A year ago in Tahrir Square
The time difference meant that when I woke up on Friday January 28th of last year, Tahrir was already ablaze. I remember waking up that day and immediately reading the news. Watching the events unfold threw me in an emotional roller coaster that did not end for weeks.
I spent that day glued to my laptop, shifting from watching different news channels, to getting more news from mainstream media sites, Facebook and Twitter. I vaguely remember not eating that day. I knew that Egyptians had taken to the streets since January 25th, I had even received Facebook invites for that day. I saw the masses of people chanting for Mubarak to leave. But nothing would prepare me for that Friday when things took a very violent turn, generating shock waves across Egypt and the World.
In the following days, I put aside my thesis and spent almost every waking hour following the news. I even made it through NYC’s snow and cold to the rallies that the Egyptian community had organized. I went to every possible talk On-Campus, Off-Campus, Uptown, Downtown that discussed Egypt and the ‘Arab Spring’.
Then on that fateful day, February 11th, Mubarak was gone, or at least no longer President. I was overjoyed, thrilled! Filled with hope for a better future in Egypt, yet wary of the consequences of a military take over and a well organized Muslim Brother hood…
Since Mubarak’s resignation much has happened: a national referendum, a Parliamentary election, more clashes in Tahrir and Maspiro, a lot more civilian deaths and thousands of arrests. What was a moment of triumph for the young Egyptian revolutionaries started to look more like an ongoing battle for their freedom. Today, a year later, we know that this revolution is far from over.
After spending 4 years in Egypt, I left it with a heavy heart knowing that I will always remain connected to that place. Seeing the images of Egyptians fighting for their freedom from the same Tahrir I passed through on a daily basis made this revolution even more personal to me. I truly hope that the Egyptian people succeed in what they went out to accomplish, and because it has taken them years to arrive to this moment, something tells me they’re not about to back down any time soon.
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Global day of rage for Syria
Today is the international day of solidarity with the people of Syria. It has been ten months since the Syrian people first started their revolt against the Syrian regime that has since killed thousands of its own people.
In support of the Syrian people and their fight for justice, a group of Palestinian activists and youth have published a statement (below). Having done research for a project focusing on citizen media in Syria, I had to watch hours of footage coming out of Syria since the start of the revolution. As a result, I have one thing to say: This horrifying bloodshed needs to end!
Palestinians for Syria
21/01/12 is the Global Day Of Rage For Syria
A peaceful revolution…a revolution against foreign intervention…a revolution against sectarianism and factions.This is the revolution of the Syrian people we know.
For ten months now the Syrian people have marched towards freedom and we have no doubt that they will achieve their liberation. For this reason we see it as a duty to warn them of the dangers of foreign intervention and to express our support for their peaceful revolution against sectarianism and factions.
For ten months the Syrian people have marched steadily towards freedom, despite the criminal oppression of Bashar al-Assad’s regime which uses weapons against its own people, instead of using them to liberate their occupied land, and despite the disagreements among their representatives whom the people gave trust in.
For ten months the Syrian people have marched towards freedom as martyr after martyr is sacrificed, which has only strengthened their resolve and steadfastness to continue their march.
For ten months the Syrian people have marched towards freedom as the world analyzes the meanings behind slogans raised in protests, and satellite channels have garnered more viewers with the increase in bloodshed and murders. The media sells to its viewers talks of a conspiracy or of a civil war, and many powers, sells us their support to freedom or democracy in the Middle East, when they never did. We are confident that these plots will fail and be crushed under the feet of the Syrian Arab People.
Ten months and we have avoided watching the disfigured bodies and the brave women who do not fear facing the live ammunition. Ten months and we chose which channel to hear from about the news of 30, 70, 100 martyrs of Syria, which made us ashamed from our miserable show of solidarity, as at the end of every day dozens of families lose their sons and daughters, with seemingly no one to share their pain with.
We, Palestinian activists and bloggers, on the Global Day of Rage for Syrian Revolution, stress our support for the brave revolutionary Syrians. We strongly reject manipulating the Palestinian cause as a cover under which the Syrian martyrs’ bodies are brushed under and stamped upon by Bashar al-Assad’s regime. It is true we must think logically about the dynamics of the Syrian revolution, but we must put the overwrought analyses aside, because the cost is the blood of our Syrian brothers and sisters. We reiterate our support for the peaceful Syrian revolution and its rejection of foreign intervention amidst the threats of sectarianism, as without our solidarity and faith we have no right in theorizing and preaching to the Syrians who are being murdered one after the other.
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SOPA and PIPA to be shelved!
The voices of the Internet community have been heard! The White House finally issued a statement stating that they will not support both SOPA and PIPA, as they currently stand. This lead Congress to shelve both bills (for the time being).
This has come as a result of mass campaigns fighting against both bills. These bills have been labeled “a violation of freedom of speech and a form of censorship” by many, including big players in the Tech world. In fact tomorrow a number of websites including Wikipedia, BoingBoing and Reddit will be participating in a one-day blackout to protest SOPA and PIPA.
To understand how PIPA and SOPA would work I would recommend watching this video:
Based on the explanation on the video, the Internet will never be the same. Crowd sourcing and Start ups will suffer a major blow as result of both bills. I’m hoping that the decision to shelve these bills will be permanent, and we all continue the fight towards our freedom on the Internet.
The hacking war between Israel and Palestine rages on
Today I noticed the hashtag #HackerOmar trending on my Twitter feed. I instantly opened my news feed and yes it was as expected the ‘Saudi’ hacker 0xOmar strikes again. Almost two weeks ago the same hacker published information of tens of thousands of Israeli credit cards. This time 0xOmar decided to target the Tel-Aviv Stock Exchange and El-Al websites.
These cyber-attacks are nothing new, if you recall my previous post on the Internet going down in Palestine (although some may dispute it was a result of a cyber-attack). Israel and Palestine have engaged in a cyber-war for over a decade now. I recall writing a paper over two years ago about the hacking war between Pro-Israelis and Pro-Palestinians during the Gaza Offensive of 2008/2009, and while doing the research for the paper it came to my attention that this war spans back to over a decade.
This recent hacking incident is merely an escalation in a continuing cyber war between Israel and Palestine. However, this war is part of a larger global cyber-war that has seen many players join, yet the sides still remain blurry. The results of this war remain unknown, even though indications strongly point towards the fact that Internet users stand to lose their freedoms online.
Goodbye 2011
It’s been one exciting year, packed with surprises! Starting with the Arab Revolutions to Occupy Wall Street and what I would consider as the year of Citizen Journalism.
As someone who studies digital media, there has been a lot to follow, from Anonymous, to the online activists in the Arab World, the hype around Google+ and how the mobile phone finally took center stage this past year.
Here’s hoping that the next year will bring a better future for the Arab world, and for Palestine. I also look forward to see how social media and new media is going develop in the coming year.
Happy New Year!
No! Not under my name
On this Friday, and after almost two weeks of protesting by the Egyptian Youth against the Egyptian Military Council, the Muslim Brotherhood has called for a day long protest. No, not to end Military rule in Egypt, and no not to postpone the elections, but the demonstration has been called for the “Victory to Jerusalem”!
As a reaction to this, Palestinian youth have started the “Palestine is stronger with a free Egypt” campaign in which they post the following statement on their respective blogs:
We Palestinian youth refuse to use Al-Aqsa and the Palestinian cause as a tool to hit the great Egyptian revolution.
Egypt is witnessing a new wave of revolution lead by the brave courageous Egyptian youth who rejects SCAF’s hijacking their revolution. As the youth are resisting the oppression by the security forces, the Muslim Brotherhood called for a million man march in solidarity with Jerusalem.
We consider this invitation a detour on all Egyptian movements and sectors who announced tomorrow Friday a million man march to bring down Marshal Tantawi.
The Muslim Brotherhood has the right to take their decision in internal Egyptian issues. But we refuse MB taking the lead of the Arab tyrants who systematically used the Palestinian cause as a tool to practice their oppression.
The freedom of Al-Aqsa and Palestine does not come from stepping on the dignity of the Arab people.
We are in solidarity with the heroes of Tahrir square and all the Egyptian cities.
Palestine is stronger with a Free Egypt”
Palestinians after decades of struggle and decades of Arab appropriation of the struggle for their own interests, are making a stance, saying No! no more, not under my name.
Say No To Sexual Harassment
In early October I received an e-mail with the title “Say No To Sexual Harassment”, in it was a call for a meeting to combat sexual harassment in the streets of Ramallah. Being a victim of sexual harassment in the street and someone who advocates for both human and women rights, I had to go. I was among 70 other participants who were eager to tackle this issue. What came to me as a shock at the time, was the accounts of people confirming the fact that sexual harassment has seen an increase in Ramallah during the two years that I had been gone.
The meeting started of with a call for action, and various accounts of harassment that served as a confirmation to the need for action. Finally, after much discussion amongst the participants, including representatives from women organizations such as Sawa, Women’s Afairs Technical Committee and Women’s Center for Legal Aid and Counseling, we decided we were going to take action. We started off by creating committees that would work towards launching a full on campaign against sexual harassment in public spaces.
Having worked on crisis mapping in the past, I figured it could be used as a great tool, basically we would be crowd-sourcing the incidents and data on to a map. Once I suggested the idea, many participants sounded excited, indicating that a similar project had been running in Egypt for years. (Harassmap was started by both Rebecca Chiao and Engy Ghozlan to document sexual harassment in the streets of Egypt. I must say that I am very grateful to Rebecca for extending a helping hand, and giving us much needed advice and tips on how to process with our own map.)
The map itself would use the well known Ushahidi platform and link to FrontlineSMS. FrontlineSMS allows us to receive reports via SMS, and we’re given the option to immediately respond with an SMS giving tips and advice on how to deal with sexual harassment. The goal behind this map is to document incidents on the spot, identify hotspots in Ramallah and hopefully use it as a way to build a community willing to combat this horrible phenomenon.
So now a month later, the group has shrunk slightly, but many of us are still powering through. Since our initial meeting, many local organizations have shown interest in our initiative and have offered to help with our campaign. As for the map, well it’s in the process of being tested, we’re hoping to launch the map by the end of this month just in time for the 16 days of Action against Gender Violence. Till then stay tuned to receive more updates on the map and the initiative
Screenshot of the map:
Palestinian Internet is down!
This morning I had problems going online, I figured it’s not that big of a surprise when it comes to Internet and Palestine. As the morning hours passed, I realized I wasn’t the only one with problems connecting to the Internet. It seemed everyone in Ramallah couldn’t go online. I found out a few hours later and by a statement from the Minister of Information Communication Technology that Palestinian networks have been facing cyber attacks originating from 20 different countries. There are no details as of yet about the type of attacks or the origins. Awaiting further news on this matter.
This maybe the first incident in which the entire Palestinian network is targeted, however hacking is not a new phenomenon in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict that has roots going all the way back to over a decade ago.
Graffiti takes up a new meaning in Palestine
I remember being driven through the streets of Ramallah, during my first visit there back in 1994, and noticing the walls filled with graffiti. My cousin at the time said that “graffiti was our daily newspaper during the First Intifadah”, it reported the arrests and deaths of Palestinians during the uprising*. A few years later a campaign to clean up the graffiti took place and the daily records of that time period were erased and a cleaner Ramallah emerged. With the start of the Second Intifadah in late 2000, graffiti made its way back to the walls of Ramallah, this time however the names of those arrested and killed also showed up in posters put up everywhere. What I also noticed was an increase in factional graffiti, almost like gang turf wars, each political faction tried to overtake the other by filling the walls of Ramallah with their symbols.
Of course when The Wall was built, the 8 meter high and 810 Km long cement wall offered the world’s biggest canvas to graffiti artists. Luring artists like Banksy to leave their mark on various parts of the wall. During that time, the form of graffiti changed noticeably, more portraits emerged, whether of the late Yasser Arafat or the incarcerated Marwan Barghouti, and messages to western audiences started to prevail, even graffiti postcards made it to the Wall!
This week a new form of graffiti emerged as part of a campaign run by a group of young Palestinian activists. Their graffiti is trying to direct messages not to a western audience, or political factions, but to their own people. They are asking their people to ‘think’, they are also expressing their ‘Hunger for freedom’ and I even spotted an ‘#occupy wall st. not Palestine’ around the city, linking the Palestinian uprising to that of the Occupy Wall st. movement that started in NYC and has now become a global phenomenon. As one of the activists wrote on their blog, they are “aiming to move the society and create public pressure in regards to fundamental issue such as the Palestinian prisoners hunger strike, the need for the people to think and act.”
I look forward to seeing more of their art covering the walls of Ramallah and other cities across Palestine.
Here are some pictures I took of the graffiti campaign happening in Ramallah recently.
* Here is an interesting article on the role of new media in Palestine, but also on how Palestinians had no broadcast media prior to the Oslo accords, and print media was highly censored by Israel. So Palestinians used graffiti as a way to spread the news. The author also address the development of graffiti from the first Intifadah to the second.
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48 hours… well almost!
So my Facebook experiment almost made it to 48 hours, before I succumbed to my need for news.. during the initial 24 hours, I had typed in the Facebook URL twice before I stopped myself. But by the second day, I just couldn’t do it anymore, I felt disconnected, I needed my news. I re-activated my account..
As a news junkie, I came to realize that I’ve come to rely on Facebook for many things, I got some updates and links to interesting news articles, that I would’ve otherwise not read. Even updates about clashes in the West Bank, Wall St. and on a Football pitch in Florida became part of my life, I have become addicted. That is of course disregarding the whole fact that I’m linked to many of my friends through Facebook, I get constant updates on their life, wedding photos, baby photos and more. Basically it’s become an easy and perhaps lazy way to stay in touch, and for that I’m somewhat grateful.
Eventually, like any addiction I can probably overcome it, but with the help of Facebook I have created a social world is difficult to disconnect from. I feel social when I’m on Facebook, even though it’s a virtual connection, then again when I’m miles away from my friends, virtual is all I have.
