Documentary offers damning critique of how Western media covered Gaza attack: The Electronic Intifada
Sarah Irving Amman 15 June 2012
Only two English-language journalists reported from Gaza as it suffered an all-out attack from Israel in late 2008 and early 2009. The War Around Us is a powerful, deeply moving new documentary through the eyes of these two reporters, Ayman Mohyeldin and Sherine Tadros.
Directed by Abdallah Omeish (whose best-known film is Occupation 101), The War Around Us is just 75 minutes long. But that’s enough. Tightly focused and intentionally restricted in its scope and aims, it follows in chronological order the course of the conflict, intercut with post facto interviews with Mohyeldin and Tadros. At the time both were reporting for Al Jazeera English. Mohyeldin was based in Gaza, but Tadros was there on an assignment to cover reactions to the election of US President Barack Obama.
With apparently free access to Al Jazeera footage of the attack, as well as images from the Palestinian news agency Ramattan, the film is extremely graphic and disturbing. Scenes include that of a mother and her two dead children lying side-by-side on a hospital floor; another man screaming with grief as the body of his little girl flops on a blanket; young men lying in the courtyard of a police station hit by Israeli air strikes, each with one hand raised as they say the final prayers of the dying. A victim of the horrific burns inflicted by illegal white phosphorous munitions (made in the US, fired by the Israeli military) lies in a hospital bed; huge pools of blood lie clotting on the steps of a school in Jabaliya refugee camp run by the UN agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA).
Icy fury
Less graphic but equally devastating is the interview footage. Rima, a beautiful and intensely dignified young mother, tells Tadros how her children no longer say they are afraid of dying — they just want to make sure that they die along with her so they’re not left alone. John Ging, then a leading figure in UNRWA, speaks with icy fury as desperately-needed food supplies burn behind him. And 16-year-old Ahmad Samouni’s face writhes in pain as he describes lying for days surrounded by the bodies of his family, waiting for the Israeli army to allow ambulances to fetch him.
Many viewers are perhaps now inured to the kind of violence we regularly see on YouTube and activist media, but to watch news media footage — where cameramen have often risked their lives to chase the most graphic images, and which has been edited and soundtracked for intensity and impact — for over an hour is hard to stomach, even now.
It is, then, something of a relief that the film intercuts the material from the attack on Gaza with extended interviews with Mohyeldin and Tadros. They reflect on the roles and responsibilities of journalists in such a situation, on their “anger” at finding that they were the only mainstream Western journalists reporting from inside Gaza, and on the personal impacts of covering such a horrific story.
“Where was the outrage?”
Mohyeldin, already a seasoned conflict reporter when he was posted to Gaza, is the more political one in his comments. He is patently furious at the Western media for their failure to adequately deliver to their audiences the truth of what he calls in the film “a story of great shame to humanity.” American and British news channels, he says, “neglected the story and then had the audacity to question the only journalists on the ground … they tried to spin it in a way that would marginalize or diminish what was happening.” He condemns the “silence of the international community. Where was the outrage?”
Tadros’s comments are more personal. A newcomer to frontline reporting, she is frank in saying that she will never put herself in that position again. Obviously hugely affected by the mothers and children she interviewed — in their homes and hospital beds — she recounts how, coming home to London after the attacks, she couldn’t hold her one-year-old nephew because she imagined blood seeping through his clothes. She also describes vividly the difficulty of facing death day after day, not from one’s own perspective, but from that of the family, thousands of miles away, who are powerless to help.
Tadros admits that during the attacks, Mohyeldin found her to be a “princess.” But behind-the-scenes footage shows a drained, haggard woman working 19 hours a day, snatching sleep on an office floor, desperate to achieve her role of showing the human impacts of a conflict which much of world was seeing only from Western reports in southern Israel or the insidious lies of Mark Regev and Avital Leibovich, chief mouthpieces for the Israeli government and military.
Specific aim
Ayman Mohyeldin, in a question and answer session following a screening of the film in Amman, acknowledged criticism of the documentary for its focus on two mainstream journalists, rather than telling the story from a Palestinian perspective. Although Mohyeldin has a Palestinian mother, he doesn’t labor this as a claim to authenticity. Instead, he insists that the film has a very specific aim — to speak to Western audiences, to use himself and Tadros, two Western journalists of Arab origin, as a bridge to the sympathies of Western viewers, and to “make people question their own media for not telling [the truth about the attacks].”
Ultimately, The War Around Us is a damning critique — from within the industry — of the Western media’s reporting of Palestine, as well as a powerful tool in the hands of Palestine solidarity campaigners. There is no way to walk away from this film not feeling angry and deeply distressed, but also with a visceral and fundamental grasp on the depth of Israel’s denial of the Palestinian right not only to life and liberty but, in Ayman Mohyeldin’s words, “of the right to aspire.”
For details of future screenings of The War Around Us, see http://thewararoundus.com
Sarah Irving is a freelance writer. She worked with the International Solidarity Movement in the occupied West Bank in 2001-02 and with Olive Co-op, promoting fair trade Palestinian products and solidarity visits, in 2004-06. She is the author of a biography of Leila Khaled and of the Bradt Guide to Palestine and co-author, with Sharyn Lock, of Gaza: Beneath the Bombs.
Iran arrests suspects over nuclear scientists’ deaths: Guardian
Iran intelligence ministry claims detained suspects are linked to assassinations of nuclear scientists and have ties with Israel
Iran has claimed it has arrested the “main elements” behind the assassination of two of its nuclear scientists, alleging they were spies working for Israel.
The intelligence ministry said on Thursday it had identified a number of agents affiliated with the “Zionist regime” involved in the January assassination of Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, a key figure at one of Iran’s main uranium-enrichment facilities and the 2010 killing of Majid Shariari, a senior nuclear scientist.
Local news agencies published what appears to be a terse statement by the ministry, which does not shed light on the numbers, names or nationalities of those said to be detained nor clarifies where and when they were arrested.
“A series of heavy and thorough intelligence operations which begun after the assassination of our first nuclear scientists … led to the identification of a number of agents [gathering information] for the fake regime that rules over the occupied territories,” it said.
In January, attackers on a motorbike stuck a magnetic bomb to a car carrying Roshan, deputy director of the Natanz plant. The car’s driver, Reza Ghashghaee, was also killed in the attack, which took place during morning rush-hour in Tehran.
Roshan was the latest victim in what is widely seen as a covert war against the Islamic republic’s nuclear programme. It was the fifth assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist in the past two years.
Shariari, a member of the nuclear engineering faculty at Tehran’s Shahid Beheshti University, was killed in November 2010 when bomb attacks targeted two Iranian nuclear scientists.
Shahriari was killed. His colleague, Fereidoun Abbasi-Davani, who was wounded in the attack, was later promoted as head of the country’s atomic energy agency.
Shahriari and Abbasi-Davani were targeted by attackers on motorcycles who attached bombs to the victims’ cars.
In recent years, Iran’s nuclear programme has experienced setbacks including the assassination of its scientists and the release of the Stuxnet computer worm, designed to sabotage its atomic facilities and halt its enrichment programme. The malware is believed to have targeted a control system used in Iran’s nuclear sites in July 2010.
Embarrassed domestically by the inability to protect its scientists, Iran claims it has launched various sophisticated operations to identify the culprits.
In May this year, Iran hanged 26-year-old Majid Jamali Fashi, who the authorities alleged was responsible for the assassination of Masoud Ali-Mohammadi, a particle physicist killed in January 2010.
According to Iran, Jamali-Fashi confessed to having attached a remote-controlled bomb to a motorcycle parked on the street, which detonated and killed Ali-Mohammadi while he was leaving home for work. The extent of Ali-Mohammadi’s involvement in the country’s nuclear programme is unclear.
In the face of little independent information available on Jamali-Fashi, observers have questioned whether he was involved in the killing of Ali-Mohammadi. Some suspect Iran is struggling to cover its embarrassment at home by staging a series of show trials and claims of arrests.
Iran says its nuclear activities are peaceful and has accused the west – the US and Israel in particular – of attempting to prevent Tehran from acquiring a technology it claims to want for medical and energy supply purposes.
The west fears Iran’s nuclear programme may have military applications and has imposed sanctions to force the authorities to permit the International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors full access to its nuclear sites.
Iran is due to hold nuclear talks with the world’s major powers in Moscow next week, when its top officials meet their counterparts from the US, France, Germany, China, Russia and Britain, the group known as P5+1.
Madonna sings for apartheid; yet campaign to boycott Israel grows stronger: Electronic Intifada
“I chose to start my world tour in Israel for a very specific and important reason,” Madonna said.
(Mark Cornelison / MCT)
Madonna kicked off her “MDNA” tour on 1 June with all the spectacle one has come to expect from her. First-rate choreography, costume changes galore and, of course, all the hits trotted out for a crowd of 30,000 at Ramat Gan Stadium on the outskirts of Tel Aviv. There was even a little controversy mixed in to remind us of the days when the “Queen of Pop” used to be truly shocking.
Now, the hired pens are frothing over her depiction of French far-right leader Marine Le Pen with a swastika on her forehead. Predictably, the responses range from the obtuse (“how can she show the swastika in the land of the Jews?”) to the supportive (“she was right to bring attention to the rise of the right in Europe”) to outrage from Le Pen herself (who is threatening to sue “if she tries that in France”).
All of this commentary misses that which is both most obvious and most hidden: that in order to play in Israel in the first place, Madonna had to cross what must be world’s largest picket line.
“I chose to start my world tour in Israel for a very specific and important reason,” said Madonna from the stage of the stadium. “As you know, the Middle East and all the conflicts that occur here and that have been occurring for thousands of years, they have to stop. You can’t be a fan of mine and not want peace in the world.”
That same day, two Palestinian brothers, both in possession of tickets to Madonna’s “peace” concert, filmed their attempt to get to the show (“Anarchists Against the Wall and Sheikh Jarrah movement reject Madonna’s invitation to whitewash Israeli apartheid and occupation,” Live from Occupied Palestine, 31 May 2012).
That attempt was thwarted by Israel’s wall in the West Bank. Madonna said nothing about them or the other innumerable Palestinians who were similarly unable to attend. For all her rhetoric about world peace, she said nothing of the very segregated crowd for whom she was performing.
Silent on Palestinian suffering
She said nothing of the Palestinian political prisoners on continued hunger strike. Nor did she say anything about the members of Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, calling for African refugees to be summarily deported. In fact, her “thousands of years” line, parroted from the same old Orientalist schlock fed to the West every day, reveals that Madonna knows absolutely nothing about the daily conditions of Palestinians.
Even the debate over the image of Marine Le Pen ignores a massive part of the issue — specifically that even while the fascist menace seems to be gaining traction in European elections, the far-right is on the rise in Israel too. Ultra-orthodox gangs are allowed to beat up Arabs on Israel’s streets with impunity. Cities like Haifa are warning businesses that they’ll lose their licenses to operate if they hire African refugees.Avigdor Lieberman, the same foreign minister who routinely promises “transfer” of Palestinians, has enthusiastically met with Geert Wilders, the hard right, anti-immigrant leader of the Dutch Freedom Party.
One simple, shocking image of Marine Le Pen won’t even scratch the surface of this, and as you may have guessed, Madonna didn’t mention any of Israel’s home-grown proto-fascists. As for the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel, the Queen of Pop wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot pole.
This, in essence, is where the victory lay for Israel’s occupation of Palestine: the brutal reality of a colonial settler state relying on a policy of racism and apartheid, repainted as a clash between a peace-loving bastion of culture and a civilization bent on war.
It’s no wonder, then, that such fanfare has surrounded Madonna’s Israel tour-launch. Ever since she announced it at this year’s Superbowl, the concert has been touted loud and clear — perhaps by nobody more than Israel’s politicians and officials. In the days leading up to the concert, the Israeli embassy in London took time to smear the BDS campaign as “an anti-Israeli movement.” The Board of Deputies of British Jews called comparisons to apartheid South Africa “a specious and desperate effort by a failing boycott campaign” (“Israel is new South Africa as boycott calls increase,” The Independent, 3 June 2012).
PR gimmick
But if the push for cultural boycott is failing, then why go out of the way to denounce it so vociferously? Why is the Knesset passing laws that allow for boycott advocates to be sued in court? Why is the Israeli government discussing stepping in to insure promoters against the financial effects of “politically motivated cancellations”?
So scared of BDS are some in the music industry that last year saw a consortium of American and Israeli entertainment executives to set up the “Creative Community for Peace,” whose expressed intention is to counter the movement for a cultural boycott of Israel.
Truthfully, the Israeli government and concert industry have plenty of reason to be nervous. Though the launch of the “MDNA” tour did indeed take place in Israel, the BDS campaign surrounding it was one of the most high-profile in some time. It was so public that Madonna’s public relations team stepped in to announce that 600 tickets to her show would be given to members of left-leaning organizations (“Madonna invites Israeli, Palestinian activists to Tel Aviv concert,” Haaretz, 31 May 2012).
This too backfired. Some groups declined the invitation on the grounds that those living in the occupied West Bank and Gaza wouldn’t be able to attend. And given the amount of publicity surrounding the controversy, they were afforded a larger platform to make the case for BDS.
Among these were Anarchists Against the Wall and the Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity Movement, the latter of whom released a statement making clear that: “Madonna has never criticized the Israeli occupation, its separation policies, or its regime of privileges. Therefore, we believe that the reason she sought the presence of Israeli peace activists was to further a public image of an artist who promotes peace in the Middle East. We refuse to be a public relations gimmick for Madonna at the expense of the Palestinians. This is not our way” (“Madonna invites leftist groups to concert, anarchists refuse,” +972 Magazine, 31 May 2012).
The inequities of Israeli society have even been inadvertently illustrated from within Madonna’s own camp. Headlines were made when Ali Ramadani, one of Madonna’s backup dancers of Palestinian heritage, tweeted from al-Aqsa mosque while visiting. “At the amazing al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem,” wrote Ramadani. “I don’t want to say it’s in Israel, but Palestine, strength and honor.” Israeli newspapers called his tweet a controversy (“Keeping up with Kabbalah’s Queen of Pop,” Times of Israel, 29 May 2012).
It seems, then, that even as the Israeli concert industry has stepped up its game, so has the BDS movement. The campaign surrounding Madonna’s mega-show has arguably been the most high-profile since 2010, when the Gaza Freedom Flotillamassacre provoked several well-known acts to cancel performances in protest.
Since then, there have been several other cancellations Israeli concerts (Tuba Skinny,Natacha Atlas and Cat Power) after consistent campaigning from BDS activists. Still others (The Yardbirds, Zdob si Zdub), while not officially joining the BDS campaign, have quietly canceled their gigs in Israel without rescheduling. Far from failing, the cultural boycott movement is doing exactly what it’s meant to do: shine a light on the fierce injustice of Israeli apartheid and shame those who cross the picket line.
If the stakes have indeed been raised on both ends, then the need for sharp critique and hard arguments can’t be understated. Madonna’s endless prattle about world peace may have been hollow, but it’s also effective in the hands of colonizers. Just as in South Africa, Israeli officials have long sought to paint the Arab-Israeli conflict as “equal-sided.” Famous images of young Palestinians slinging rocks at massive tanks provided to Israel by the world’s biggest military superpower have gone a long way toward poking holes in this myth over the past twenty years.
Obscuring a double standard
Nonetheless, Israel’s political class — from its far-right to its dwindling liberal camp — continue to demand that Palestinians put down their arms, even as Israeli settlers and the Israeli military barrel through towns in the West Bank, and Gaza is locked from the rest of the world. The double standard is palpable, but the role of culture — at least in the hands of the occupiers’ government — has been to obscure it.
Speaking of those activists that did attend the concert, Madonna told the crowd, “There are several very brave and important NGOs [non-governmental organizations] that are representing both Palestine and Israel together.” Again, note the wording. And note the implication: that it’s two equal sides at war here.
Never mind the Nakba (the systematic ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948), never mind the decades of displacement, the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees scattered by Israeli land grabs or the thousands locked up in its prisons. Never mind that Israel is armed to the teeth by the west and is one of the world’s top military spenders as a proportion of national income. With that simple turn of phrase, all of this history and reality is swept aside for words that let the colonizers off the hook and place at least some of the blame on the colonized who dare to resist.
There is another crime, more esoteric in nature, at play here. Whether Madonna is aware of it or not (and there’s a good chance she is), her music and art are willfully being lent to the cause of crude state propaganda. This is no conspiracy theory. Israeli politicians are frequently over the moon to have high-profile artists play in Israel.Benjamin Netanyahu himself was so publicly chuffed to have Justin Bieber perform in Tel Aviv that he attempted to force a meeting with the teen pop star (“Justin Bieber’s meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu ‘cancelled’,” The Daily Telegraph, 13 April 2011).
When fake punkers Simple Plan announced their own show in Israel earlier in the spring, it made it onto the State of Israel’s Twitter account. Nissim Ben-Sheetrit, former deputy director general of the Israeli foreign ministry, has said publicly, “We are seeing culture as a hasbara [propaganda] tool of the first rank, and I do not differentiate between hasbara and culture” (“About face,” Haaretz, 20 September 2005).
This, of course, flies in the face of everything that those who are against BDS tell us: that art is somehow “above” politics, and has no role to play other than “bringing people together.” No matter how many times it’s debunked, this old chestnut persists. It ignores that art, for all its high falutin’ pretensions, is a form of labor. And, as any union member will tell you, when labor is withheld it can throw one hell of monkey wrench into the gears of the machine.
This is, ironically, even more true for mega-stars like Madonna. Though she may not have to put the same amount of sweat and sacrifice into her music that she had to 25 years ago, her shows require countless stagehands, sound techs and security staff to pull them off.
And so, once more, it really can’t be denied that the launch of the “MDNA” tour in Israel was a victory for the apartheid state. What also can’t be denied is the growth of the movement for BDS. Every effort was taken to put the heat on Madonna’s camp, resulting in some surprising chances to speak truth to power. Case in point: the ongoing campaign to get the Red Hot Chili Peppers to cancel a forthcoming Tel Aviv show has gained a welcome shot in the arm.
There’s no substitute for that experience. The opportunity to shine a light on Israel’s crimes is arguably bigger than it’s ever been. Madonna’s glitzy, glaring flash might blind and confuse for a little while, but in the end, it’s really no match for the collective effort of all those pushing that light in the right direction.
Alexander Billet is a music journalist and solidarity activist living in Chicago, and runs the website Rebel Frequencies (www.rebelfrequencies.net). His first book, Sounds of Liberation: Music In the Age of Crisis and Resistance, will be available in the fall. He can be reached at rebelfrequencies [AT] gmail {DOT] com.