CRY FREEDOM.net
Welcome to cryfreedom.net,
formerly known as Womens
Liberation Front.
A website
that hopes to draw and keeps your attention for both the global 21th. century 3rd. feminist revolution as well
as especially for the Zan, Zendegi, Azadi uprising in Iran and the
struggles of our sisters in other parts of the Middle East. This online magazine
that started December 2019 will
be published every week. Thank you for your time and interest.
Click here for the Iran 'Woman, Life, Freedom' section
For the 'Women's Arab Spring 1.2' Revolt
news
click here |
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SPECIAL
REPORTS PALESTINE
FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA - FREE PALESTINE
with special thanks to citizen-reporter 'Biba'
(Algeria)
June wk2 --
June wk1 part3 --
June wk1 part2
-- June wk1 --
May wk5 part2 --
Click here for an overview by week in 2024
June 6, 2024 |
|
May 23, 2024 |
June 11 - 5, 2024 |
June 9 - 4, 2024 |
June 7 - 4, 2024 |
When one hurts or kills a women
one hurts or kills hummanity and is an antrocitie.
Gino d'Artali
and: My mother (1931-1997) always said to me <Mi
figlio, non esistono notizie <vecchie> perche puoi imparare qualcosa da
qualsiasi notizia.> Translated: <My son, there is no such thing as so
called 'old' news because you can learn something from any news.>
Gianna d'Artali.
Abu Bakr Bashir
Press vs
CPJ - June 6, 2024 - by Abu Bakr Bashir
<<I was a journalist in Gaza. The place I call home is gone now.
I was 13 when my father moved our family from Libya back to my parents’
hometown of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza. It was 1994, a time of
optimism. Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization had signed
the Oslo Accords and Palestinians were heading toward an independent
state. Gaza, with its successful businesspeople and its young, skilled
workforce, was a central part of that project. But over my 25 years in
Gaza - 15 as a journalist - I watched how years of blockade and war
eroded life in the strip. Now, with the ongoing war, the place where I
grew up, went to school, made friends, fell in love, formed a family,
and buried my father has been destroyed. The one place I will always
call home is gone. These days, I live and work in London, where I moved
in 2019. Like most journalists, my biggest professional worry is meeting
deadlines. It's nothing like Gaza, where handling the stress of life and
death calculations and maintaining balanced relations with all the
conflicting parties in and around the strip were always my top
priorities. The conflicting parties were Israel, which maintained a
stranglehold on Gaza despite the 2005 withdrawal of settlements and
troops, and Hamas, the de facto government, which based its legitimacy
on its victory in the 2006 Palestinian elections and its claim that it
had pushed Israel out. After those elections, amid Western pressure,
Hamas and its rival Fatah agreed to form a unity government. But in
2007, Hamas took over Gaza. The Fatah-run Palestinian Authority was yet
another conflicting party as it continued to claim that it was the
legitimate authority over Gaza and squeezed the strip economically. Amid
all this, I was taking my first steps in journalism. During the
Palestinian uprising known as the second intifada, foreign journalists
needed help arranging and translating interviews. A local fixer hired me
to accompany foreign journalists for $50 per day - very good money for a
person my age with no experience. I only worked one or two days a month,
but I was learning.
I soon made contact with the local journalist community. I initially
thought they were all as wealthy and influential as the foreign
correspondents they helped and frequented expensive cafes and
restaurants, but I was naïve: journalists in Gaza belonged to the middle
class, if not the lower class. Meeting for knafeh, a local dessert, at
the Saqallah shop was a luxury. When the Abu Al Soud knafeh shop opened,
I invited a local journalist there to show respect and admiration. But
journalists mostly hung out at the Matouq restaurant, at cafes by the
beach, and later at the Press House, a media development nonprofit
headed by Bilal Jadallah. Jadallah was killed during the ongoing war and
the Press House was flattened. So were the knafeh shops in Gaza City. As
a young reporter, it did not take me long to figure out that reporting
about Israel-Palestine for foreign media outlets meant there were
restrictions on criticizing Israel in terms of content and language. In
almost every single article produced from Gaza, I had to include the
lines <Hamas, seen as a terrorist group by the West,> or <Hamas took
over Gaza by force,> or, <Hamas is dedicated to the destruction of
Israel.> To my editors, these additions were simply part of the
structure of any article on Gaza. To my local audience, which felt my
reporting was too soft and failed to show the brutality and cruelty of
the occupation, these lines amounted to bias. And to me, they were a
perfect prescription for inducing stress. I soon became a regular
customer for Hamas security having to explain my articles and defend
myself. Abu Bakr Bashir covered the 2018 Gaza border protests, known as
the Great March of Return. During the protests an Israeli sniper killed
his colleague, photojournalist Yaser Murtaja. Ironically, the more times
you meet the same people, the more <friendly> your relationships become.
The challenge was how to make sure these relationships were as friendly
as possible in order to save my life and career and to maintain open
channels with the de facto authority. But I also had to keep them as
formal as possible because I was reporting for international media, and
I was not allowed to get too close to authorities.
My relationship with Abu Mustafa embodied this conundrum; he was the
Hamas security officer who always questioned me about my reporting. We
met so many times that we became <friends.> He was one of the first
people I called every time I needed to avoid the chronic bureaucracy in
Gaza; in particular, he helped me get permits for visiting foreign press
as he had the authority to approve their entry over the phone in just a
few seconds. However, Abu Mustafa was only his nickname. I never felt
confident enough to ask his real name and he never shared it during all
our years of contact. In 2015, both NPR and the Wall Street Journal, my
biggest clients at the time, invited me to visit Jerusalem. That meant I
had to pass the Erez border crossing and meet Israeli security officials
in person for the first time. I was very nervous as Israel, like Hamas
and Gaza, was at the very center of my reporting. Just like Hamas,
Israel had a say over my life and career. At that time, I had already
lost several colleagues to Israeli fire in the 2014 war. I would go on
to lose several more, including Yaser Murtaja, who got too near the
border fence while pursuing a photograph during Gaza's anti-Israel
demonstrations in 2018. Yaser did not know he went too far; there were
no signs or instructions warning him away. An Israeli sniper ended his
life. In the current war, more than 100 Palestinian journalists have
been killed, including Roshdi Sarraj, another colleague of mine and of
Yaser Murtaja. So yes, Israel does have a say about the lives of
journalists in Gaza and I had every right to fear for my life. Hamas,
too, has its own say on journalists' lives, safety, and careers. In
2019, Palestinians took to the streets to protest the harsh economic
conditions under its control. Hamas police cracked down on the
protesters, and arrested and beat up the journalists covering the
protests. As a journalist, I had no option but to report on the protests
and on the Hamas assaults. It was just one more time when I had to put
my life at risk for the sake of my reporting. I survived, but I couldn’t
shake the stress for many weeks to follow. Back to my 2015 trip to
Jerusalem through Erez crossing. While I was looking over my previous
reporting to prepare myself for potential questions from the Israeli
officers at the checkpoint, Abu Mustafa gave me a call. He had seen my
name on a list of Gazans planning to cross Erez. He put me in touch with
a nameless colleague whose job was to guide people like me, who were
making the journey for the first time. That was one of the weirdest
situations ever, to be guided by a Hamas security officer whom I did not
know or trust and who did not know or trust me. I am the last person to
seek advice from Hamas, and yet here he was, advising me on how to deal
with the Israeli security, intelligence, and military officers. I was
shocked to learn that everything this nameless man said happened in
exactly the way he described it. I was strip-searched by two Israeli
officers, and brought into a room with a woman who appeared to be
Palestinian who said she wanted to talk to me. On the advice of the
nameless man, I told her I was tired. I was later interviewed by a bald
Israeli officer, one of the two people Abu Mustafa's colleague said
would interview me. The officer showed me photos of people on his
computer and asked me about who they were. The nameless man's advice
was: once you are asked about someone, that meant they knew you had a
relationship with them, so don't lie but give general answers. In the
end, I made it to Jerusalem and back unharmed. I felt thankful for his
guidance but also stressed over how much these two fighting parties
seemed to know about each other - and about me. Both had the tools to
make my life miserable if they wanted, and I only had my press card, a
helmet, and a vest - materials that needed Israeli approval to enter
Gaza and Hamas permission to be used there. When I lived in Gaza, I was
worried about my life and my children's future. Now in London, I worry
about Gaza and the future of journalism there. In addition to those
journalists who have been killed, dozens have fled; these losses are
catastrophic to the journalistic profession there. Eight months into the
war, I have so many questions: Who will guide the young journalists
entering the profession? How objective can they be given the brutal
conditions and lack of guidance? Will the world listen to them, let
alone believe their narrative? And at the end of this, will there be
young men and women willing to go into journalism in Gaza? Who will tell
Gaza's story?>>
Read more here about Abu Bakr Bashir here:
https://cpj.org/2024/06/i-was-a-journalist-in-gaza-the-place-i-call-home-is-gone-now/
Women's
Liberation Front 2019/cryfreedom.net 2024