Last week I posted about the Dublin Live piece about a young Gazan who dreams of moving to Dublin to study and escape Hamas. The piece was noteworthy in that it mentioned the reality of Gaza in a way the mainstream media normally doesn’t.
Now The New York Review of Books has a piece adapted from palestinian Arab photojournalist Jehad al-Saftawi’s book My Gaza: A City in Photographs, which again spells out some home truths about Gaza, sorely missing from the mainstream media (hat tip: Michal)
My name is Jehad al-Saftawi. I am a photographer and journalist. For years, I clung to the idea of fleeing my country for the Western world. There is no free press in Gaza. Most of the news channels cater to political parties that use violence to silence opposition. I come from a place overflowing with weapons, where my father could easily buy a pistol and shoot it into the air while cruising the streets of our city. A place where, on any night, you could be awoken by a bomb exploding in your neighbor’s home, stored there by a member of their family who belonged to an armed faction.
Working as a journalist in Gaza is like walking barefoot in a field of thorns. You must always watch where you step. Each neighborhood comprises its own intimate social network, and traveling through them with a camera makes you a significant cause for suspicion. You’re caught between the two sides of the conflict: the rulers of Gaza limit what you can photograph and write about, imprisoning and torturing those who disobey; at the same time, the Israeli army sees you as a potential threat that must be eliminated, as has been the fate of many Palestinian journalists.
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Our father, Imad al-Saftawi, grew up in an ultraconservative middle-class family that was heavily influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood. As an adult, he spent many years participating in armed struggles, both within and outside the framework of Palestinian armed organizations, which he believed to be justifiable resistance to the Israeli occupation. As a member of one of the leading armed factions in Gaza, Islamic Jihad, he killed innocent Israelis.
I condemn these actions, though many in Gaza consider my father a hero, one who carried out valiant operations for the sake of his country and religion.
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My siblings and I lived with my father’s family at the time, constantly feeling the weight of his reputation as a hero, and his community’s disapproval that we weren’t following his lead.
Not surprisingly, a look at Jehad’s Twitter feed shows he is a reasonable guy.
