeed, its central feature section. It was renamed “Feed” in February 2022.

Echobox, a social media management company, reported that the most recent significant Facebook algorithm change occurred in February 2023, and accelerated in May 2023. This change resulted in content from publisher pages nearly disappearing from user feeds. This sudden shift significantly reduced traffic to media websites, disproportionately affecting audiences and publishers in the Global South, including the MENA region. These regions heavily rely on social media referrals for news access.

Facebook’s disproportionate influence in the MENA region

Social media are widely popular in the region. Despite the rise of new platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat, Facebook remains a pivotal force in the MENA region. For many, it represents the internet itself. Arabic is the third most used language on the platform. In a MENA survey conducted in 2022, around 72 percent of respondents reported daily Facebook usage. Notably, Libya (100 percent), the UAE (93 percent) and Qatar (90 percent) have exceptionally high Facebook reach relative to their population. Egypt, Morocco, and Algeria also rank in the top 10 countries for the fastest-growing Facebook user base.

A more vulnerable media landscape

Unlike their Western peers in more enabling environments, media outlets in the MENA region have long struggled with challenges such as digitalization, limited resources, and political repression. These unique obstacles have rendered their reporting and survival fragile. In an increasingly frail digital news landscape, publishers find themselves at the mercy of third-party platforms, where algorithmic changes beyond their control have led to news shaping and, in some cases, layoffs or even business collapse.

Kamel, the founder of Raimh Post, an online local news outlet covering a remote marginalized region in Yemen, described to Global Voices the abrupt consequences of these shifts:

Overnight with no pre-warning, insights and preparation our content was not shown any more on Facebook, our main channel of distribution. We have lost nearly 80 percent of our audience who used to come from Facebook to our website. It’s very frustrating. We are in crisis as we have lost our audience and business.

Pay or you will not be seen by your audience

In a classic commercial play, Facebook initially enabled organic reach for news content, making itself indispensable, before imposing a price tag for visibility. News content that once appeared organically in user’s feeds, must now be sponsored for a chance to be seen. Additionally, posts with external links are downgraded as Facebook aims to keep users within its platform.

This shift has frustrated users like Hassen, a young unemployed Algerian, who reported to Global Voices, “Facebook should ask us what we want to see. I used to follow updates from the news and international organizations who post opportunities for jobs, training, and learnings resources, etc. I noticed that they don’t appear on my feed anymore. I only see posts from friends which are often not very interesting or useful.”

While larger websites, often funded by states or political entities, have more capacity to adapt and pay to promote their content, the impact is more dramatic for small independent publishers due to their limited resources.

Wael Sharhah, the founder of Awafi, a non-profit newsroom in Yemen dedicated to public health education, criticized Facebook’s aggressive push to charge for content that was once freely accessible. He told Global Voices:

It is very aggressive and irresponsible of Facebook to push us now to pay for what used to be free. We are creating the social value of the platform by empowering the public with information. While we were already struggling, it is more difficult in our region to generate revenues and report independently.

The TikTok-ization of Facebook

Since the internet’s inception, written content has been the primary medium for conveying information. According to the Reuters Digital News Report 2023, the majority of online users worldwide still prefer reading the news over watching or listening to it as it offers faster and more convenient access to information.

However, the habits of younger generations, who grew up with social media and smartphones enabling easy video creation and sharing, have evolved. These social natives now consume a significantly higher number of short videos, often presented by influencers rather than traditional journalists. This shift has propelled the success of more visually-oriented social networks like YouTube, Instagram, and, more recently, TikTok, in contrast to more text-focused networks such as Facebook or Twitter.

In response, Facebook and Instagram have aggressively promoted short-format video content, modifying their algorithms to prioritize video over text-based content. The downplay of text articles has badly impacted publishers. Many journalists critique the value of short videos, expressing concerns that TikTok-ification of news trivializes important issues.

Mabrouka Khedir, the head of Cosmos Media, a Tunisian digital media outlet focusing on the environment, emphasized the challenges of providing context and explaining complex stories in short videos. She said to Global Voices “Written news helps convey greater complexity and detail. We are already stretched, and it takes much more resources to create a good video compared to text.”

The deeper issue: Supporting a free press in challenging contexts

As advertising revenue and audience increasingly shifted toward social media platforms, numerous local media are struggling to survive, some have already disappeared. In the MENA’s highly repressive environment, there is a risk of regions turning into “news desert,” where there is no free, independent information, and human rights violations go unreported.

Most MENA countries are languishing at the lower end of the RSF’s global freedom of expression index. Despite their predominantly youthful population and the eagerness of women to participate, there is a dearth of local platforms that can amplify their voices and contribute to shaping public policies.

The ongoing debate about the responsibility of social media platforms and the media industry highlights a far deeper global issue. Societies all over the world, particularly in contexts of conflict, are grappling with the fundamental importance of safeguarding press freedom. Press freedom is the foundation of democracy, peace, and development.

Written bySaoussen Ben Cheikh

Globalvoices.org

From Gaza: Does creativity only come from misery?

Global Voices — Sun, 03 Sep 2023 04:04:18 +0000

Gaza-based author contemplates creativity beyond the Israeli blockade’s daily misery.

Written byWe Are Not Numbers

This story was first published by We Are Not Numbers. It was written by Dana Besaiso. An edited version is republished here, under a content-sharing agreement. All photos have been shared from Instagram with the permission of the photographer Mohammad Zaanoun.

( Globlvoices.org) – They say misery breeds great art. From John Keats’s powerful poems about his struggle with illness and death, to Vincent van Gogh, who channeled his battle with mental illness into his dramatic and intense paintings, those who suffer can infuse their emotions and experiences into art that holds exceptional power and meaning for the world. The dilemmatic question that comes to mind is: what happens to art when the misery is gone?

Misery as normal

For as long as I can remember, my story alongside every other Palestinian’s has been filled with sorrowful events. Even the cheerful and happy ones are, in some way or another, coated with misery.

Whether it’s that girl preparing for her wedding in Gaza, that youth who migrated to secure a better future, or that very old lady sitting on her couch with the key to what was once her home — before the Israeli forces dispossessed her out of it — hanging from her necklace. Her hopes of returning to her house diminish as she watches the repeated Israeli military attacks on Al-Aqsa Mosque on her TV.

When my eldest sister, Rasha, graduated with her master’s degree from the United Kingdom, my family and I couldn’t be there to witness her achievement because of the travel restrictions on residents of the Gaza Strip. We had to experience it through photos and videos. Yet, I still considered myself and my family lucky that at least one of us made it!

In the meantime, most of her international friends’ families managed to attend because, for them, it was as easy as booking a ticket and getting on the airplane. We had only dreamed of seeing an airplane, much less flying in one.

Growing up under miserable circumstances

Since I was born, life has been tainted with agony. Growing up in Gaza, we bore witness to destruction, murder, and countless escalations, that we became nicknamed atfal horoob (“children of wars”). We even joke around and say we graduated with a “bachelor’s degree in war,” as we have officially survived four Israeli aggressions, in addition to numerous attacks.

We got so used to moving on after these Israeli escalations that we started believing it was the norm. We carry our losses, sadness, and grief, and keep moving on with our lives. We return to work or school with the heavy baggage of emotions on our backs. Life must go on.

In May 2021, we faced one of the ugliest and most horrifying Israeli aggressions. The 11-day attack resulted in the deaths of 232 Palestinian civilians, including 65 children, over 1,900 injured, and 1,447 housing units in Gaza demolished, leaving countless individuals with no shelter.

I considered myself one of the lucky ones back then. After that escalation, I struggled with survivor’s guilt — a mental response to an event in which someone else experiences loss but you do not.

“Why me?” I would ask myself. “Why did I survive when so many didn’t?” These thoughts haunted me for a while. I had spent each of the 11 nights saying my goodbyes to my family and friends because death was so close.

I considered myself lucky because I didn’t lose someone close to me, didn’t lose my home, or my identity.

And then, life went back to normal — or as normal as it can be.

Misery is part of our daily lives

Sad stories are etched in our DNA. I grew up listening to the stories of our grandparents and how they were displaced from their homes during the Nakba of 1948 and Naksa of 1967. I heard about the horrific massacres that happened before I was born, such as the Deir Yassin massacre of 1948, the Sabra and Shatila massacre of 1982, and many more.

These anecdotes are not just part of our history, but rather a part of our daily lives. We face the brutality of the occupation, whether it is the aggression on Gaza or the dispossession and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the West Bank and Jerusalem, such as in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood and Silwan neighborhoods, and others.

I got so used to these stories that I stopped seeing the bigger picture. The continuous and repeated tragedies that affect almost all Palestinians made me lose perspective that this life is not normal.

It is not normal to have an entire family removed from the civil registry because they all died in an Israeli bombing. It is not normal to be denied your childhood because you were locked up in an Israeli prison since you were 13 for a crime you didn’t commit, like Ahmed Manasra.

It is not normal to be traumatized by the sound of a shutting door because it reminds you of the sound of bombing. And it is not normal to lose your four-year-old son, such as Tamim Dawood, because his heart couldn’t handle the sound of F-16s dropping bombs on his neighbors.

What will happen if the misery lifts?

I am struggling with the fear that if, inshallah, the Palestinian reality changes for the better, I might lose the inspiration to write. As a person who has lived her life in constant terror, my passion for writing stems from the ongoing struggle to advocate for my fundamental human rights.

So, the question remains: Will I be able to create happy stories that are not rooted in Palestinian misery? Will we ever write cheerful stories? Ones that talk about happiness and success? Ones where people are genuinely happy without mentioning the “in spite of” in the middle of it?

Will I ever write a story about a mother enjoying her son’s wedding without noting that it happened despite the Israeli forces recently demolishing their home before their eyes?

I can only hope that there will come a day when we, Palestinians, no longer have to ask these questions, because we are no longer burdened by misery. We will learn for ourselves whether there is a trade-off in terms of creativity, and whether it is worth it.

Featured Image: Palestinian artist Maha Al-Dayya has finished painting artworks of the houses that were destroyed by Israeli planes during the repeated wars on Gaza, July 8, 2023, Gaza Gity. Photo by Mohammad Zaanoun, used with permission.

Via Globlvoices.org

Written byWe Are Not Numbers

How Turkey’s Opposition Elite enabled Erdoğan and Misled Voters

Global Voices — Sat, 26 Aug 2023 04:04:45 +0000

Public intellectuals’ unwillingness to own faults entrenches Erdogan’s rule

Written bySinan Ciddi

( Globalvoices.org ) – The sources of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s power are vast. In his over twenty years of rule, he has consolidated power to build himself a loyal bureaucratic system (including the military and law enforcement), a compliant mainstream media landscape, and a government system that positions his dictates above any notion of oversight. Added to this is the lack of a credible political opposition field that could offer voters a credible alternative to Erdoğan.

This much is known and well-documented. Therefore, when curious observers ask, “Why did Erdoğan win the 2023 presidential elections?” The answer is usually conveyed in a mixture of the reasons cited above. Meanwhile, the elephant in the room — namely, the country’s opposition intelligentsia — is left unaddressed.

Image by Arzu Geybullayeva

What the intelligentsia failed to do

Turkey’s intelligentsia is broad and diverse. But the most recent general elections also showed its demoralizing effect on public opinion. Ahead of and during the general elections held in Turkey in May 2023, many of the influential opposition media outlets, with their commentators and journalists, were in a state of euphoria. Many respected analysts abandoned their objective analytical toolkits and lenses to cheer for the main opposition candidate who ran against Erdoğan: Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu. Kılıçdaroğlu’s candidacy was essentially forced upon the public by Kılıçdaroğlu himself and his narrow group of political operators, with little debate, public input, let alone any analysis to determine whether he was indeed the best candidate to defeat Erdoğan in what many described as the country’s most crucial election.

Instead, the opposition intelligentsia helped to cement a widespread view that Kılıçdaroğlu was the man to defeat Erdoğan. Meanwhile, those who questioned this decision were cast out as pariahs who could not read the writing on the wall. Seasoned analysts would engage in targeted campaigns that declared that the Erdoğan era was finished and he had no chance of surviving reelection.

This certainty was based on what Rusen Cakir, the editor of Medyascope, constantly referred to as a “governance crisis” by Erdoğan. This “governance crisis” was based on the premise that Erdoğan failed to deliver meaningful solutions to the most pressing economic and political problems the country and voters were facing. Cakir was not alone in this message. Other veteran analysts and observers would join his weekly broadcasts, assuming that their conversations with ordinary voters and attendance at his Republican People’s Party (CHP) campaign rallies were clear signs the Erdoğan era was at its near end.

One veteran journalist and Kılıçdaroğlu advocate, Kadri Gursel, went as far as to say that those who could not see the coming tidal wave were not only uninformed but might not really want Erdoğan out of office! Similar commentaries paid scant attention to alternative analyses: namely that Erdoğan’s image may be tarnished, but he had significant structural advantages arising from incumbency (outlined in the first paragraph) that may help him stay in power.

In the end, the skeptics got it right. What is troubling is that, while the predictions of journalists, pollsters, and analysts can be wrong, it was the marginalizing tone and the refusal to take critical analyses that presented credible alternative scenarios to the public into account.

Almost three months since the election, these pundits, rather than acknowledging that they misled the public, have only accepted that they were wrong and that it was time to move on and remain optimistic.

The impact

The wider failure of public intellectuals is twofold: first, raising the expectations of people who looked up to their analysis and were utterly demoralized by the election outcomes. Second is their hand-wringing — they have shrugged off any responsibility for how their analysis was short-sighted.

Analysts have a duty to the Turkish public they influence by providing all the information they are entitled to. Of course, their analyses can be proven wrong, in part or in whole. What would have been valuable in this election cycle was for respected and popular independent outlets to focus on a variety of electoral outcome scenarios, a critical look at why the Kılıçdaroğlu campaign and candidacy were lackluster, and a keener focus on the existing strengths of Erdoğan’s state apparatus that prevented a genuinely competitive election.

Instead, we got a misinformation behemoth wherein the vast majority of Turkey’s pro-Erdoğan media spread misinformation, seemingly joined by opposition media outlets that willfully misrepresented the range of possible outcomes that could come to bear. Both helped serve Erdoğan’s interests. However, only the latter is responsible for the sense of demoralization, apathy, and public anger that has since ensued. The Turkish public deserves better from those who claim to speak truth to power.

Written bySinan Ciddi

Via Globalvoices.org

The Dreams of Saudi Human Rights Defender Loujain Al-Hathloul in a Children’s Book

Global Voices — Mon, 07 Aug 2023 04:04:15 +0000

This interview was published on Loujain’s birthday, celebrating her achievements

Written byخالد إبراهيم Khalid Ibrahim

Translated byGulf Center for Human Rights

Read this post in عربي

This post was written by Khalid Ibrahim, executive director of the Gulf Center for Human Rights (GCHR), an independent, non-profit organisation that promotes freedom of expression, association, and peaceful assembly in the MENA region.

This article was first published in the Gulf Centre for Human Right. An edited version is republished here under a content-sharing agreement.

( Globalvoices.org ) – Prominent human rights defender, Loujain Al-Hathloul’s tireless work in advocating human rights, has inspired a beautiful children’s story titled “Loujain Dreams of Sunflowers.”

On February 10, 2021, Loujain announced that the authorities had conditionally released her after having spent more than two and a half years in prison for defending women’s rights in Saudi Arabia. Her efforts included demanding an end to the male guardianship system and to the ban on women’s driving. Her release was influenced by political pressure from the West.

Despite her release from prison, Loujain suffers from not being allowed to freely express her opinions on social media or speak freely to the media. She is also prevented from finding suitable job opportunities. She is also prevented from traveling abroad to start a new life, one that would enable her to fully enjoy her rights and rebuild her future.

Khalid Ibrahim and Lina Al-Hathloul. Photo provided by Khalid Ibrahim. Used with permission.

The executive director of the Gulf Centre for Human Rights, Khalid Ibrahim, recently conducted an interview with Lina Al-Hathloul, a human rights defender and Loujain’s sister. The interview focused on the children’s book she wrote to tell her sister’s story, and it also includes updates on Loujain’s latest news.

Edited excerpts from the interview follow.

Khalid Ibrahim (KI): Can you explain the relationship between Loujain’s childhood dream of flying, as depicted in the story, and her tireless work for women in Saudi Arabia to attain the right to drive, which was achieved five years ago?

Lina Al-Hathloul (LH): Loujain fought for women’s right to drive in Saudi Arabia. It was a dream of hers, and she did everything she could to achieve that goal. She discussed this matter with individuals from different segments of society, pointing out the injustice that this ban represents, until she finally learned to drive herself, to demonstrate that it is possible for women in Saudi Arabia to practice this right as well.

In the story, the little girl Loujain wants to fly using her wings, but only boys had the right to fly. After much suffering and determination to succeed, her family understood her desire and agreed to teach her to fly so that her story became one of an inspiring heroine who encouraged young girls to learn to fly as well.

KI: The family supported Loujain until she fulfilled her dream of flying and landing in a field of sunflowers. Could you elaborate on the role of your family in the great achievements that Loujain achieved through her human rights work?

LH: My father filmed Loujain in 2013 when she drove for the first time in Saudi Arabia, at a time when women were still not allowed to drive. The video went viral, and, as her guardian, he took full responsibility. My family has always been supportive of us all, and wanted a better future for us daughters. My father’s support was visible to everyone, of course, but I also wanted to thank my mother in the story, because in real life, she was the one who sacrificed the most and fought for us to become independent women.

Lina Al-Hathloul carrying the book. Photo by Khalid Ibrahim. Used with permission.

KI: “I know I will fly, not immediately but definitely.” This phrase was repeated several times in the story. Could you clarify if this reflects your belief that peaceful change and building an independent and prosperous future for all citizens in Saudi Arabia may not happen immediately, but it will surely be eventually realized?

LH: This phrase was the main picture of Loujain’s Facebook profile while she was in prison. We thought it was very expressive and embodies Loujain’s vision of her human rights work. Things take a long time to change, and we are working to build a mature and healthy country, which will take generations, not just years. I wanted children to know that they must be patient and that injustice may last for a long time, but justice will always prevail.

KI: Could you tell us about how your story’s theme came to be?

LH: Uma, who co-authored the story with me, is a human rights activist, and she invited me to speak before the Human Rights Council while Loujain was in prison. When I was in Geneva, I met her 5-year-old daughter, who had been hearing a lot about Loujain. Like any child, she was curious to know why Loujain was in prison. Her numerous questions made us believe that it was important to have a story that tells Loujain’s struggle in a beautiful and imaginative way, to help children understand that injustice must be confronted, and that we can try to change our societies for the better.

On a personal level, I wanted to ensure that Loujain’s name is remembered by future generations, so that they know that my sister was one of the pioneers who contributed to change and to the attainment of this right. No matter what the authorities do to try and tarnish her name, people will always remember her as a righteous champion as opposed to being a traitor, as the authorities attempted to label and defame her.

KI: Could you update the readers on the latest news of human rights defender Loujain Al-Hathloul?

LH: After her release, Loujain was transferred from a small prison to a larger prison; she is deprived of her civil and human rights, including her right to freedom of expression and the right to travel abroad.

This link contains a video about the book as well as excerpts from articles published in a number of international newspapers about it.

Written byخالد إبراهيم Khalid Ibrahim

Translated byGulf Center for Human Rights

Featured photo: Saudi human rights defender, Loujain Al-Hathloul. Photo by Loujain. Used with permission.

Via ( Globalvoices.org ) –