Silencing of Gaza – “ongoing genocide” and extremination of the voices for truth
| Krug 99 – Circle 99 Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina 21. December 2023 – 50 Silencing of Gaza – “ongoing genocide” and extremination of the voices for truth While I condemn all of Hamas’s terrorist actions against Israeli civilians, I would like to address the most recent events in Gaza from October to the beginning of the most recent aggression, and, as U.N. experts have called it, the genocide taking place before our very eyes. In addition, I would like to speak about that which is intimately linked with all of this, and that is the reporting, the narrative and the propaganda which is also taking place before our very eyes thanks to the media. What we see is that the large Western media networks are broadcasting the points of view of the government that the Palestinians consider a threat while the Palestinians are suffering as the victims of genocide. This is taking place in the context of centuries of colonial and racist viewpoints that continue to dehumanize the Palestinians and their suffering in spite of daily evidence from the area. The Palestinians are treated as invisible, delegitimized in terms of self-defense, stripped of their lands and of the right to legitimate defense. Indeed, their only means of defense is the media, which is why such a powerful media struggle and on-line exclusion is being conducted against the pro-Palestinian narrative. During the few days of the ceasefire, U.N. rapporteurs spoke directly from the scene about the genocide taking place before our very eyes. But there is no public mention of the perpetrators. There is no real discussion about it, no responses, no contextual statements. In short, we hear nothing about any investigations. What is taking place is the displacing of an entire population through mass execution using the most modern weaponry. This is shown only by a handful of media in any full historical context. But such media represent a point of reference for ethics and a guideline for future journalism. Samer Abudaga, a civilian and a photographer for the Al Jazeera network, was killed in an Israeli attack two days ago in Gaza. Samer died of his wounds because rescue teams that had been dispatched were held up for five hours by Israeli forces. Samer’s four children are now without a father. And our network is without a dedicated professional and an exceptional human being. Samer was the 89th journalist killed since the beginning of the attack on Gaza. Al Jazeera is demanding an investigation and the punishment of those responsible for killing journalists and this particular case is being referred to international courts of justice. Since October 7, no fewer than 89 journalists have been killed by Israeli attacks. Many of them were fatally targeted by Israeli attacks. In just two months, many more journalists have been killed than during two decades of the Vietnam war. One journalist is killed every day in Gaza. During 2023, 94 were killed, 70% of whom while reporting from Gaza. During the first hours of the Hamas attack of October 7, four Israeli journalists were killed. Given the number of deaths and attacks by Israeli forces against journalists, Human Rights Watch (HRW), Amnesty International, AFP and Reuters have collectively investigated and determined that the media was purposefully targeted. Reporters Without Borders, HRW and Amnesty International have all called for an official, independent and objective international investigation concerning possible Israeli war crimes against journalists. The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has condemned the killings and the continuous attacks on journalists and it has called for an immediate investigation. International journalist organizations have echoed the charges that journalists are being targeted, which is a war crime. Up to now, there is no word on what is being done about these appeals. But, on December 8, [Israeli Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu said that “investigating Israel for war crimes is pure anti-Semitism.” Al Jazeera’s journalists and other media teams continue to work in Gaza under extremely difficult conditions. They are witness every day to targeted killings and attacks, and they experience direct threats to themselves and to members of their families. In spite of all this, they continue their reporting, because they are now among the last ones there, and the objective is to report to the world about the reality around them. Without their work, the world would never know what is happening there. The world is faced with a unique global threat of disinformation and manipulation of media content. We live in a time when “artificial intelligence” (AI), among other methods, in ways never before experienced, can facilitate the spread of lies, not only through the news, but through entire reconstructions that do not correspond to reality. If it cannot be determined whether something is a reconstruction or the original event, the damage can be considerable. In the meantime, people are dying. Current propaganda is attempting to keep entire societies and the whole world from seeing these war crimes and to keep them enthralled with the concept of the fight against Hamas. Nobody asks what happened before October 7. That would be considered anti-Semitism. Beyond this, there has been manipulation of the Holocaust. Now more than ever, those employed by the media are questioning just how free journalists and writers are and how freely they can convey their thoughts, information and communication in general – even outside Gaza – in the so-called free world. What we are seeing is a polarization which has exposed the deep control, pressures and tendentiousness by a great number of countries and governments in the West but also in the East and of course in Israel. Even individuals who are not journalists and do not work in the media are part of the public sphere and actively form their opinions through their engagement, especially with social media. These individuals can attest to and report about more and more incidents of oppression by certain platforms if they dare to distribute content or provide their opinions that might express overtly pro-Palestinian views or sympathy with the victims in Gaza. This kind of tendentiousness and censorship has been done in such a massive form, not only by the Meta company, but by a whole series of other providers of similar Internet services. This type of limiting of information is quite sophisticated. It is set up algorithmically in such a way that the purveyor of the content is not even at the beginning aware that he has been suspended because he continues to provide his content without realizing that it is not being broadcast, that it cannot be seen. But this is not so easy to prove. Shadow-banning of pro-Palestinian content, even prominent appeals for a ceasefire, was for the first time applied massively as a method of control over free speech and expression in Western countries. In the past few months, censorship and spreading disinformation into the public domain has become a key tool in the on-line war connected with Gaza. Anti-Palestinian propaganda counts on its ability to misguide the media and on-line activity by spreading manipulated content and conjuring up Islamophobia and terrorism of radical groups, all with the aim of portraying widespread military operations against civilians as defensive measures. But this approach has encountered resistance. Aggressive propaganda has begun to implode in response to, among other things, the harsh hate speech of Israeli state officials. The failure of such propaganda was obvious following the footage broadcast of mass destruction and demolition of residential areas, dismembered bodies, the arrests and humiliations of civilian and the mocking of victims’ suffering. Such propaganda did not take into account that it would at some point become unacceptably disgusting for the average Westerner and that millions of people would begin to ask questions about the past 75 years of the Israeli narrative. The key factor in this information warfare was in fact how to avoid the issue of what had preceded October 7. And that war has evidently been lost, especially among young people, or those who are today between the ages of 20 and 35, among those young Westerners who are very familiar with social media and may have been in the past insufficiently aware about Israeli apartheid, occupation, colonization and decades-long oppression. If it were not for today’s Gaza tragedy, for the most part this picture would have remained the same as before. Instead, we are witnessing masses of young people activated and writing about these things, sharing their thoughts, their visions. Every day they are going out into the streets to protest, dedicated as they are to the revolutionary distribution of the truth. They are pro-Palestinian oriented and are against the mainstream media and establishment in their own countries. In this context, there is a broad spectrum of groups and individuals who identify with Palestinian victims as reflected in oppression against their own identities, whether they are groups of minorities, Jewish organizations, religious and spiritual associations, anti-Zionists, anti-globalists, the LGBT population, Afro-American associations, native citizen organizations, feminist movements, workers groups, leftist parties, ecological activists, labor unions, Marxists or anarchists. This is a growing public sentiment and over the past two months it has expanded from individual hardly-heard voices into an enormous movement on the world scene. And this movement is poised to destroy the activities of huge companies through boycotts or to pressure them to cease their sponsorship of Israeli interests. Today the Palestinians are David standing with his slingshot against Goliath in the conviction that Goliath will be defeated with the stones of truth that will be broadcast by the media from Gaza. ** Summary of Session of 17 December 2023-50 The presenter was Ermina Gakic-Kulenovic, News Editor, Al Jazeera Balkans ** Adil Kulenović, president |
| Association of Independent Intellectuals – Circle 99 (Bosnian: Krug 99), a leading Bosnian think-tank, was established in Sarajevo in 1993, in the midst of the Bosnian war (1992-1995), while the capital was under siege. Circle 99 provides a platform to bring together intellectuals of various professional and ethnic identities; university professors, members of the Academy of Sciences and Arts of Bosnia and Herzegovina, artists, journalists, entrepreneurs, diplomats, and other prominent figures from Bosnia and from abroad. Multidisciplinary discussions and initiatives are held each Sunday throughout the academic year, in the form of regular sessions about politics, science, education, culture, economy, and other societal issues. The overall goal is to sensitize the public towards a democratic transformation, achieving and maintaining peace, and integration of modern Bosnia into the community of countries fostering liberal democracy. Circle 99 has been declared an organization of special significance for the city of Sarajevo. |
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