My few words to the Bristol Palestine Rally in Castle Park on Saturday 12 April
When I was asked to speak today my first instinct was to simply read out a list of the 200 plus journalists and media workers killed in Israel’s onslaught in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen. I would have included the Israeli journalists also killed in the conflicts.
But when I began to type out their names it became as distressing as the scrolls we produced here in Bristol remembering those thousands killed in Gaza.
When local members of te National Union of Journalists (NUJ) held our first a vigil to honour our dead colleagues in Gaza more than a year ago, the list ran to 73 names. Even then recounting their names and the circumstances of their deaths blurred into an overwhelming sense of helplessness. What hopelessness must we feel today with more than 200 dead and world leaders still doing nothing?
Serious journalism is a risky business. All the colleagues I worked with for a decade in Belarus are now either in jail or in exile. Last year journalists were assassinated in Haiti, India, Iraq, Mozambique, Myanmar and Sudan just for trying to expose what the powerful and the criminal would prefer remains hidden.
In Gaza journalists are killed for telling us that a genocide is taking place. I thank god I was not around to witness last Monday’s Israeli airstrike on a tent that killed Ahmed Mansour and Hilmi Al-Faqawi of Palestine Today, and Yousef Al-Khozindar of NBC News. For once I was glad to have missed the news.
I can only echo the words of Sara Qudah speaking for the Committee to Protect Journalists. “This is not the first time Israel has targeted a tent sheltering journalists in Gaza,’ she said. “The international community’s failure to act has allowed these attacks on the press to continue with impunity, undermining efforts to hold perpetrators accountable.”
Let’s go back a bit. Journalists have been targeted for generations in the Middle East, not least since the Nakba in 1948 with little enough publicity.
In 1986 when UPI TV journalist John McCarthy was kidnapped and held captive by Islamic Jihad in Lebanon for five years, his name appeared daily on every newspaper, and Islamic Jihad was roundly condemned.
When Observer freelance Farzad Bazoft was jailed then hanged by Saddam Hussein in 1990, his name was constantly on our lips, and Saddam was vilified. There was similar outrage and response in 2013 when three Al Jazeera journalists were unjustly jailed by the Sisi regime in Egypt.
And when 11 journalists at Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris were assassinated in 2015, world leaders turned out to demonstrate their outrage and march through the streets of the city.
Where is their outrage now? World leaders cannot claim they don’t know. The so-called leader of the free world has even sneered at the the killing of journalists in Gaza. Trump has shown himself to be an enemy of press freedom, as do many of the world’s autocratic leaders. I suspect they may secretly admire Netanyahu’s immunity as his forces gun down members of the media.
The deliberate nature of his policy of murdering the messengers has become increasingly difficult for the media to ignore amongst the dreadful carnage in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon. They cannot claim not to know. Members of the NUJ around Britain and Ireland have been reading out the catalogue of names in remembrance of the dead over and over again. They will feature again, when Bristol Trades Council gathers here in Castle Park on Workers Memorial Day, Monday 28 April.
What does it take for politicians and media organisations to recognise Israel’s determination to target the messengers who provide daily evidence of their avowed genocidal intent?
While we mourn we must also organise. While we can we must also raise our voices. I am going to ask that we stand in silence for a minute to remember those who have died while providing us with the information that has brought us all here together.
But first I would like us all to raise our voices and cry out against those who remain silent. In Arabic the word ‘Shame’ is ‘عار!’ (Eari! But first I would like us all to raise our voices and cry out against those who remain silent.
In Arabic the word ‘Shame!’ is Eari ( عار!). When I cry ‘Shame’ – you cry ‘Arr’.
SHAME! – EARI! SHAME! – EARI! SHAME! – EARI!
Thank you. Can we now stand in silence and remember the dead.
ends
