As a journalist working in Gaza, with all of its crises and suffering, conveying peoples’ deep feelings fearlessly and clearly, and providing the context for their experience is the most critical role I play in bringing the story to our readers.
This process of conveying peoples’ stories to readers can also help shape a journalist’s understanding of their own work and practice. It’s a mutual relationship between the story, the readers, and the writer.
Reporting from Palestine, and from Gaza in particular, can often prove tricky. Where you are publishing your story often has the greatest effect on the outcome and what you can write.
I still remember working at a local newspaper in Gaza, where I was ordered not to use words like “Zionism” and was instructed to glorify some regimes while turning a blind eye to the suffering that those same regimes were causing to people, including Palestinians.
There were lists of terms that I was or was not allowed to use. To me, these terms represented the limitations of freedom of expression, something that is at the heart of storytelling itself. Without freedom of expression, how are we to tell people’s stories in their truest forms?
In my work I have also encountered many international platforms and audiences that on the surface expressed their support for freedom of expression, but when it came to being a Palestinian writer, me and my colleagues would be judged when writing about the experiences of our people. If we expressed our feelings in the midst of scary war times, wrote a quote from the Holy Quran in our writing, or dared to express ourselves on social media, we risked losing our jobs or opportunities.
It was clear that for many international outlets and audiences, people support freedom of expression except when it comes to Palestine. I would sit and wonder how such standards could ever produce the truth.
This is what is at the core of the internal conflict and struggle that we face as journalists in Gaza. These challenges cause an internal divide, where you feel split between the pleasure of being able to tell people’s true stories and the concern that you might be judged for it because of who you are. People start to question, are you really doing journalism, or is it just “writing”?
The space that Mondoweiss guarantees is starting to give me the answer.
When we tell stories, we tell everything, and we don’t leave any stone unturned. We are given the space to tell people’s stories fearlessly, with no boundaries or limitations. Even when people may be afraid to speak about their reality, we also give them the space to speak using their own voices.
The reason behind our ability to do that is our audience, the people who read these stories and support them. When the relationship between writers and readers is built and based on fearless storytelling, it creates opportunities for amazing stories to be told.
When the readers are in control, they can inspire their writers. For that, as it is the best place that I can share this with you, I would like to thank you for inspiring me to write all these stories for you during the past year because I know that I have the power to tell it to a free community, one that is ready and willing to listen.
