Gaza – This Magazine

On motherhood and activism through a genocide

Lisa Whittington-Hill — Mon, 05 May 2025 18:35:31 +0000

Image by Hendra via Adobe Stock

On October 7, 2023, I was just about three months pregnant. As a genocide unfolded before our eyes in the weeks that followed, I reflected a lot on the parallel lives mothers live on both sides of this dystopian world.

Like many others, my social media feed exposed me to countless images of the Israeli military’s atrocities in Palestine. Images of shrapnel seared into the bodies of innocent Gazans are seared into my brain like scars: a woman silently mourning as she tightly hugs a child-sized body bag. A damaged incubator containing shrivelling babies. A girl hanging limp over the window of her destroyed home. Wide-eyed toddlers shaking uncontrollably as they begin to process the trauma that will remain with them for the rest of their lives. Many of these images were censored, black squares politely asking me whether I still wanted to view the photos that they concealed. Apparently their contents were too heinous to set eyes on, and yet not heinous enough to end in reality. There was always the occasional image that slipped by uncensored. In those moments, I wished I had not logged on. I cried often. I was pregnant, but these tears were not hormonal. They were human. I often had to force myself to move away from the screen to limit the horrors I was viscerally absorbing, as if to protect the baby that was living through me.

It was an unusual time to be pregnant, to be growing a new life as I witnessed the lives of others being ended so mercilessly. Over the span of three months of genocide, 20,000 babies were born in Gaza. As I planned for my son’s future, over 16,000 children were killed, futures completely obliterated. Of the nearly 1.1 million children in Gaza, those that survived now faced malnutrition, disease, physical disability, and psychological trauma. As I received excellent care in Toronto through regular prenatal appointments, I read about the horrific and life-threatening conditions that 50,000 expectant mothers in Gaza endured, birthing in unsanitary conditions on rubble-filled floors with limited access to medication. As I felt the pain from the stitches of my C-section for weeks, I remembered the mothers who were forced to have emergency C-sections with no anesthesia. I cannot conceive of their unfathomable pain and the trauma that will forever be bound to the memories of how they welcomed their babies into the world. As one mother from Gaza, Um Raed, told Al Jazeera, “Since the birth, I’ve not known whether I should be focusing on my contractions or on the sound of warplanes overhead. Should I be worrying about my baby, or should I be afraid of whatever attacks are happening at that moment?”

Though my pregnancy felt challenging, my baby boy arrived, healthy and present. When I caressed and gently wrapped his little body in soft swaddles, I kept getting intrusive flashbacks of those babies whose tiny bodies were maimed before their first birthdays, and of those who did not even reach this milestone at all, wrapped in white shrouds. While I had the privilege of enjoying my baby’s first winter through a festive holiday season, I also got chills thinking about the infants in Gaza who have frozen to death.

I often wondered about the purpose of bringing new life into this world full of anger and injustice and pain. But if there is anything I have learned from the Palestinian people, it is their deep-rooted resilience, one that stems from the same faith that I share with them as a Muslim, but has been put to the test in ways I can’t comprehend. They provide us with an important lesson on finding purpose in a world littered with inhumanity: we all have a responsibility to be active agents, building a more just world for all. From the articles and poems we read and write to the dinner table conversations we partake in using the knowledge we choose to seek, from the silent donning of a keffiyeh to the ways in which we raise and speak to our children about the world and its people, we all have, within our own skillsets and capacities, in our respective spheres of life, the ability to partake in this global, growing tide of activism.

Over the course of a year, we contributed what we could. Never has the world been so vocal in its support for a free Palestine. Boycotts have proven successful, careers have been put at stake, and a new media outlet, Zeteo, has emerged, questioning the status quo and bringing challenging conversations to the forefront so that we no longer have to tiptoe carefully around the subject of an ongoing genocide.

Despite the signing of a ceasefire deal 465 days later, we will continue to learn, speak, cry, create, call out, and call it like it is. In doing so, we will watch the tide continue to rise, from the river to the sea, in all ages and stages of life, until injustice is entirely swept away.

Hunting waves—and peace—with the Gaza Surf Club

Graham F. Scott — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 12:27:44 +0000

Could surfing really help bring Israelis and Palestinians together? Grant Shilling meets the beach bums, peace activists, and ex-soldiers who believe it’s possible

Surf’s up in Ashkelon. So I hop on the train in Tel Aviv bound for the southern Israeli city with my surfboard bag in tow. The bag, stencilled with Boards Not Bombs, attracts more than a few stares and the interest of Israeli state security at the train station. The bag is scanned, the board is tapped up and down its length, and the question has to be asked:

“You came here to surf in Israel?”

Well, yes.

“And what does this mean,” says the security soldier “Boards Not Bombs? You know we take bombs very seriously here in Israel.”

Don’t I know. I went to Israel in February 2009, during the biggest military operation in Gaza in more than a decade. Israel had launched an enormous offensive reply to years of Hamas bombs on southern Israeli towns like Ashdod, Sderot, and Ashkelon. On January 2, foreigners were ushered out of Gaza. On January 3, Israeli tanks rolled into Gaza to begin a ground offensive. A month later the death toll in Gaza was estimated to be close to 1,000 civilians.

So you can be forgiven if surfing is not the first thing you think of when Israel, Gaza, or the Middle East is mentioned. Neither is peace. But there is a thriving surf scene in Israel and an emerging one in Gaza, and both are part of the global brother- and sisterhood of surfers united by the waves that connect us all.

The members of the Gaza Surf Club

I’m a Jew—but my true religion is surfing. I had come to Israel because I was increasingly disturbed by the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, and it was precisely because the situation had become so bad that I felt it necessary to see it myself. I believe surfing and peace are related: surf-ers everywhere know the peace that can come from riding a perfect wave. So I went to Israel in the hopes of delivering wetsuits to members of a loose-knit group of surfers known as the Gaza Surf Club, along with the T-shirts I made with the (now-notorious) Boards Not Bombs phrase printed on them. Call it fun over fundamentalism.

The security guard is still waiting for an answer to his Boards Not Bombs question.

“Ever hear of the Beach Boys?” I ask him.

“Of course,” he says.

“Well, it’s true,” I tell him, breaking into song. “Catch a wave, and you’ll be sitting on top of the world.”

He shakes his head like I’m meshuga and sends me through, anyway.

Once on board the train we travel south for an hour through a jumble of expressways extending out of Tel Aviv, lined by orange groves, the occasional camel, Arab and Jewish villages, and the faint blue line of the Mediterranean and its fickle waves.

On the train I meet Avram, a young Israeli soldier in uniform who is curious about my board. I tell him of my plans to surf in Ashkelon and then, hopefully, Gaza.

“I surfed Gaza,” says Avram, to my surprise. He served there during the second intifada and smuggled his board in on a troop vehicle.

“There were a few soldiers in the water and a few Gazans. Some of us lent them our boards.”

You see? I think, there it is—the aloha spirit! Not so fast. “In Gaza they said we were stealing the waves,” says Avram. “We told them, ‘learn how to surf.’”

For all the laid-back spirit of surfing, there is also a testy localism, a result of limited carrying capacity: too many surfers, not enough waves. Territorial conflict, already abundant in the Middle East, apparently extends to the beach, too. Sometimes I think the Middle East is a case of localism gone crazy—spiralling out from the Old City of Jerusalem divided into its quarters of Muslim, Jewish, Christian, and Armenian. Jerusalem is more carved up than Bobby Orr’s knee.

Dorian "Doc" Paskowitz

In 1956, eight years after the formation of the State of Israel, surfing arrived with the American surfer and physician Dorian “Doc” Paskowitz, the undisputed father of Israeli surfing. He brought his 10-foot Hobie surfboard with him. Four years later he returned with six surfboards, each emblazoned with the Star of David. Aiming to repopulate the world with Jews, he raised nine kids out of a 1949 Studebaker and then later in an RV, while chasing waves; his life was recently vividly captured in the feature documentary Surfwise. Paskowitz was like Moses carrying the Ten Commandments down from Mount Sinai: Thou shalt surf.

The first surfer Paskowitz taught on a Haifa beach happened to be an Arab boy. He’s been trying to bring Arabs and Israelis together to surf ever since.

The sport grew slow and steady in Israel: in the late ’70s, a group of hardcore surfers were centred in Tel Aviv. In the early ’80s, Shaun Thomson, a Jew and world champion surfer, came to Israel to teach a surf clinic. He was treated like a rock star and thousands of Israelis watched Thomson from the beach. The next year Tel Aviv played host to a stop on the World Surfing Tour.

Today there are close to 30,000 surfers in Israel. In Gaza, the scene is much smaller, with perhaps 50 or 60 surfers— equipment being one limiting factor. For instance, Salah Abu Khamil is considered the first Palestinian surfer in Gaza: now in his 40s and working in Israel, he first saw surfing on Israeli TV in the early ’80s and started out on a homemade board he painted himself. Lacking anything else suitable, he used knives for stabilizing fins.

The train station in Ashkelon has a quiet, eerie quality. The city does not see many tourists these days. In early March 2008, rockets fired by Hamas from the Gaza Strip hit Ashkelon, wounding six and causing property damage, marking the first time that Hamas had been able to reliably strike the town. In May 2008, a rocket fired from the northern Gazan city of Beit Lahiya hit this shopping mall in southern Ashkelon, causing significant structural damage and a number of injuries, but amazingly no deaths. Outside the train station is a big-box discount store. Though it’s open, the parking lot is almost empty.

Pulling up to meet me in his Toyota Corolla with a short board strapped to the roof is Chico Maayan. Maayan, now 42, a diminutive former Israeli surfing champ, has lived here in Ashkelon, a coastal community of 120,000, for 30 years. We are off to Delilah’s to check the waves there. Delilah’s is a popular beach named after the legend of Samson and Delilah, which played itself out here on the shores of Ashkelon and Gaza 15 kilometres to the south. We drive through a maze of modern white three- and four-storey apartments with red-tiled roofs separated by patches of green, the building style typical of much of Israel.

Ashkelon’s current slow pace means the waves are not crowded today. That suits Maayan fine for now, but he runs a surf school in Ashkelon, and since the bombing, business has been in the toilet. He tells me about a surf lesson he was teaching a while ago that ended abruptly.

“I was in the army, so okay, I know combat,” says Maayan. “I hear this whistling. I know it’s a rocket. I tell the kids, ‘Get down! Get down!’ The bomb landed 100 metres from us, a mushroom of smoke. We were shocked; this is the middle of summer. All the parents call me and tell me to bring the kids home. Since then it has been a problem.” (In surf lingo, catching a big wave is called “riding a bomb.” So you can imagine that Maayan’s experience brings a whole new meaning to the idea.)

This year the celebration of Purim—the festive holiday where children and adults dress in costumes that commemorate the deliverance of the Jewish people of the ancient Persian Empire from Haman’s plot to annihilate them—was cancelled in Ashkelon. “No one comes here,” says Maayan. “It’s a ghost town.”

Maayan’s parents are from Chile and came to Israel around 1960. They are proud Zionists. “My mother will kill anyone if they say anything bad about Israel,” he chuckles. Maayan served in the army during the first intifada. He describes himself as a patriotic Israeli. “Israel didn’t do enough in its recent war in Gaza,” says Maayan. “Not until we see a white flag from Hamas should we stop.”

And yet Maayan believes in a twostate solution and that Israel should support the more moderate Fatah party in Palestine. I ask Maayan how he feels about the Gazan civilians during the operation going on not far from here. “Really it didn’t bother me very much,” he says. “Sometimes I get a clinch in my heart; it’s a pity, but really, the Israeli army dropped flyers warning people to clear the area. We did our best. Hamas has got a policy that they hide behind their citizens…. Fatah is more reasonable; they recognize Israel. They are more suitable to rule. If not, then it’s like having Iran next door.”

And yet, Maayan is optimistic. “Things will get better. I love Ashkelon, I love the place, the people; I know the beaches, and this is my home.” I tell Maayan that tomorrow I plan to go to Gaza in hopes of hooking up with the surfers there and delivering some equipment. He looks at me and says, vaguely, “So you are like that, I see.”

The next day I plan to enter Gaza. Mohammed Alwayn is my surfing contact there: Alwayn is an agronomist who works for Care International. “When you surf, you don’t think about the situation,” he tells me over the phone. “When surfing, we feel free.” Alwayn and I made plans to meet up and and he’d introduce me to some of his surfing friends. All I had to do was get across the border.

My friend Arthur Rashkovan is to drive me to the Gaza border. Now 30, Rashkovan grew up two blocks from Israel’s famed Hilton Beach, home to some of the best surf in the country, and has lived there his whole life. A former Israeli skateboard champion, he’s a first-generation Israeli whose parents are from Moldova in Eastern Europe. I asked him what brought his parents to Israel and he told me, “The usual: anti-Semitism.”

Rashkovan grew up in what he calls a “mini-California, a surfer’s paradise.” Despite the conflicts, life continues as normal in Tel Aviv. It’s an extremely safe city. With a population of 400,000, street crime and homelessness are virtually nonexistent, children are free to play in the streets and parks by themselves, and women can safely walk the streets late at night in a city that never sleeps.

“Tel Aviv is in a bu-ah, a bubble,” says former Israeli surf pro Maya Dauber, 36. “For me, the last war with Gaza was like a reality TV show. You feel removed.

“You have to understand. This is not the first war we ever had,” says Dauber, who served in the military while being allowed to compete as a surfer in the World Qualifying Series. “Every few years we have a war. Every few years I know a soldier who died or was hurt because of a war. You start to develop a thick skin. You start to protect yourself more and more. You don’t want to hear about it. That’s why Tel Aviv is one of the best cities to hang out in in the world. Because people want to forget. They want to go out and have fun, to drink to clear their minds. Surfing,” she says, “is an extension of that.”

During his youth Rashkovan would “surf my brains out. I lived like a true beach bum. Nothing else mattered.” When he turned 18, Arthur had to serve in the military. “I realized I need to serve my country, and I didn’t want to get out of the army. So I had a goal of getting the best job I could have and keep on skating and surfing.” So he took a desk job not far from home. “My experience in the military was a lot of skate injuries,” laughs Rashkovan. “I broke my arm twice and my ankle from skateboarding. Luckily you get a very long leave to heal up, so I went on two surf trips to San Diego. The third time I got injured the army had no use for me, and they released me.”

After Rashkovan left the army he gradually became one of the prime movers and shakers in the burgeoning Israeli surf industry. In 2004, Doc Paskowitz came to Israel looking to meet some Arab-Israeli surfers. Rashkovan was in a position to help him out. Paskowitz and Rashkovan gave impromptu lessons to Arab kids on the beach between Tel Aviv and Jaffa, a spot where Israelis and Arabs surf together. “At that moment, I realized, hey, why not organize the first surf event for Arabs and Israelis?” says Rashovan. “I thought it would be a good opportunity to show that surfers can overcome barriers such as religion and politics.”

The 2004 Arab-Israeli surf contest was just the beginning. Last year, as part of something he describes as beginning as a “lark,” Rashkovan got together with Doc Paskowitz and surfing god Kelly Slater (who is of Syrian descent) to teach surfing clinics to Arabs and Israelis. They dubbed it Surfing for Peace. Young Arab girls in hijabs and young Israelis with yarmulkes caught waves with Slater looking on. Fun versus fundamentalism.

Then, pushing his luck, Doc Paskowitz, along with his sons David, Josh, and Jonathan, headed for the border to deliver some surfboards to Gaza. Despite there being a total blockade on entry, Doc managed to cajole some border guards into letting him exchange the boards with some waiting Gazans. “Kissing was the secret to getting across the border,” says Doc. “All the guys that want to shoot me, I grab them and kiss them.”

Nobody believes that you can actually bring peace simply through the act of surfing. But you can create moments of peacefulness, create some friendships, and demystify your so-called enemy. Or, as Doc says, “God will surf with the devil if the waves are good enough.”

“That day when we delivered the boards was a very magical day,” recalls Rashkovan. “We were swamped by the media. Everybody was calling me: the New York Times, the L.A. Times. I had newspapers call from Germany, South Africa, Indonesia, Brazil—really everywhere. The funniest part is we had maybe one or two minutes on Israeli TV. People are turning cynical here and indifferent. Because on one side we have war all around and we have gotten a bit insular. You get used to what’s going on around and just get on with it. The whole world was excited and Israel was like, ‘Whatever.’”

Friends asked Rashkovan why he was bothering with Surfing for Peace. “I want to prove that there are large populations on both sides who want to live their lives peacefully,” he says. “The problem is they are controlled by politicians who have other interests. Peace is a political process, but luckily friendship isn’t. Initiating actions on the grassroots level between common people is a much faster way to move things. Surfing as a peaceful way of living is just perfect for this goal. Why not just go out and forget about our worries for a moment? This what the Arabs in Israel do when they go surf, this is what the Israeli surfers do when they go out, and it’s the same for the guys in Gaza.”

Rashkovan is determined to keep Surfing for Peace grassroots and out of politics. “We know there is a huge population in Gaza that wants to live its life quietly, but it’s controlled by extremists,” he says. “I wanted to show the Gazans on the other side that there are a group of people here who want to have the same life. And maybe through the common ground of surfing show the world something else. We just want to make friends with a few guys on the other side.”

As you get closer to Gaza the highway winnows down to two narrow lanes surrounded by farm fields and overhung by orange groves. There is a sweet perfume of orange blossoms in the air. The pastoral landscape is abruptly interrupted by a clearing covered in asphalt and a big sign that reads Welcome to the Erez Crossing. The Gaza crossing looks like a hangar in a mid-size airfield with plenty of parking spaces. There are many people milling about their cars—simply waiting.

The gate has a parkade shed with a gate. At the gate Lior, a friendly, engaging young Israeli soldier, greets me. The surfboard makes him smile. I tell him surf’s up in Gaza and I want to join my Palestinian brothers on the waves.

“Not today.”

“Come on, I heard it’s as big as Indo in Gaza.” He laughs at my reference to the surf mecca of Indonesia. I spend about a half-hour trying to charm and disarm the young soldier, but there will be no getting into Gaza today—or on several other attempts I make. Hamas and Israel are still lobbing bombs at each other and things are just too hot.

Having come all this way from Tel Aviv, we stop at the Arab port of Jaffa instead to visit Rashkovan’s friend Abdallah Seri. An Arab-Israeli, Seri lives with his family in a simple flat with a patio garden. His father, a fisherman, joins us over strong Arabic coffee while a soccer game plays on the TV.

Abdallah Seri with one of the "Boards Not Bombs" T-shirts

Seri, now 28, learned to surf at the age of 12 and is part of the Surfing for Peace project. He talks about his love for Doc Paskowitz and for surfing and how it can bring people together. But then he turns serious. “The people in Gaza are not an autonomous people,” he says. “They don’t know how to think for themselves anymore, and they can’t tell right from wrong anymore. They’re victims of both the Israelis and their own Arab brothers and sisters.”

Seri’s father points to the soccer players on the screen: “Look at these guys. They’re from all over the world, playing together as a team. That is what sport can do. That is what surfing can do.”

Using surfing as an approach to solving an intractable problem like the Middle East conflict involves a leap of faith. In fact, many writers have questioned whether surfing itself is a faith. Does God reside in a double-overhead wall of blue? (The ancient Polynesians prayed over tree trunks to their god of surfing before shaping them into surfboards and built temples dedicated to the sport.)

Rabbi Nachum “Shifty” Shifren, aka the Surfing Rabbi (he wrote a book of the same title), is a deep believer in the divine peace that surfing can bestow. “I think if there is anything that can bring about peace, it’s surfing,” Shifren, a former lifeguard and triathlete, tells me by phone from Santa Monica, California. “What I am advocating is a synthesis between the physical and the spiritual. I believe that surfing is the answer to modern man’s dilemma of stress, of lack of security, of lack of self-esteem, and even in the search for peace. Surfing is a spiritual connector. It’s like a conduit where one could appreciate God and the forces of the world.”

Divine conduit or not, surfing does seem to help individuals overcome barriers to understanding. Despite his selfdescribed hardcore rightwing views, Chico Maayan also took part in the Surfing for Peace operation. “We started Surfing for Peace because we thought of it as not connected to politics—it is connected to the ocean,” he says. “We’re surfing. The Gazans are surfing. We should surf together. It won’t bring peace, but we will see the enemy differently.”

Back in Tel Aviv, I call Alwayn in Gaza to tell him I hadn’t been able to get past the border. He was hardly surprised. “Have faith,” he says.

A week after I got back to Vancouver Island, Arthur Rashkovan emailed to tell me that a German-based journalist had received permission to get into Gaza and took along four of the wetsuits I had left behind. He also took some photos of the surfers unpacking the suits in delight.

So I keep the faith. Searching for waves and peace in Israel and Gaza may be an act of faith, but this is a region, after all, that hosts three of the world’s major religions. Faith is all we’ve got, and surfing is my religion. I do believe that hope resides in a double-overhead wall of blue. Or as Chico Maayan told me, “As long as there are waves, there will be a type of peace.”

Images of the Gaza Surf Club courtesy Alex Klein, director of God Went Surfing With The Devil. Below is the trailer for that documentary:

How mainstream media botched Iranian election coverage—again

Graham F. Scott — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 17:27:22 +0000

A protester on the streets of Iran, June 17, 2009. The sign reads "They Killed My Bro Koz He Asked "Where's My Vote." Creative Commons photo by Hamed Saber.

Two elections. Two women. Two killings. One legacy?

Not really. One victim became a world icon, while the other barely registered on the books of the international media. Such are the divergent post-mortem fates of Neda Agha Soltan and Zeina al-Miri. The former was shot in the streets of Tehran during post-election disturbances in June. Her story made headlines, and her name became the household kind for those who follow world news. The latter was shot in the streets of Beirut barely a week later, after clashes between supporters of two of Lebanon’s political factions following parliamentary elections. Locals barely remember her name.

Al-Miri’s anonymity is not unique. Videos of Israeli soldiers shooting unarmed pro-Palestinian protesters, in some cases fatally, surface regularly on the internet. North American mainstream media is hardly moved or concerned. Israel is on the good books of Western governments—those who demonstrate against its policies cannot be pro-democracy activists. Not so for Iran, where any opposition to the theocratic regime is cheered on, even if it is backed and led by the mullahs themselves.

The coverage of the Iranian crisis was a lot more than another case of double standards. It was a missed opportunity to understand the political dynamics at work in Iran after decades of bias and demonization of that country. It was also a missed opportunity to create genuine links of solidarity with the Iranian people that outlive the euphoria of mass street action. But instead of understanding, with a few exceptions, we got sensationalism. Instead of grassroots, long-term solidarity, we got sensational vows of support and government-driven initiatives of interference.

During Iran’s disturbances, the social networking site Twitter famously went so far as to move a planned maintenance blackout to correspond with nighttime in Iran, at the request of the U.S. State Department. Researchers at the University of Toronto who had developed an online censorship avoidance tool jumped into the fray and urged Iranian activists to use it to reach websites banned by the Iranian government.

Where did all these efforts go when Israel banned all journalists from entering Gaza during its bombardment of the strip last January?

Instantaneous solidarity with ordinary Iranians seeped all the way to the higher echelons of power. North American and European heads of state, the same ones whose countries have imposed sanctions and waged proxy wars on the Iranian people for decades, were suddenly touched by the fate of Neda and felt compelled to express their support. Dozens of protestors killed in China or Honduras or Yemen around the same time simply did not tickle the right solidarity glands. When the Iranian protests started dying out, the voice of cold realism, The Economist, wondered whether the “dream” was over.

Whose dream of change was it, anyway? Shouldn’t it have been the Iranians’? The highly romanticized and superficial coverage of events exposed two key things. First, a deep-seated belief that Iran wants to be “just like us”—democratic, liberal, civilized—and that a shadowy force called the Islamic revolution is stopping it (the fact that Islamic rhetoric dominated both sides in Iran’s conflict seemed to fly right above the heads of North American and European media analysts).

Second, the coverage demonstrated the continued, powerful influence of Western governments and political elites over the tenor and content of news from foreign countries. Without a serious overhaul of how this coverage is conducted, North Americans will continue to receive a largely skewed and one-sided portrayal of events, one where pro-Western forces of good are battling anti-Western forces of evil. You would hope this cartoon notion had been demolished along with George W. Bush’s silly decree that “you’re either with us or against us.”

Around the same time, Bush’s successor, President Barack Obama, remained conspicuously vague on the question of a possible strike by the Middle East’s only nuclear power, Israel, on alleged Iranian nuclear facilities. Such a strike would spark another conflagration in the Middle East, and the security repercussions would be felt worldwide.

Shouldn’t Western mainstream media be just as worried about that scenario? And in light of such possible escalations, shouldn’t that drive them to make better sense of what happened in Iran? Crucial questions are going unasked: What is the long-term impact of the Iranian crisis on the nuclear file? Who are the power groups mobilizing both camps? Why did the protests fizzle out the way they did? How can an influential man like Iranian politician Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, accused of corruption, be leading a “democratic” movement of change?

Even if media outlets wished to make better sense of events affecting millions of people, they would have had little airtime or space to discuss these secondary matters at hand. After all, the King of Pop had died.

[Photo source]

Why the CRTC must bring Al Jazeera to Canada

Graham F. Scott — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 17:25:11 +0000

Washington-based TV anchors Marash and Fakry of the Al Jazeera English language network. Photo by Jason Reed/Reuters.

In late 1996, in a tiny peninsular emirate on the Persian Gulf with a total surface area barely larger than Toronto and Montreal combined, an experiment began. At the invitation of Qatar’s head of state, a small group of former BBC Arabic journalists relocated to the capital, Doha. They had been left jobless when their London-based employer’s Arabic station folded (due to an editorial scuffle with its Saudi funders), and they needed work. This group of journalists became the nucleus and precursor of what was to become the most ambitious and costliest single broadcast project in history—the Al Jazeera television network.

When it first began, few outside the Arab world noticed the daring and confrontational newcomer to the regional satellite scene. The station drew the attention of viewers because of its explicit and overt criticism of power in the region and its tackling of taboo issues—from government corruption and lack of democratic institutions to women’s rights and homosexuality. Al Jazeera carved a niche for itself and gathered a loyal following for its incisive coverage, volatile debate shows, and extensive investigative reporting.

Now, more than a decade since Al Jazeera’s inception, Canada can no longer afford to shun the world’s first truly global news network—especially one that is both steered and shaped by Canada’s best and brightest.

Undoubtedly, Al Jazeera has generated plenty of debate and controversy. Glorified and vilified in equal measure, it has been described as “radical” and “extremist” by its detractors and as a much-needed “alternative” medium by its admirers. But regardless of leaning and intent, most commentators acknowledge that Al Jazeera represents an important phenomenon in the Arab media.

In North America, Al Jazeera is a household name in part due to its unfettered, and sometimes exclusive, access to key news events, including the early days of the U.S.led wars in Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, as well as its status as the destination of choice for videos from Al Qaeda leaders Osama bin Laden and Ayman El-Zawahiri.

More recently, Al Jazeera was the only global network on the ground in Gaza during the Israeli military attack on the strip between December 2008 and January 2009. It was during these periods that the station solidified its reputation as the go-to source of “alternative” news for the Western media organizations.

Yet, as Al Jazeera’s English-language station (AJE) makes significant strides internationally, beaming into more than 140 million households in at least 100 countries, it remains under blackout in North America.The network’s inability to secure cable providers in the U.S., and the highly politicized battles to undermine its effort for access across the continent, have left it embattled but not defeated. Instead, AJE built its headquarters for the Western hemisphere in Washington, D.C., and expanded its online video capability to reach American and Canadian audiences.

Al Jazeera has come close to broadcasting to Canadian homes before. In 2004, the CRTC reviewed the Arabic network for inclusion on Canadian cable service providers. The process unleashed a firestorm, with critics accusing it of anti-Semitism and hate speech. The station never went to air in Canada.

Two years later, AJE faced the same fate in the U.S. cable market—with the exception of two small providers in Toledo, Ohio, and Burlington, Vt. Burlington became the site of high-profile town-hall debates after the network withdrew from the deal due to viewer complaints, many of which accused Al Jazeera of being “anti-American.” But the city council eventually reinstated the network, saying it offered a unique “alternative” to American programming. It was considered a major victory for the network’s U.S. profile.

Of course, four years make all the difference. While the early battle to include Al Jazeera in the cable offerings pertained to the Arabic language station, which presumably appealed only to the Arabic speakers in Canada, today’s application by AJE targets the entire viewing audience of Canada. While the usual critics of the station are levelling the same accusations this time around, defenders argue AJE is a whole new network.

Of note is AJE’s list of employees, which reads like a who’s-who of international journalism. The station boasts the likes of Sir David Frost, who hosts a regular talk show; Riz Khan, formerly of CNN International and the BBC; Rageh Omar, formerly of BBC; and former U.S. Marine captain and public affairs officer Josh Rushing, author of the captivating autobiography Mission Al Jazeera.

The Canadian contribution is also significant. The team boasts veteran Canadian journalists including Avi Lewis, former host and producer of CBC’s CounterSpin; Brendan Connor, the veteran CBC sports journalist; and Kimberly Halkett, formerly of Canada’s Global Television and the network’s chief investigative reporter. The most recent addition is station head Tony Burman, former editor-in-chief of CBC News.

The station is breaking through the blackout—its online video traffic increased by 600 percent during the first two weeks of 2009 (in part due to Al Jazeera’s exclusive access in Gaza), with 60 percent of these hits coming from the United States. In Canada, the CRTC is currently reviewing AJE’s application. Meanwhile, AJE launched its own campaign website, iwantaje.com, and made its coverage available free of charge online.