Breakfast in Gaza with Taghreed El-Khodary of ‘The New York Times’

Taghreed El-Khodary, reporting at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in Gaza

One of the highlights of my trip to Gaza was meeting Taghreed El-Khodary, the correspondent for the New York Times. She had breakfast with my New York-based delegation two weeks ago. Everyone in my group came away feeling that she is an amazing ambassador for her society. Why, just consider the warmth and sensitivity in her face, above. 

The first surprise of the meeting for me was how outspoken and analytical El-Khodary is. I had expected a nose-to-the-ground reporter type. Certainly her writing in The New York Times during the onslaught on Gaza back in January had a who-what-where-when quality. Just the facts, ma'am–when this extreme situation cries out for more than facts, it cries out for emotional color, depth, and analysis, so that Americans can respond with moral force and creativity to an ongoing disaster.

For instance, El-Khodary continually referred to the situation in Gaza as "a siege." Just as everyone in our lefty delegation does. Is it a siege? I would say yes; Webster's says siege is a military blockade. Well then why doesn't she get to say as much in the Times? Oh but I'm getting ahead of myself.

A small, lively woman wearing jeans and a wide leather belt with a big square buckle, El-Khodary began by saying that the situation in Gaza is not a "humanitarian" crisis, it is a political crisis. "When I met with John Kerry, I said, stop talking about humanitarian problem, because it's purely political." Gaza is under siege, and Hamas is benefiting. "The society is shifting into a society that is very dependent on others… And Hamas is getting more power out of every aspect of life."

She described the breakdown of the civil society in Gaza. Many young people are unemployed. Some of them get paid without having to produce anything, because they work for the Palestinian Authority, and the Palestinian Authority ordered teachers and civil servants to leave their jobs when Hamas took over the government.Hamas then filled the schools with newly-graduated teachers with very little experience.

"They know how to pray… but they are not competent. Their competence is with religion." She told of one high school where Hamas teachers instruct girls on how to wear the veil.

"You know teenage girls. They are dying to wear skirts… You can see the shift, where this place is going. I blame the international community, I blame the Palestinian Authority for asking the teachers to stay at home… This is why I am against the siege, because people will be stuck with one way of looking at things."

At the same time, El-Khodary said, the international community was "stupid" in its efforts to isolate Hamas.

"Hamas is a reality, like Fatah. You cannot marginalize it. You can weaken it, but indirectly." She had explained all this to John Kerry, and she felt that he understood. (I blogged about this two weeks ago.) "You can't focus only on the humanitarian aspect. It's a political issue…

"That's why I'm here. To be able to explain it to Congress."

At this point in our meeting, the penny dropped. I realized that El-Khodary is not a reporter in the conventional mode. In one of the greatest foreign-relations horror-shows on the planet right now, she has taken on a larger human responsibility, of seeking to explain one people to another. I felt the admiration in me building for her, and I put aside all the little journalistic questions I had.

She said that she had met the three congresspeople who had come the week before: Brian Baird of Washington, Donna Edwards of Maryland, and Peter Welch of Vermont. (These three people should get leadership awards.)

"My message to them was that if you want to come out with a policy, a strategy, you have to understand the ground really well. You cannot only listen to Fatah, to Abu Mazen and then determine a strategy."

[El-Khodary at breakfast, Marna House, Gaza City]

She related how Hamas had become heroes during the second Intifadah–and Israel had worked to make them into heroes. While covering the intifada, El-Khodary had become angry at the fact that the whole television report was about Hamas.

"But that was the reality. You cannot ignore them. When you assassinate their leaders, kill them, punish them, people sympathize with the victims. They turn them into heroes. And Hamas was very active on the ground, helping the poor." And of course Fatah had failed to do anything real toward creating a Palestinian state.

One of our delegation asked about a third way, a secular alternative to Hamas, but El-Khodary shook her head. She said that the international community must focus on reconciling the two sides, Fatah and Hamas.  "That should be the priority. Then we can talk about the peace process. But they go together."

Throughout the conversation, El-Khodary was impassioned in her support for a two-state solution as the only hope. Ending the Palestinian crisis will improve politics throughout the region, she said; and she is pulling for Obama.

"I hope he will have the time, I hope he will succeed. He knows the situation very well. He understands both narratives very well… My fear is that the same policy will continue and the status quo will continue, and the Israelis will feel paralyzed to go forward."

She spoke with frustration of the isolation of Palestinian society. This was a common thread in every conversation we had with educated Palestinians. They implored us to do whatever we can to break the siege and show a different face of the Palestinians to the world. "I'm very angry at the international media," she said. Before the war the siege in Gaza was continuous, and few people covered it. "Gaza was under so much pressure, and I didn't understand why reporters couldn't make it here. I didn't understand why [the media] were not letting their international staff have presence here. There were many papers who had nobody here."

Half an hour had passed, and the ambassador in El-Khodary fully expressed itself. She told us how important it is to bring Gaza back into the human family, so that Palestinian society can grow, and that Gaza's future leaders can learn to relate to other cultures.

"There has to be an opening of the closure. People need to leave, they need to see how the world functions. You meet all these young people who have never met an Israeli–all their life. And there is a need for international presence in Gaza. After the war an army of journalists came, and now where are they?"

Some of us asked her what it was like to be in Gaza during the war, and fear entered her voice.

"I didn't like it that no international journalists were here. It's always good to have others around you. Really I felt like I was working by myself. There was so much pressure and responsibility. And I made such an effort to be on the ground…"

One night Israel hit the Parliament two blocks from her house, and then they dropped leaflets warning people to get out of the area.

"They tell you to escape but where to escape, when they are dropping leaflets everywhere? Even in my garden. And you can hear the plane hovering all the time [presumably a drone]. You think maybe they are going to make a mistake. Maybe they are going to hit you. Maybe your neighbor is wanted.  It was a scary experience."

Like other smart committed Gazans we met, El-Khodary has options. She can leave Gaza in a moment. Her talents are in demand. But she does not want to leave. The story is too important; she said she is too interested in how it will end, as a journalist; and as a Palestinian, she feels tremendous responsibility to represent her society in the international press.

She became impassioned as she spoke about the future. 

"I hope I will see the two-state solution," she said. She felt this both as a reporter and as a citizen. "As long as you are living in this jail, there is a reminder that the story is not over… It is about occupation…" Even when she buys cheese in the market and sees that it is from Egypt, it is a reminder of the siege."This comes from the tunnels." And of course there is something wrong with that: that the most productive sector in Gazan society is contraband.

I finally opened my mouth. I sensed how deeply moved my whole group was by El-Khodary's heroism and nobility, by her invocations both of professional "objectivity" and her love for a people who have been cruelly isolated by the world. I said, "The woman we're meeting is not the writer that I read in the New York Times. Are they censoring you?"

The look El-Khodary gave me bordered on disdain; and quickly I realized that in her situation, the question was all but meaningless. 

"The New York Times is the paper to reach you, and to reach all Americans. I mean, what is my goal? It is to reach you… There are two narratives of the story. One is Israeli. And I have managed to get the Palestinian narrative out.

"Of course, I would always put more [than appears]. But you have limited space in the paper, and you have another narrative. There is another narrative, and it is important."

She then referred to this piece in the Columbia Journalism Review that she wrote, that is filled with descriptions of the war and of Hamas's treatment of collaborators. "I don't know why they didn't take it," she said of the New York Times.

Still, she accepted her role. She could be making tons of money in the Gulf working for a TV station, but she was getting the Palestinian story out, and helping others at the Times to understand the details of Palestinian life. "I'm working for them full-time but I'm not staff." She liked that role; it allowed her to perform analysis for the International Crisis Group at the same time. 

I felt slightly foolish in my question. Of course she is being censored. But the New York Times is hardly alone in suppressing the full Palestinian story. All of American media are in on that. And meantime one must be thankful for the Times for affording this brave reporter the platform that it has.

"And one must keep working and pushing, for the story to get out."

Related posts:

1. The ‘Times’ attacks this blog, and finally offers El-Khodary without filters to its readers
2. ‘Times’ stringer El-Khodary’s searing reports from Gaza appear on ‘Al-Jazeera,’ not in the ‘Times’
3. ‘New York Times’ Flexes Its Moral Muscle for Palestinian Freedom
4. Friedman and Goldberg play ‘good cop/bad cop’ in the ‘New York Times’
5. ‘New York Times’ blows the Netanyahu-Obama story. Why?