THE latest Israeli attack on the Palestinians in Gaza has gripped the attention of people everywhere. While the military action is being covered by international broadcasters, the fact that Israel has not allowed foreign media access to Gaza, has forced the Palestinians within the war zone to try to tell the world about the crisis themselves. Many are using the Net and mobile phones as a means of reaching out. Photos taken with mobile handsets are being posted online. SMS communications to friends are being added to blogs or distributed through e-mail. Now that Israel has launched its land incursion, communication resources in Gaza could be reduced to rubble at any moment. It is certain that already the world is not viewing the majority of the atrocities committed by Israel in real time. However, in this digital age personal video and photographic records are surely being created as never before. Like some other governments, Israel may still believe that it can control the reporting of its actions. But the Jews should know, perhaps better than others, that even when crimes are carried out behind high walls and barbed wire that there will be witnesses. In wars of the last century, personal testimony about atrocities was limited to grainy photos and paper documents, coupled with eyewitness accounts. The war in Iraq has shown that eyewitness accounts are now backed up by digital video which is rapidly disseminated on the World Wide Web outside the control of any central authority. Imagination is no longer needed to get the full picture of the destruction wreaked on civilians in war. Global Voices is offering coverage from a variety of blogospheres. The site has a special Gaza bombings coverage page at http://globalvoicesonline.org/specialcoverage/2008-gaza-strip-bombings/ or subscribe to the Palestine RSS feed at http://globalvoicesonline.org/-/world/middle-east-north-africa/palestine/feed/. It’s also possible to follow Twitter (www.twitter.com) users around the world talking in real time about the events in Gaza by subscribing to the GazaNews hashtag (Gaza). The photo sharing site Flickr also has posts including photos taken of the Gaza violence and graphics created in support of the Palestinian people. Input the search term “Gaza” or take a look at www.flickr.com/groups/palestine/pool/. The Electronic Intifada (EI), found at www.electronicIntifada.net, publishes news, commentary, analysis, and reference materials about the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict from a Palestinian perspective. Launched Feb. 23, 2001, EI is a pioneering online resource for media analysis, criticism and activism, EI has progressively expanded its scope with the aim of presenting an accessible, credible and responsible Palestinian narrative of developments on the ground to the international community. From Bahrain, Haitham Sabbah, an “uprooted” Palestinian activist and blogger, is working to organize and coordinate information on the Gaza situation. Sabbah was as born in exile in Kuwait and has not been allowed to visit Occupied Palestine since 1986. “Pro-Palestine Bloggers are facing a challenge to educate their readers and fill in the gap that the main stream media, specially the Americans, are ignoring intentionally as we witnessed during the war on Lebanon in 2006, and is evident now in Gaza,” commented Sabbah. “Because this controlled media has selected to focus on the Israeli side of the conflict and magnify the casualties there while ignoring the atrocities on the Gazan’s side, the public is systematically brain washed to think that the reason for the war is Hamas’ rockets, ignoring the fact that Israel is the occupier and they never stopped attacking Gaza, even during the six month truce period. All of this and more is hidden in the Western media. The duty of Palestinian and pro-Palestine bloggers is to expose these lies and show the world the other side of the story which they normally don’t see on their TV channels or read in their controlled media.” He added, “Moreover, while Israel has barred international media from entering Gaza to cover their crimes, we have Palestinian and Western bloggers inside Gaza who continue relentlessly to publish live and up to minute photos, videos and news that can’t be found anywhere else. Spreading this material of Israeli war crimes is the utmost important objective in this time of war to put pressure on the public around the world to raise their voices against the war in front of their governments. This will help in putting a quick end to this war.” Sabbah has used his degree in Engineering, Electronics and Communication from India’s Birla Institute of Technology, not only in his capacity as a senior manager at Zain Bahrain, but also to support his homeland. He helped create the Palestine Blogs Aggregator at http://PalestineBlogs.net. He is also a co-founder of the Palestine Think Tank http://PalestineThinkTank.com, which, like all of his sites, is primarily in English, but also includes material in Arabic. And of course don’t miss Sabbah’s own blog at http://sabbah.biz.
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