Reporting Egypt: From Passion to Purpose

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Jul 3, 2014 Egypt
[Photo courtesy of Ahmad Hammoud via Flickr.] [Photo courtesy of Ahmad Hammoud via Flickr.]

Reporting Egypt: From Passion to Purpose

By : Heba Afify

Throughout the last year, my main challenge as a journalist has been to get myself to take the news seriously. But at times, when the absurdities became too tragic to laugh at, the bigger challenge was to deal with injustice on a daily basis, especially as it kept hitting increasingly close to home.

As journalists, we have been constantly alternating throughout the last year between being at the heart of laughable charades and unspeakable tragedies, and it has taken its toll.

It is not as easy to care about the details of the story when it has become crystal clear that the events are driven by the will of the powerful few and have little to do with any law or logic.

The feeling of futility was difficult to brush off as we compared platforms and public appearances of two candidates in an election with results that were determined months before. We covered these elections, looked for violations, interviewed voters, listened to their hopes and watched the state take frantic measures to ensure a higher turnout. Then we followed the predictable results, notwithstanding the facts of the election days. We saw the announcement of the high turnout and the unfolding of large festivities.

Part of the job has become to fight off that nagging voice in the back of my head: does it even matter?

Does it matter what the exact charges fielded against activists are when it’s obvious that they are unimportant details only serving to take them to jail?

When the prosecution was forced to release April 6 Youth Movement founder Ahmed Maher due to lack of evidence tying him to the charges he faced in November, new charges were cooked up before he was able leave prison, and he was eventually sentenced to the three years that were meant for him.

How many different ways can you speak of the war on the revolution and the targeting of activists to put every story about an arrest or a sentencing in context?

When does it become unnecessarily repetitive to follow every government decision with an analysis, fishing out the clause in the recently passed constitution that it violates and quoting experts wailing about the reverse of gains they’ve worked on for decades?

And if that is the fate of the constitution that we have dissected and analyzed, does it even matter what laws are being passed? How do you convince yourself of the worth of analyzing decorative measures?

When does pointing out ridiculousness become in and of itself ridiculous?

On another front, you notice your humanity adjusting to cope with the intolerable violations of human rights.

Recently, I was looking up the number of people who died in October 2011, when military tanks ran over Christian protesters in the incident known as the “Maspero massacre. “

When I saw the number, twenty-seven, it felt small. I felt I had become a different person than the one who was shocked by this very same number in 2011.

The casualties in the dispersal of Muslim Brotherhood protests in August were in the hundreds; over fifty were killed in clashes in front of the presidential guard building in July. Suddenly the numbers that were shocking in 2011 did not provoke as much of an instinctive reaction.

And, again, you alternate between losing bits of your humanity in order to remain functional and be able to put deaths and crimes against humanity into news stories, and the weight of all the tragedies you have digested, which hits you like a bus.

Most disheartening, I have had to come face to face with my own limitations.

An absent sense of danger is often a staple of good journalists. I look back with nostalgia at the days where I had no real grasp of the dangers of journalism. And even in the small place in the back of my head where I realized there was always a chance of being shot while covering a protest or arrested for my work, I wholeheartedly believed it was worth being part of Egypt’s moment of transformation.

I find myself heading to cover protests with an unfamiliar fear. The faces of those who were killed while doing this occupy most of my thinking. Having read the letters of those who are unjustly behind bars, I do not feel the romanticism and solace that I assumed comes with being locked up for a cause. Injustice is ugly, and I do not want it happening to me.

The danger has become too real to ignore, and the situation too hopeless to justify the sacrifice.

I think of all the people who I used to meet in these protests and who, one by one, ended up in jail. I try to imagine whether they would do it again, and whether I am willing to do it and end up with them.

I go out of moral and professional obligation, but I am no longer at peace with the risks that it entails.

The shocking sentencing of three Al Jazeera journalists last week to seven and ten years in prison was an especially sad day, which demonstrated how much freedom of the press has suffered, and resonated deeply with journalists.

I have done Baher Mohamed’s exact job as a freelance producer with Al Jazeera English. I have worked out of the Marriott hotel room where he got arrested and was around for one raid on the AJE office. He was just sentenced to ten years for doing something that I have done, but on a different day, and the sense of injustice could not get more real.

However, my disenchantment with the practice in light of the developments of last year has come full circle.

Seeing injustice rise to unprecedented heights and mainstream media become a synchronized state-worshipping orchestra, the need for journalists who attempt to report the truth, broken and demoralized as we may be, is more evident than ever. While the joy of journalism may have momentarily escaped me, the sense of purpose is stronger than ever.

 [This article originally appeared on Mada Masr.] 
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Jan 9, 2012 Lebanon
Maya Mikdashi By :
Maya Mikdashi

American Elections Watch 1: Rick Santorum and The Dangers of Theocracy

One day after returning to the United States after a trip to Lebanon, I watched the latest Republican Presidential Primary Debate. Unsurprisingly, Iran loomed large in questions related to foreign policy. One by one (with the exception of Ron Paul) the candidates repeated President Obama`s demand that Iran not block access to the Strait of Hormuz and allow the shipping of oil across this strategic waterway. Watching them, I was reminded of Israel`s demand that Lebanon not exploit its own water resources in 2001-2002. Israel`s position was basically that Lebanon`s sovereign decisions over the management of Lebanese water resources was a cause for war. In an area where water is increasingly the most valuable resource, Israel could not risk the possibility that its water rich neighbor might disrupt Israel`s ability to access Lebanese water resources through acts of occupation, underground piping, or unmitigated (because the Lebanese government has been negligent in exploiting its own water resources) river flow. In 2012, the United States has adopted a similar attitude towards Iran, even though the legal question of sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz is much more complicated and involves international maritime law in addition to Omani and Iranian claims of sovereignty. But still, US posturing towards Iran is reminiscent of Israeli posturing towards Lebanon. It goes something like this: while the US retains the right to impose sanctions on Iran and continuously threaten war over its alleged pursuit of a nuclear weapon, Iran should not dare to assume that it can demand the removal of US warships from its shores and, more importantly, should not dream of retaliating in any way to punitive sanctions imposed on it. One can almost hear Team America`s animated crew breaking into song . . . “America . . . Fuck Yeah!”

During the debate in New Hampshire, Rick Santorum offered a concise answer as to why a nuclear Iran would not be tolerated and why the United States-the only state in the world that has actually used nuclear weapons, as it did when it dropped them on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki- should go to war over this issue. Comparing Iran to other nuclear countries that the United States has learned to “tolerate” and “live with” such as Pakistan and North Korea, Santorum offered this succinct nugget of wisdom: Iran is a theocracy. Coming from a man who has stated that Intelligent Design should be taught in schools, that President Obama is a secular fanatic, that the United States is witnessing a war on religion, and that God designed men and women in order to reproduce and thus marriage should be only procreative (and thus heterosexual and “fertile”), Santorum`s conflation of “theocracy” with “irrationality” seemed odd. But of course, that is not what he was saying. When Santorum said that Iran was a theocracy what he meant is that Iran is an Islamic theocracy, and thus its leaders are irrational, violent, and apparently (In Santorum`s eyes) martyrdom junkies. Because Iran is an Islamic theocracy, it cannot be “trusted” by the United States to have nuclear weapons. Apparently, settler colonial states such as Israel (whose claim to “liberal “secularism” is tenuous at best), totalitarian states such as North Korea, or unstable states such as Pakistan (which the United States regularly bombs via drones and that is currently falling apart because, as Santorum stated, it does not know how to behave without a “strong” America) do not cause the same radioactive anxiety. In Santorum`s opinion, a nuclear Iran would not view the cold war logic of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) as a deterrent. Instead, the nation of Iran would rush to die under American or Israeli nuclear bombs because martyrdom is a religious (not national, Santorum was quick to state, perhaps realizing that martyrdom for nation is an ideal woven into the tapestry of American ideology) imperative. Santorum`s views on Iran can be seen one hour and two minutes into the debate.

When it comes to Islam, religion is scary, violent and irrational, says the American Presidential candidate who is largely running on his “faith based” convictions. This contradiction is not surprising, given that in the United States fundamentalist Christians regularly and without irony cite the danger that American muslims pose-fifth column style- to American secularism. After all, recently Christian fundamentalist groups succeeded in pressuring advertisers to abandon a reality show that (tediously) chronicled the lives of “American Muslims” living in Detroit. The great sin committed by these American Muslims was that they were too damn normal. Instead of plotting to inject sharia law into the United States Constitution, they were busy shopping at mid-western malls. Instead of marrying four women at a time and vacationing at Al-Qaeda training camps in (nuclear, but not troublingly so) Pakistan, these “American Muslims” were eating (halal) hotdogs and worrying about the mortgages on their homes and the rising costs of college tuition. Fundamentalist Christians watched this boring consumer driven normalcy with horror and deduced that it must be a plot to make Islam appear compatible with American secularism. The real aim of the show, these Christian fundamentalists (who Rick Santorum banks on for political and financial support) reasoned, was to make Islam appear “normal” and a viable religious option for American citizens. Thus the reality show “All American Muslim” was revealed to be a sinister attempt at Islamic proselytizing. This in a country where Christian proselytizing is almost unavoidable. From television to subways to doorbell rings to presidential debates to busses to street corners and dinner tables-there is always someone in America who wants to share the “good news” with a stranger. Faced with such a blatant, and common, double standard, we should continue to ask “If Muslim proselytizers threaten our secular paradise, why do Christian proselytizers not threaten our secular paradise?”

As the United States Presidential Elections kick into gear, we can expect the Middle East to take pride of place in questions pertaining to foreign policy. Already, Newt Gingrich who, if you forgot, has a PhD in history, has decided for all of us, once and for all, that the Palestinians alone in this world of nations are an invented people. Palestinians are not only a fraudulent people, Gingrich has taught us, they are terrorists as well. Candidates stumble over each other in a race to come up with more creative ways to pledge America`s undying support for Israel. Iran is the big baddie with much too much facial hair and weird hats. America is held hostage to Muslim and Arab oil, and must become “energy efficient” in order to free itself from the unsavory political relationships that come with such dependancy. Candidates will continue to argue over whether or not President Obama should have or should not have withdrawn US troops from Iraq, but no one will bring up the reality that the US occupation of Iraq is anything but over. But despite the interest that the Middle East will invite in the coming election cycle, there are a few questions that we can confidently assume will not be asked or addressed. Here are a few predictions. We welcome additional questions from readers.

Question: What is the difference between Christian Fundamentalism and Muslim Fundamentalism? Which is the greater “threat” to American secularism, and why?

Question: The United States` strongest Arab ally is Saudi Arabia, an Islamic theocracy and authoritarian monarchy which (falsely) cites Islamic law to prohibit women from driving cars, voting, but has recently (yay!) allowed women to sell underwear to other women. In addition, Saudi Arabia has been fanning the flames of sectarianism across the region, is the main center of financial and moral support for Al-Qaeda and is studying ways to “obtain” (the Saudi way, just buy it) a nuclear weapon-all as part and parcel of a not so cold war with Iran. Given these facts, how do you respond to critics that doubt the United States` stated goals of promoting democracy, human rights, women`s rights, and “moderate” (whatever that is) Islam?

Question: Israel has nuclear weapons and has threatened to use them in the past. True or false?

Question: How are Rick Santorum`s views on homosexuality (or the Christian right`s views more generally) different than President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad`s or King Abdullah`s? Can you help us tease out the differences when all three have said that as long as homosexuals do not engage in homosexual sex, it`s all good?

Question: Is the special relationship between the United States and Israel more special because they are both settler colonies, or is something else going on?