Recording: Palestine and the media

VERITY FIRTH:  Hello, everyone who's joining us today.  I'll just wait for about 30 seconds so that people can enter the virtual room and then we'll begin our session for today. 

 

Thank you so much for being online with us.  We've reached 120 people, so I'm going to begin now and I'm sure more people can join us as we go along. 

 

Firstly, thank you, everyone, for joining us for today's event.  Before I begin, of course I'd like to acknowledge that I'm on the land of the Gadigal People of the Eora Nation.  I want to pay respect to Elders past and present and I particularly want to acknowledge the Gadigal as the traditional custodians of knowledge for the land on which this university is built.  I know and I want to extend respect to all the different lands that you are all on, wherever you may be. 

 

My name is Verity Firth.  I'm the Executive Director, Social Justice at UTS, where I lead up our Centre for Social Justice and Inclusion.  It's my huge pleasure to be joined today by Samah Sabawi, Antony Loewenstein and Professor Saba Bebawi, who I will be properly introducing them in a minute.  Unfortunately, Sara Saleh has lost her voice due to sickness and isn't able to join us today.  We're obviously wishing her a very speedy recovery.  But I particularly want to thank Samah, who's coming online for us today with about one hour's notice.  So just a special thank you to her for being so readily available. 

 

First, a couple of key pieces of housekeeping.  So today's event is being live captioned.  To view the captions, you click on the "CC", closed caption, button at the bottom of your screen in the Zoom control panel.  We're also going to post a link in the chat now, which will also open the captions in a separate internet window if you prefer.  

 

If you have any questions during today's event, please type them into the Q&A box, which you'll also find in your Zoom control panel.  I will have time ‑ hopefully we'll have time to put your questions to the panellists, but please keep them relevant to the topics that we're discussing today.

 

We also want to acknowledge upfront that today's discussion does include topics that can be upsetting and can cause people distress.  If you do feel overwhelmed or distressed in any way, just take a break.  You can just turn off the webinar.  You don't have to keep watching.  And if you really do feel that you need to talk to someone, remember there's a free 24‑hour service like either Lifeline or Beyond Blue and you should feel free to reach out to those support services.

 

So thank you, everyone, for joining us here today for this important discussion.  As you know, we're here today to talk about Palestine, Israel and the role of the media in covering the human rights issues in the region and the human impact of violence.  Mainstream media plays an undeniable role in narrating and shaping our reality.  Where Palestine and Israel feature in the news, the human impact of violence can quickly become obscured in the choice of words used and the heat that's often applied on journalists covering these stories. 

 

We're also going to be looking at how the media itself has come under attack ‑ either directly, like the offices of Al Jazeera and the Associated Press in Gaza, which were destroyed in targeted aerial bombing, or indirectly, like the journalists who face accusations that they are engaging in activism rather than investigative journalism.  And when there is a vacuum left in mainstream media, is social media helping or making things worse with misinformation?  We'll be discussing that as well today. 

 

So I'm honoured to now introduce today's speakers.  First, to Samah Sabawi.  Samah Sabawi wages beautiful resistance through her art.  A recipient of multiple awards for her critically acclaimed plays Tales of a City by the Sea and THEM, Sabawi also co‑edited Double Exposure:  Plays of the Jewish and Palestinian Diasporas, which was the winner of the Patrick O'Neill Award.  She co‑authored the poetry anthology I Remember My Name:  Poetry by Samah Sabawi, Ramzy Baroud and Jehan Bseiso, winner of the Palestine Book Award.  Samah was awarded a PhD from Victoria University with her doctoral thesis titled Inheriting Exile:  Transgenerational Trauma and the Palestinian‑Australian Identities.  Welcome, Samah, and thank you for joining us.

 

SAMAH SABAWI:  Thank you for having me.

 

VERITY FIRTH:  Antony Loewenstein is a journalist who has written for the New York Times, the Guardian, the BBC, The Washington Post, The Nation, Huffington Post, Haaretz, and many others.  Between 2016 and 2020 Antony lived in East Jerusalem.  He is a best‑selling author whose books include My Israel Question and Disaster Capitalism: Making a Killing Out of Catastrophe, for which he was also writer and co‑producer of its associated documentary, Disaster Capitalism, and most recently Pills, Powder and Smoke: Inside the Bloody War on Drugs.  He's currently working on a book due to come out later next year on how Israel's occupation has gone global.  Welcome, Antony.  Thank you for joining us.

 

ANTONY LOEWENSTEIN:  Thanks for having me.

 

VERITY FIRTH:  Professor Saba Bebawi is Head of Discipline for Journalism and Writing at UTS.  She holds a PhD in international news and has published on media power and the role of media in democracy building in addition to investigative journalism in conflict and post‑conflict regions.  She is author of Media Power and Global Television News: The role of Al Jazeera English, Investigative Journalism in the Arab World:  Issues and Challenges.  Saba has also co‑authored The Future Foreign Correspondent and co‑edited Social Media and the Politics of Reportage:  The Arab Spring and Data Journalism in the Global South.  Bebawi is founder and project director of the Foreign Correspondent Study Tour, funded by the Australian Government's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.  Thank you so much also for joining us, Saba.

 

PROF. SABA BEBAWI:  Thanks, Verity.

 

VERITY FIRTH:  So I'm going to begin by talking about the language of objectivity.  It's obviously what we expect of our journalists, but does it dehumanise violence?  When we talk about casualties rather than children dying, is this objective reporting?  How does the panel think this language of objectivity affects reporting on Israel and Palestine?  I might begin with you, Saba.

 

PROF. SABA BEBAWI:  Sure.  Thanks, Verity, for that introduction and I'm really happy to be with this fabulous panel with Antony and Samah. 

 

The idea of objectivity is a very interesting one in the scholarly literature and when we talk about reporting reality, we don't necessarily lean towards providing an objective account as far as the academic literature goes.  So rather than offering a portrayal of what recording reality is is not objective journalism, it is about offering a portrayal of what is actually happening on the ground by including all aspects of the event, and I like to refer and I like to even quote CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour, who talks about this and I use it very often, in an interview about her experience with the Bosnian war and she says, "It's important that calling it as it is is not biassed reporting and it is not taking sides" and she believes that objectivity means ‑ and I'm going to quote her ‑ "giving each side their hearing but not treating each side the same, not drawing a moral equivalence which would be a false equivalence, not saying 'on one hand' and 'on the other hand'." 

 

This is in essence what she's saying.  She's saying the person being sniped and killed is somehow equal to the person who's sniping and killing and the forces who are bombarding, besieging and shelling a city full of civilians do not have the same moral standing as those who are being bombed, shelled, starved and besieged and that is the truth.

 

So having said that, and I'm sure Antony and Samah have more to say about this, but I'd like to raise another point here specifically in regards to the Palestinian‑Israeli conflict and this is from personal observation.  So even if the reporting is objective, it does remain very limited and I'll give you some examples here briefly.  For example, to reduce the conflict in my opinion to reporting on numbers of casualties without providing the overall context is not only problematic in my view, but dangerous.  This is a conflict that is the longest ongoing conflict in modern times.  It has a complex and layered history, but also the current situation is extremely complicated.  So we cannot diminish it to a number or a counting story, which is what I seem to be seeing.

 

The other point I'd like to make is that the media somehow have been focusing on Gaza.  It is not the Gaza conflict.  It is the Palestinian conflict.  It's part of the Palestinian territories.  In my opinion, this is a deliberate where I see it as a mediating redrawing of the borders in an attempt to eliminate other parts of Palestine from the story and, in turn, form the Palestinian discourse. 

 

I've got a lot to talk about and I'll stop there, but just some brief points I wanted to start and kick off with.

 

VERITY FIRTH:  Thank you for that.  Antony, what are your views?

 

ANTONY LOEWENSTEIN:  I think the question of objectivity is one that's regularly used by media organisations when they're teaching young journalists at universities for that matter how to report on the conflict or, frankly, any issue, but often I think it's a false question.  Let me briefly explain why.  I think a better word to talk about journalism is fairness rather than objectivity.  Fairness I think is a much better way to view how we should be seeing any number of issues, not just Israel‑Palestine, whether you report on a war, whether you report on a local issue, whatever it may be. 

 

Objectivities suggest there's two equal sides and, as Saba said, there's "he said this", "she said this".  As the audience, you decide.  It's a nonsense question.  Particularly when it comes to Israel‑Palestine, as someone who reported on it for 15 years ‑ I was based there for years, often doing work there always independently in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza ‑ there's not two equal sides here.  There is occupied and occupier.  Israel occupies Palestine and Palestinians are occupied. 

 

It does not mean one is uncritical towards, for example, Palestinian leadership.  It doesn't mean one doesn't say to the Palestinian authority Hamas are corrupt organisations.  One can say one should.  One doesn't become a protagonist for one side or the other.  That's not at all what I'd suggest.  But good, fair reporting would suggest that there is context for what is happening in the last two weeks. 

 

For example, there is context to say why is there longest‑running occupation in modern times.  As a journalist myself who is thankfully often not forced or required to play along with certain rules that my media bosses may tell me I have to play along to, which is often how it works in this sort of situation, you too often have I think a false equivalence here where a lot of the coverage in the last few weeks very much frames it as Hamas fires rockets, Israel defends itself and shoots back.  Now, an average person seeing that or hearing that might think oh, okay, these two sides are at it again, they're fighting again, why can't they get along and hug and move on ‑ maybe not hug, why can't they just shake their hands and just move on? 

 

The reason ‑ that's obvious to say this, but the reason that's a false equivalence is this is not two equal sides here.  This is a situation where too often the context of, for example, Gaza remains occupied, the land, sea, air borders are controlled by Israel.  There's been a 15‑year siege which Israel and Egypt have imposed brutally.  Most people in Gaza cannot come and go freely.  Only a handful of people can, for a range of reasons.  So ultimately, without that kind of context, the last two weeks can seem like just another round of a war that seems to go on indefinitely. 

 

I'll finish on this one point.  What's so interesting, though, despite the fact that so much media reports it like that, in many western countries public support in fact in the last 5 or 10 years is far more moving towards sympathy for Palestinians and I've often on one level wondered why that is, not because I don't share that view, I wonder where people are getting that information from ‑ not mostly from the mainstream press, not mostly from political elites, maybe from social media, friends, et cetera.  I think there's maybe a growing awareness of what Palestinians are suffering for in the last 50 or 70 years, but I think that public opinion is definitely shifting, including here in Australia, and I think we should often wonder if that's happening more despite mainstream media rather than because of it.

 

VERITY FIRTH:  I think that's a really interesting point and we will explore that later because I think opinion is shifting, but exactly why that is is something that's up for debate.  Samah, do you have anything to add around the language of objectivity?

 

SAMAH SABAWI:  I do, but I want to pick up on that last point which you said you'd come back to later, but just to say that in previous decades we always relied on the media to shape public opinion.  We knew that the media could shape public opinion and I think, I'm hoping at this point, seeing that shift in public opinion that ran way ahead of the media institutions that it might just be public opinion for once that's going to actually shift how the media responds to the question of coverage of Israel and Palestine. 

 

On the question of objectivity, I'm really more interested in accuracy and humane reporting.  I think objectivity is a very difficult bar to explain and to hold and to prove.  What is being objective when you're dealing with an occupier and occupied, when you're dealing with an oppressor and the oppressed?  When just reporting on the crime within itself exposes the criminal, then the criminal is not going to be happy because you haven't been objective because in their opinion you've taken sides by exposing the crime and that's exactly what happens with Israel every time that the Palestinian voices are allowed to express their stories in the mainstream.

 

I'm also interested in when we talk about objectivity in looking at the representation of the voices and of stakeholders, how much access do we have as Palestinians to tell our stories and to shape ‑ to explain the narrative that goes with the news footage.  And I'll tell you one thing.  During every Gaza bombing, but certainly during the last one as well, the Palestinian community and members of the Palestinian activism circles were hounded by reporters, which you would think is a good thing, but the reporters didn't want us to talk about the context, they didn't want us to analyse what was going on, they didn't want us to explain what was happening, which triggered this entire recent episode.  They wanted the human story, but they wanted the human story taken completely out of the context in which it was happening, which to me is just mind boggling. 

 

And it goes back to the idea that a lot of Israeli supporters would always begin every conversation with when they're having it with you ‑ they'll say it's complicated, it's complicated.  This is a complex situation, and of course it's complicated when every time you're looking at footage of people being bombed, civilians being bombed with no place to run to, being besieged, being kept at check points.  I mean, some of the footage that comes out of Palestine, you know, in your worst nightmare or in the most incredible science fiction film you cannot imagine having people cached up in those ways in order to go to work every morning, for example.  But the footage never makes sense because the analysis that comes with it is completely taken from another planet, which is the Israeli analysis of what is going on. 

 

So the people who are consuming mainstream media are left confused because what they're hearing, the sound bites that are coming with the footage that their eyes are looking at are so different and so contradictory and I think that is why we're seeing change shifting in public opinion because the Palestinians are now actually trying to tell their stories in any other means possible, having given up on the mainstream in hosting their voices and giving them a platform to speak.

 

VERITY FIRTH:  That's really interesting.  Thank you for that.  So my next question is around activism, as opposed to investigative journalism.  So when covering issues from the #metoo movement to Black Lives Matter and again on Palestine, there have been high‑profile cases where it's been suggested reporters care more about advocacy than investigative journalism.  Saba, can you comment on that?

 

PROF. SABA BEBAWI:  The eternal question, advocacy or journalism.  There are a few points here to highlight and I'll probably refer to my own research where I did a study on Al Jazeera English comparing it to BBC and CNN and its coverage of events in the Middle East and I found two interesting points. 

 

So the first point is that each news organisation reported from its national perspective.  Probably didn't need to spend six years doing that, but it was good to get the facts to support it.  And we call that selective reporting.  That's choosing one fact over others and eliminating others to form a particular narrative or to form a new social reality.

 

The other thing that I found particularly interesting is Al Jazeera English always had two different and often opposing narratives on the same event on the same day from the same newsroom and that was based on the reporter's political allegiance.  So Arab reporters tended to give an Arab angle to the event and western reporters were giving a western angle to it.  So what this means is that reporting is selective across the board and a phenomena that I actually call mediated advocacy.

 

There's another point I would like to raise here that there is no universal culture of journalism.  When we talk about advocacy being different from journalism, this is a western discourse.  There is no one way of doing things.  There are different cultures of journalism, there are different journalisms across the world, and I'll bring one example from China, where I have a colleague of mine, Hyun Wun, who wrote about transformation of investigative journalism in China and the fact that Chinese investigative journalists cannot practise investigative journalism in the western way.  So what they've been doing historically is marrying it with advocacy journalism and that is the way they do investigative journalism because she found that in order for them to achieve their aims and full potential, investigative journalism in China needs to be integrated with the practice of activist journalism.  So although investigative journalism is what we define as fact‑based, evidence‑based journalism, it is fuelled by a sense and purpose of advocacy. 

 

In many parts of the global south, and particularly in the Arab world, so working with Arab investigative journalists, it's the passion that leads them to talk about a particular thing, not only find the issues but how they report on it.  But they still do it in a fact‑based, evidence‑based way and in that situation, that context, it works.

 

VERITY FIRTH:  That's really interesting.  Antony ‑ I'll go to Samah, I want to mix things up a bit.  Do you have anything to add around that advocacy piece?

 

SAMAH SABAWI:  Yes, I'll talk about Palestinian journalists because I've dealt a lot with Palestinian journalists over the years.  For Palestinian journalists living in Gaza, for example, they know that getting the story out is advocacy.  They're being honest with the story, they're shooting what is happening, the camera is showing things as they are and they're reporting things as they are, but they know that our lives as Palestinians under occupation and in Gaza ‑ our lives are very political regardless of whether we want it to be or not and just by telling a Palestinian story that a side has been taken. 

 

So the idea of objective journalism in that sense is very difficult to really ‑ it's very difficult to apply for people who are in war zones, who are part of the war zone.  So a journalist who is a war zone journalist, who's an American with an American passport who goes to Afghanistan and reports, might still be able to have that distance between what they're reporting and might have the protection ‑ gear and the protection everything of being an American citizen. 

 

A journalist in Gaza knows that whether or not they report the story, they might be killed because a bomb might fall and their entire family might be wiped out.  And so they know they have no protection and they know that their lives and the lives of the people they love and they care about depends on how much they tell of that story and about the details of the story as well, not just about, you know, such and such happened today, such and such happened to this family who live in this house who are eating this food, this child was torn to pieces as he was having his sandwich.  These details matter and so with Palestinian journalists on the ground in the middle of it all who are themselves part of an occupied people, who are themselves part of an oppressed people, I don't think that question applies.

 

VERITY FIRTH:  Yes.  Antony?

 

ANTONY LOEWENSTEIN:  The question of advocacy or activism is something that's come up a lot in my life because often I'm accused on this issue of being both and I guess I'd refute that.  Let me briefly explain why.  So this is generally raised by people who are either blindly pro Israel who don't like the fact that there is someone who is more critical or sceptical of Israeli claims, Israeli actions.  I'm Jewish myself, although I don't think my Judaism ‑ I don't really practise my religion, I'm not religious, I don't think that really informs my reporting except for the fact that I know that Israel claims to be acting on behalf of me.  In other words, Israel explicitly says that as a Jewish state our role is to act in your interests and to protect you. 

 

Now, my view is they're doing the exact wrong thing and the opposite of that, but that's how they claim to be.  Many Jews in the diaspora, including in Australia, will argue that.  When growing up I used to hear that.  My family, many killed in the Holocaust, would say ‑ my family wasn't madly pro Israel, but the argument was always said God forbid something happened, there was always somewhere to go to protect us. 

 

On one hand, I understand that logic, considering the 20th century that makes sense, except on the fact it's on the back of other people, the Palestinians, which is why in my view it's unacceptable.  When I'm reporting on Israel Palestine, I think you have to not view this issue as two equal sides, as I said before.  You have to be sceptical and critical of all claims.  I don't think one should be a blind advocate for any one particular side. 

 

On the other hand, if anyone spends any time in Gaza, in the West Bank, in East Jerusalem, where I was based for four years and have been going there for 15 years, a blind man can see what's happening there.  As Samah said before, yes, some parts are complicated.  Like any conflict, things are not necessarily black and white.  But ultimately this is being a conflict, a war, an ongoing level of daily violence. 

 

One of the problems with reporting is too often, even the last two weeks, the New York Times can put headlines saying, "After a period of calm, violence flares up".  Well, what does that mean?  Peace for whom?  I mean, yes, for a lot of Israeli Jews life has been relatively okay, there has been no real violence, and that's great for them, but if you're on the West Bank or Gaza every day there's violence in a different way.  A Palestinian civilian is killed in the West Bank almost every day by Israeli forces or Israeli troops ‑ almost every day.  That's violence.  It's obvious to say that. 

 

If advocacy or activism is saying that and reporting that, which is simply fact, then yes, one can be accused of activism, but I don't think reporting accurately what's going on as a human being ‑ to me the problem I often find is that too many people who are invested in this conflict, Jews particularly, put their religion first and their human being cap second.  In other words, they are seeing it through a very tribal lens and that to me is unhealthy. 

 

We all have tribal views, I'm not saying that we can all necessarily escape that, but this is a example ‑ I'll finish on this point.  It is unimaginable that you would have the equivalent of Palestinian side and what the New York Times has done in the last 20 years almost every correspondent there, bureau chief in Jerusalem, has either had a child who's in the IBF or partner or someone close to them who works for advocacy for the Israeli Government as their job.  It's not a conspiracy theory, it's a fact.  People can Google that if they don't believe me. 

 

Can you imagine the equivalent on the other side?  Can you even imagine it, the idea you'd have, for example,  Palestinian journalist X working in Jerusalem and her husband was a part‑time fighter for Hamas, for example?  Can you imagine?  It would never happen.  I'm not saying ‑ it shouldn't happen on either side to be honest as a reporter.  My point being that sort of reality for New York Times is uncontroversial, that's normal.  How is that not activism, how is that not advocacy for one side?  The reporting often reflected that. 

 

The New York Times got a bit better during the recent conflict, which we can discuss later if we want here and there, but those sorts of organisations that frame so much the reporting for the western audiences, particularly in the US and the western world, and I think when those organisations start to shift their coverage, which to some extent I think they're slowly doing, that's when you realise many people on the very blind pro Israel community are worried they're losing the information.  Ultimately this is not really a violent conflict, it's an information war, and there's no doubt to me Israel in the last 5 or 10 years is increasingly losing it.

 

VERITY FIRTH:  That's really interesting.  Antony, I'm going to stick with you because last year you wrote an essay where you said that Australia is almost unique globally in its consistent support for Israel in diplomatic forums like the United Nations and it's interesting what you were just saying then too about the information war.  So what is the reason that Australia has had that approach and how does it affect Australian media coverage of these issues?

 

ANTONY LOEWENSTEIN:  Let me briefly explain this because you could write a book about it, as many people have, but let me briefly give an overview.  I think the reason Australia ‑ this is generally bipartisan, by the way, this is not particularly more on the Liberal Party.  I think when Labor has been in power in the last 30 or 40 years there have been slightly more shifts.  Whitlam was a bit more sceptical of Israel, Kevin Rudd was sceptical.  There are differences, not saying they're exactly the same, but in general there is virtually bipartisan support for Israel. 

 

Why?  I think a few reasons.  One, I think there is still in many concern countries, including here, an ingrained sympathy or guilt because of the Holocaust.  I think that actually still plays quite a large part.  I'm not saying that's explicit, but the sense that essentially the world didn't stop the Nazi Holocaust and therefore we in the west have a responsibility and duty to support Jews to form and build a stable home.  That's one reason. 

 

Two, I think 9/11 has been a wonderful gift for Israel.  Just after 9/11 Netanyahu, then not Prime Minister but political leader in Israel, was on the media essentially saying ‑ I'm paraphrasing here ‑ that now he argues most of the west will understand what we have been going through for decades, namely, that we in Israel have been fighting a war on terror against Muslims, against terrorists and now you in the west, you get it, welcome to our reality.  I think many people in the west shared that view.  They still share that view. 

 

But Israel is almost on the frontline so the narrative goes of fighting this war against terrorism and in fact often Israel explicitly says to Europe that we are fighting a war, so you don't have to.  In other words, we're doing those kinds of battles against terrorists and all these extremists. 

 

I think finally there's a question of for the last about 20 years very leading Israel lobby groups here in Australia have been sending politicians and journalists on free trips to Israel and these trips I think on one level have been very successful.  They are essentially a week or 10 days of propaganda, you are shown a narrow slice of reality, and again Labor has taken it, Liberal politicians have taken it, a lot of journalists have taken it, not so many from the ABC.  SBS ‑ the current head of SBS three years ago went on a lobby trip and came back raving how great Israel is. 

 

That's deeply problematic inherently.  It strikes me if you are going to take those trips ‑ I don't think one should, even if you do ‑ the idea that most of these people wouldn't even say, "Hmm, maybe I'll spend one more day in the West Bank", it just doesn't enter their minds and you know the impact of these trips because when they come back, they talk about it, it impacts their coverage.

 

So I think all these reasons ‑ this finally ‑ when the UN vote on pretty much anything to do with Israel in the last year, particularly since the Morrison Government, but similar under Turnbull as well, you have pretty much the entire world on the other side and the other side is Israel, the US, a few Pacific Islands, Micronesia, Palau and Australia.  Those small states, I kind of get in a way why they support it because they need the cash.  I kind of understand that, fair enough in a way.  What's our excuse?  It's not because we need the money.  We don't.  So I think it's partly ideological and also philosophical. 

 

And also, just finally, finally, Australia frames the support for Israel as so‑called shared values.  It's said all the time, as does Biden, as do many western leaders.  What does that mean, shared values in what way?  They frame it around democracy, human rights, one person one vote, all that sort of stuff, but the fact is shared values essentially means that Australia and many western states not just overlook the occupation but support it, back it, defend it, arm it.  So as a settler colonial country as we are and as Israel is and in fact many western states are, I think there's also that affinity between all these states that they see almost a kindred spirit.

 

VERITY FIRTH:  That's controversial.  I rather love that.  Saba, do you have anything you want to add on that?

 

SAMAH SABAWI:  For me?

 

VERITY FIRTH:  Sorry, Professor Saba Bebawi.

 

PROF. SABA BEBAWI:  No, nothing to add.  That was very clearly articulated, yes.

 

VERITY FIRTH:  Over to Samah.

 

SAMAH SABAWI:  Yes, we did talk about how our names are very similar before we started going on.  It's not that I want to add, I just want to highlight the last point that Antony spoke of ‑ and I take all his points on board, but the last point I think is really important for us in order to really ‑ we really need to make that connection that Australia is a settler colonialist country that has that history.  They have a history of terra nullius, they have a history of erasing the Indigenous population and they have an ongoing history of erasing of the voices of their Indigenous population, of not seeing them really entirely within the colonialist institutions and the media I think is a settler colonialist remnant institution that needs to be changed. 

 

So there is that link and there is that understanding and that nod, that nudge, that yeah, we know where you're coming from when it comes to Israel being a settler colonialist project itself and denying the people their rights and denying the Indigenous population their rights and the terra nullius land without a people, there's a lot of similarities there. 

 

It's really funny because although they do give a nudge to one another, they hate it when we make this connection.  They really, really hate it when we make this connection.  So it's just another one of the hypocrisies I guess of our government over here, but I just wanted to highlight that.

 

VERITY FIRTH:  Yes.  I mean, that's a truth that we haven't really properly explored ourself yet. 

 

Samah, there was an open letter which most people I think have heard about now calling on the media to "do better on Palestine".  It's been signed by more than 720 journalists, media workers, writers and commentators since May 14.  It states, "As journalists, reporters and other media workers, we know the media can do better.  Many of us are seeking change, but lack sufficient power in our organisations to push back against the status quo."  Some signatories have been pressured to remove their names from that open letter by their employers and what do you think that shows about the heat on journalists who speak up or are covering stories about Palestine and Israel?

 

SAMAH SABAWI:  Look, there is no doubt, there is a lot of heat on the journalists.  They are not able to perform their duties in the way they would like to perform them.  But I think too there's also self‑censorship that goes on in the institutions, also the fear that if they were to report things as they are, that they would get in trouble for it. 

 

I'll never forget I was in an ABC radio studio with an ABC reporter who I can't give the name but off record it was during the bombing, the 51 days of bombing of Gaza in 2014.  He almost begged me not to bring up Gaza in my interview that I was doing at the time because he just doesn't want to go there and he weeps for Palestine, he weeps for the Palestinians, but he was afraid to lose his job.  Now, that was just not an isolated incident.  I've heard that from so many reporters who have told me that they would like to speak out, but they're afraid they would lose their job. 

 

So there is a fear within these institutions, but there's also self‑censorship that goes on and there's also this incredible ‑ I had this incident at the ABC which until this day I cannot fathom how it could happen within the ABC.  I submitted an opinion piece on the annexation of Jerusalem back in July of last year to the ABC's religion and ethics and very quickly they started questioning some of the words that I was using, like "annexation" and "occupation".  I can't remember now.  But within a week, when the piece was finally published, it appeared alongside an attack piece and very quickly it became clear to me that passed on to the federation of Australia without my consent by the ABC's religion and ethics and some of the feedback that was given on my op‑ed appeared in that opinion piece by the federation.  So it looked like they'd actually written the feedback that I was receiving supposedly from the editors of the ABC. 

 

The amazing thing, the astonishing thing was not that this happened.  The astonishing thing was that when I complained, the response was, "You're lucky, you should be happy that we're on your side and we gave you the platform to speak."  They controlled the platform so much to the point that they've appeased that other group. 

 

And so yes, the fear exists, self‑censorship exists.  No‑one knows that better than Palestinians.  Ask any Palestinian writer in Australia and they will tell you harrowing stories about them trying to write opinion pieces and being shut down or having words changed or having things watered down or just totally being ignored. 

 

So we know that this is happening and we know that the fear is there and I just want to take the opportunity to really give a shoutout to the courageous journalists and writers who did sign that letter because we cannot make change happen without courage and we need courage.  We need courage, we need integrity and we need to bring back the idea of ethical reporting, if it ever existed, into the Palestine‑Israel story.

 

VERITY FIRTH:  Yes.  Saba?  In Gaza and in the occupied Palestine territories the press has been targeted by Israeli forces, including the arrest of journalists in Sheikh Jarrah and the bombing of the Al Jazeera and Associated Press offices in Gaza.  Can you talk to us a little bit about this and what are the impacts on the ground of these actions?

 

PROF. SABA BEBAWI:  Look, this has always been the case during times of war.  Myself working as a journalist in the Middle East, we worked for state media and that was always considered part of the military because the first thing that happens in conflict or wars or coups is that the media is taken over, the media studios are taken over by the military with a gun to your head as a journalist in front of the microphone and you're silenced or dictated and that is because the media is a tool of war. 

 

So this is, generally speaking, usually the first thing that happens in war and in the recent conflict in Gaza this is what happened.  They bombed the building of Al Jazeera and Associated Press offices and that was in an attempt to silence them.  And usually, by the way, when you see that happen, it means that there's something large that's just about to happen that they don't want you to know about and they don't want journalists.  So there's always ‑ when there's a plan for more destruction, the media are out and you can't report on it.

 

Now, what is particularly interesting in these times is that ‑ I would like to talk about social media because social media here really plays a role and it has so recently as we witnessed during the Arab Spring.  So people have phones, people have cameras, people have videos, they can edit on the go, they know how to put things out there.  I will confess that personally I have not been getting my understanding and news, although I work in journalism ‑ I've been getting it from social media and that's how I've been understanding what's been going on and I've been trying to make now ‑ the problem with social media, especially with Facebook, is it is quite limited to who you have followed or who you like, but there is a lot going on there that we are actually more informed than before. 

 

So I think that's ‑ I can talk a little more about social media, but I'll leave it there for now, but it's important to note that it's not just ‑ they can silence the mainstream media and, as we've noticed, the mainstream media has actually ‑ they've silenced themselves.  So I think it's social media that really has people reporting on the ground that I think we don't need to talk a lot about that because we understand fully what that means, but that has to be taken into account.

 

VERITY FIRTH:  And we'll stick on social media because your points go completely into a question I was going to give to Sara Saleh had she been able to join us, where she did a video to GetUp where she talked about that, "In the face of military tanks and army boots, Palestinians are fighting back with literally the only weapon they have ‑ their phone". 

 

So let's now talk about the role of social media in both the reporting of what's just recently happened, but also in this, as we've all alluded to earlier, seeming shift of public opinion in terms of this issue.  So Saba, why don't you elaborate because you were on a good roll there.  Then I'll come to you, Antony?

 

PROF. SABA BEBAWI:  Okay, there's two points actually I'll bring up.  So the first thing is the positives ‑ I'll bring in an example of the positives of social media and an example of the negatives.  So the positive is people circulate things, you become more informed, as we said, and I think it has been very successful, Arab journalists use it, comedy has played a particular excellent role here.  For example, what went viral was the trending ‑ and trending was John Oliver's Calling Out Israel clip and also on the bombing of Al Jazeera and the AP offices, you know, making comments like, "Oh it was really nice the idea to send a courtesy note to the Palestinians just half an hour before letting them know their houses are going to be bombed, that's really nice of them."  Other jokes that he made was the means, that the idea fused in social media themselves, which is the before and after, so this is what the building looked like before and looked like after. 

 

It's interesting that always there's been a really interesting use of the military or the governments themselves of social media.  So that I think has played a role because I think it has more impact, comedy is very powerful, and I think it's a very effective way of conveying the message. 

 

Negatively, though, as I said, it is quite limited.  It's a bubble.  So I have many Jewish friends in Australia.  Some of them are more pro Israel, some of them are more pro Palestinian, but I had one particular friend who is pro Israeli and she's a very good friend and it was interesting that her social media feed was drastically different from mine and she didn't unfriend me, but she did make a comment that came later on that said oh my God, the reality on my Facebook feed is very different from the reality of others. 

 

So there is a limitation here and this again ‑ it talks to what media organisations you follow, what newspaper you read.  You know, you choose.  We do not have that kind of holistic, sceptical audience which will read everything.  You're not going to see me getting news on the conflict from Fox News.  You're not going to see me do that.  I don't have enough time in my life.  But the issue is that social media is still very limited.  However, a point that Samah made very early on is that it does give a voice.  There is no gate keeping, it gives a voice.  So people, yes, have the phone and they edit and it's there immediately posted for people to see.

 

VERITY FIRTH:  Yes, I think that's so true and you really saw that bubble happening in US politics in the final days of Trump as well, just that complete disconnect between what people were hearing.  Antony, social media, do you think it's had an influence on the way this is covered either in the mainstream press or in public opinion more broadly?

 

ANTONY LOEWENSTEIN:  I think there's no doubt that social media has hugely assisted Palestinians in getting their message out.  I won't add much more to that side because both women have said great things about that. 

 

What I would say, though, ties in to my point about the information war.  Israel is aware of the problem, they view it as a problem.  The way they're dealing with it is to some degree successful and other degrees less so.  Well before the recent upsurge in violence they've been doing a lot of lobbying, pressuring on Facebook, Twitter and other platforms to censor or de‑platform certain individuals, certain people who are claiming to be terrorists or terrorist supporters but actually are not, they are simply Palestinian voices.  Even during the recent upsurge in violence a lot of Palestinian accounts were hash tags disappeared. 

 

There's I think a growing realisation again about the disparity of influence here, that even during the recent conflict Mark Zuckerberg literally ordered Nick Clegg, Facebook's PR hack, to fly to Israel to meet officials from both Israeli and political side to somehow work out something.  There was images I remember seeing of Israeli officials meeting with Facebook officials on Zoom during the war, during the recent war, to demand more Palestinian accounts were pulled down.  This is really I would argue the beginning of this war.  So it doesn't involve guns, it doesn't involve any violence in a literal sense, but actually it reflects increasingly how Israel is petrified that they're less able to control the narrative, as Samah rightly said.  For decades Israel pretty much had the floor to themselves ‑ I'm generalising, but in general they did ‑ and that was reflected in public opinion, political elites and much of the media.  That is now shifting to an extent. 

 

Social media of course are places where a lot of us get our information, for better or worse.  So you do find, there's been a lot of articles in the last while, of many staff members of these social media companies sort of demanding that often I think when posts are being taken down, it's not necessarily person X in California doing it, though sometimes of course that happens.  It's the way the algorithms are designed. 

 

One quick example and I'll finish.  So there was a lot of posts being pulled down around Al‑Aqsa, the holy mosque in Jerusalem, the third holiest mosque in Islam, site in Islam, and a lot of Palestinians were posting about it.  No‑one could understand why that was happening, apart from the obvious, which is Israel didn't want them up there.  It emerged apparently for a lot of social media companies they confused Al‑Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, which is a designated terrorist organisation, with actually Al‑Aqsa itself.  All these posts were taken down.  Now, that's the more generous reading of what happened.  That may well have been the case, I don't know. 

 

My point in saying that there is so little cultural understanding within the organisations around the world non‑western, (a), and (b), the huge amount of pressure that Israeli officials have had on these companies to some extent has been quite successful.  How that's going to work going forward I'm not entirely sure, but I think that a lot of Palestinians are increasingly aware of the fact that if they solely rely on these social media platforms to get their word out, it's dangerous.  In other words, your account can be pulled down, tomorrow you might have a million followers, you're done.  The alternative to that I guess is other social media platforms finding alternative ways of getting the message out, but I think you will see in the coming months and years a huge push by Israel to massively pressure these companies to be far more aggressive in pulling down posts that they regard or they claim should not be there.

 

VERITY FIRTH:  Samah, I can see you're chomping at the bit.  I'll come to you now to talk about social media.  But I'm mindful of the time and want to quickly move to audience questions.

 

SAMAH SABAWI:  I'll be very quick.  I'll be very quick.  Look, social media evolves and I think they can close platforms, new ones will appear.  And what took us by complete surprise in this last Gaza war was TikTok, the new social media platform, and suddenly the pundits on Palestinian TV were calling it the TikTok Intifada, which we were upset about because we thought we were liberating Palestine, not these young guys on TikTok, but it was very effective is the point.

 

Very quickly on social media, an Israeli spokesperson came out, I can't remember his name, but he referred to the Palestinian narrative on social media as being a well‑oiled propaganda machine, which goes again to explain how little they really seem to understand what is going on because there's just no oil involved whatsoever, except maybe olive oil.  What drove the media, what drove the social media post, was empathy for the Palestinians and this attraction to the stories, people are attracted to stories of heroism.  So when you have a story about a family who are being evicted by a settler who says to them on a phone to the world to see, "If I don't steal your house, somebody else will", that's really simple language that's going to reach the entire world and people can understand this guy is taking over these people's home and he's stealing it and he says if he doesn't, somebody else will.  So that's powerful and I think it's the power of the stories that are being carried on social media. 

 

I'm not afraid that the spaces will shut down.  I have a lot of faith in the new generation.  There's always going to be something.  The story is out.  Israel needs to come to reckoning with it and Israel needs to start to understand it can no longer control Palestinian narrative.  I do believe that we're at a watershed moment in that regard.

 

VERITY FIRTH:  Thanks for that, Samah.  Now, it's 25 past, so what I'm going to do is the top‑voted question from the audience is actually quite a good one to finish on, so I'm going to ‑ Stevie Zhang, I'll use your question as the last question.  The question is:  "How can we push back against this mainstream view that journalism cannot be done alongside advocacy, especially in newsrooms such as the ABC, and move the industry towards that more humane journalism?"  So I'll start with you, Samah, then you, Antony, and then Saba, you can have the final word.  So Samah.

 

SAMAH SABAWI:  Look, all news organisations care about these days is clicks.  So for starters, let them know your views, let them know if you like something, click it, share it.  If you don't like it, then let them know that you don't like it. 

 

There is power in pulling our voices together.  There is a lot of power in that and we are seeing this power manifest itself in these letters, in these petitions that are getting all these signatures and we know, we know that we are the majority.  We are the majority in Australia.  So the media needs to start reflecting the views of this majority and they're not going to do that until we pester them enough for them to do it or until we make them know that it is good for them to do it by clicking on the positive stories that we like.

 

VERITY FIRTH:  Antony?

 

ANTONY LOEWENSTEIN:  I would agree.  I think there needs to be a lot more pushback.  I was one of the people who drafted that letter you talked about before, Verity.  People can find that, if curious, at dobetteronpalestine.com.  I encourage people to look at it.  It's obviously freely available and you can sign it if you're in the media. 

 

One of the things that became very clear to us involved in it was the people who are being attacked were mostly at the ABC and SBS, mostly younger journalists, mostly people of colour, either pressured to take their name off the petition or their contracts were threatened and we in general ‑ not we, the union particularly, MEAA and others, assisted in what we think is reducing that threat for now as far as we're aware. 

 

But I do think I agree with Samah, there needs to be far more reckoning within the news organisations of the kind of people they hire, there needs to be much more accuracy and belief these conflicts don't simply happen every five years.  As I said before, there's violence all the time.  The occupation is violence.  I'm not saying it's going to be lead story every day.  It won't be and probably shouldn't be.  But these stories are important a lot of the time and I think there's also a sense of getting diversity of opinion of people on camera, of people who are interviewed, not just people who are always responding to a terror attack.  And often I've seen for years so many Arabs are routinely asked, "Do you condemn Hamas rockets?", as if that's the only question that comes up.  You can ask that question as a journalist if you must, sure, but that's not the only question and relevant issue here. 

 

Finally, very finally, there is a report that came out this week that ABC, and I guess this came from management, gave a directive that the word apartheid should not be used in reporting.  And just very brief context of that, Palestinians have been saying this for a long time, but this year there's been an upsurge, Human Rights Watch came out, Israel's leading rights group said the same thing in January this year. 

 

It seems to me that if ABC management or news editor, whoever made that decision, is trying to say to journalists do not use that term because in their view it makes people remember apartheid South Africa (a), yes, that's what's happening over there, and (b), it's a legally recognised term.  Even if a journalist may not say, "I think what's happening is apartheid", that's obviously an opinion.  ABC has never covered that Human Rights Watch report, by the way.  It has not touched it as far as I'm aware at all. 

 

So I think that kind of reaction from ABC management as we're seeing similarly at SBS is more borne out of fear and what I call a pre‑emptive buckle, trying to kind of react almost to what appears to be a growing reality, and I do think that you can almost imagine these kinds of guys being gatekeepers like in 1993 South Africa saying you have to ‑ two equal sides here, guys, whites and ANC.  Who's to say who's right.  Who's to say?  That's I think very similar here.  Again, be critical of Palestinian groups.  I'm not saying treat them like angels, they're not.  But at least recognise there's a difference in power between the two sides.

 

VERITY FIRTH:  Thank you for that, Antony.  And Saba?

 

PROF. SABA BEBAWI:  I really don't have anything more to add apart from just ‑ it's all very, you know, well said.  I just want to highlight that we do need to remember no matter how we report on this that this is in fact a human rights conflict, the consequences affect human rights, and on both sides and I think that's something we need to remember.  So that's all I just wanted to add.

 

VERITY FIRTH:  Well, thank you very much.  Thank you to our panellists.  You were absolutely wonderful.  That was a fantastic conversation and I really appreciate you taking the time today.  Thank you to everyone who joined us.  And thank you to everyone who posted questions.  I'm sorry we ran out.  I was too focused on listening to these good people tell us their wisdom. 

 

So thanks again and of course we'll be having many more sessions like this in the future.  So sign up for our newsletter and also anyone who's registered for today's event, we will also be sending you a link with a recording of the event.  So feel free to watch us again or share it on your social media platforms.  Thanks very much, everyone.  Bye.