As Mondoweiss has grown over the last 15 years we’ve had a number of landmarks, but none gives me greater pleasure than to announce this news:
We’ve hired a full time Gaza correspondent, the great young writer Tareq S. Hajjaj.
For years we dreamt that we would have the resources to publish exclusive reports from behind the blockade. And at last we do.
Do I need to convince anyone how vital this reporting is to our mission? Gaza is an enormity of US and Israeli policy. For nearly 14 years it has been an open-air prison for 2 million people, many of them refugees from the Nakba. Palestinians are barred from leaving an area smaller than Brooklyn and Queens, and subject to ongoing, massive attacks to crush resistance to their conditions.
The mission of our website is clear: we want to insist to everyone who will listen that Palestinians are human beings deserving of the same rights that others have, including the Israelis who get endless aid from our country.
As Tareq begins his position with us, my focus is on making sure we can back him and his work to the absolute highest degree.
I need your help to do that. By Sunday we are hoping that 100 Mondoweiss readers will step up as new monthly donors – and a group of generous donors has agreed to match your entire first year of donations.
Can you sign up as a monthly donor to Mondoweiss today?
No, but I can make a one-time contribution to support Mondoweiss’s new Gaza correspondent.
We need your monthly commitment because deep reporting on life in Gaza is such an enormous task. There are too many stories to tell in a year (or a decade). There isn’t one magical story or op-ed that can change the entire narrative. But those changes are coming.
Tareq’s hiring is a particular pleasure to me because I am often reminded of my youth as a reporter when I read Palestinian dispatches.
Tareq writes beautifully and simply and he knows the supreme importance of fact. Working in a second language, he displays a professionalism and tenacity I could not have dreamed of when I was his age. Given my own privilege, I feel I owe a lot to him, and his entire generation of Palestinian reporters and journalists.
Can you make an ongoing commitment today?
Yes, I can become a monthly donor to make sure Palestinians in Gaza are heard.
No, but I can make a one-time gift today.
We believe that only with vivid truthtelling will the Palestinian experience continue to change American minds. If you want to see what that looks like, just read some of his news reports:
On the frustration of the canceled Palestinian elections. “I need to vote.”
On the tragic limitations on Gazans getting medical treatment inside Israel, even for infants.
And in this essay from last June, Tareq communicated the anguish of being under an Israeli assault for 11 days.
Please help us welcome Tareq and launch his work with a generous donation today.
Thanks always,
Phil Weiss
