I have no idea what I’m doing. I haven’t in nearly a year and a half, when I left BuzzFeed News, and then I left New York. Now, after this past month, I don’t have much faith remaining in the industry that, for the entirety of my twenties, shaped nearly every facet of my life.
Since October 7th I’ve been writing weekly about what’s happening in Gaza. What I’ve tried to do is gather together all the best things I’ve read about the unfolding genocide (like this, this, and this) and put them together in a somewhat coherent way. But after hitting send on these posts I’ve had some regrets, realizing a million different points I could have made, or essential information I’d left out. I constantly wonder if I should be writing for the most general audience possible or else assume the good faith of my readers. And every few hours I’m facing anew the worst thing I’ve ever seen in my life (most recently: a headless toddler, held aloft by her father for a cruel and uncaring world to see).
I especially regret focusing too much in my earlier coverage on litigating journalistic fights, like the scandal of who bombed the al-Ahli Arab hospital in mid October. Why did I take the bait, running around in circles over one contested atrocity, when Israel has since gone one to bomb hospital after hospital, their maternity wards and pediatric wards and backup generators, in relentless daily strikes? As I write this, 14,000 people—doctors, refugees, patients—are trapped inside of al-Quds Hospital, which is surrounded by Israeli tanks firing upon them. Same goes for Al-Shifa. Palestinian Minister of Health Mai al-Kaila says Israeli forces “are not evacuating people from hospitals; instead they are forcibly evicting the wounded onto the streets, leaving them to face inevitable death”. Doctors Without Borders confirmed yesterday, November 11th: “At the time of writing, our staff are witnessing people being shot at as they attempt to flee the Al-Shifa hospital.” Last night, while healthcare workers gathered in front of UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s office carrying the names of more than 200 physicians killed by Israeli bombardment, a doctor broke down in tears reading a message begging for help from her colleague trapped in Gaza.
I’ve kept writing about Palestine because I don’t know what else to do, even as I keep telling myself that I’m just some fucking guy, why should anyone listen to me, etc. I guess there’s still some small, stubborn part of me hoping that if I put the right horrifying testimonies together with the right historical context from enough of the right sources that I could convince even one person so far unmoved by Gaza’s plight to change their minds. Because it is possible. I’ve seen many heartening stories across social media these past few weeks of even hardline born-and-raised Zionists who, after doing their research at the behest of their followers and friends, have begun advocating for a free Palestine. And every individual person who joins our ranks is helping make the collective movement safer and stronger, by standing in solidarity with everyone around the world who’s been targeted, silenced, fired, harassed, and arrested for speaking out in favor of peace.
What I’ve been reckoning with, as I know a lot of us have, is how so many people over a month into this carnage remain so stubbornly unchanged. How, when a child is murdered every ten minutes in bombing live-streamed daily on social media? How, when most of the world’s countries, every major humanitarian organization, the majority of both American and British voters, besieged Palestinian children holding an English press conference, the fucking Pope, and millions and millions of people around the world are all crying out, screaming, demanding a ceasefire?
It’s one thing to know, intellectually, that propaganda works. It’s another to see it deployed so successfully on otherwise good-hearted, discerning people (as well as, of course, lots of hateful idiots). Israel’s powerful state-run public relations machine couldn’t succeed alone; the apartheid state is aided and abetted in covering its own crimes against humanity by the the Western media. In much in the same way that the US press manufactured consent for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, my industry has utterly failed to meet this moment, and higher up editors in particular have blood on their hands.
I’m proud of my writer colleagues, hundreds of them, who occupied the New York Times’ offices on Friday in protest of the paper’s complicity in genocide. I’m proud to have signed onto this letter alongside over 750 other journalists protesting US newsrooms’ coverage of Israel, as well as this one, for writers against the war on Gaza.
From the former letter, published on November 9th:
Reporters in the besieged Gaza Strip are contending with extensive power outages, food and water shortages and a breakdown of the medical system. They have been killed while visibly working as press, as well as at night in their homes. An investigation from Reporters Without Borders also shows deliberate targeting of journalists during two Oct. 13 Israeli strikes in South Lebanon, which killed Reuters videographer Issam Abdallah and injured six other journalists.
[…]
We stand with our colleagues in Gaza and herald their brave efforts at reporting in the midst of carnage and destruction. Without them, many of the horrors on the ground would remain invisible.
We join press associations including Reporters Without Borders, the Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists Association and the International Federation of Journalists in demanding an explicit commitment from Israel to end the violence against journalists and other civilians. Western newsrooms benefit tremendously from the work of Gazan journalists and must take immediate steps to call for their protection.
We also hold Western newsrooms accountable for dehumanizing rhetoric that has served to justify ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Double-standards, inaccuracies and fallacies abound in American publications and have been well-documented. More than 500 journalists signed an open letter in 2021 outlining concerns that U.S. media outlets ignore Israel’s oppression of Palestinians. Yet the call for fair coverage has gone unanswered.
Newsrooms have instead undermined Palestinian, Arab and Muslim perspectives, dismissing them as unreliable and have invoked inflammatory language that reinforces Islamophobic and racist tropes. They have printed misinformation spread by Israeli officials and failed to scrutinize indiscriminate killing of civilians in Gaza — committed with the support of the U.S. government.
I’m so proud of Jazmine Hughes, whom I’ve admired and looked up to since she was the Editor-in-Chief for our college paper. Last week Jazmine and her editor at the New York Times, where she’s had a storied career since 2015, “both came to the conclusion that she should resign.” Jazmine had signed onto Writers Against the War on Gaza’s statement (as well as another open letter from NYT contributors, published earlier this year and signed by tens of thousands of readers, condemning the Times’ coverage of trans issues).
How can we, as journalists, tell the whole human truth and hold power to account if we are being denied the words to describe the reality before us? Words like: apartheid, ethnic cleansing, genocide. (From the open letter on protect-journalists.com: “U.N. experts have warned they are ‘convinced that the Palestinian people are at grave risk of genocide,’ yet Western outlets remain hesitant to quote genocide experts and accurately describe the existential threat unfolding in Gaza.")
I can’t stop thinking about the content creators turned citizen journalists in Gaza like Bisan, Motaz and Plestia, charismatic Palestinians in their early 20s who are now documenting the mass murder of their people in real time. The Jerusalem Post recently published a hit piece on these famous faces of the war, accusing them of being on Hamas’s propaganda team. (Israel has also accused medical professionals and UN workers as being secretly Hamas; it expects us to believe that journalists are terrorists too.) Almost every prominent Gazan voice, with millions and millions of social media followers between them, is being targeted and hunted by the occupying entity.
What these citizen journalists have been documenting isn’t only extensive destruction and death, but the beautiful spirit and undeniable humanity of the Palestinian people, who are rescuing pets, sharing their food, cheering up orphaned babies, and fighting like hell to keep one another alive. I follow multiple animal rescues in Gaza on X and TikTok, and I start crying every time one of their videos show up on my feed, letting us know that the owners are surviving and the animals are holding on too.
I can’t stop thinking about how deeply radicalizing this moment has been for so many people around the world, and particularly young people, who’ve now developed deep parasocial relationships to everyday Palestinians through their phones. The first thing that hundreds of thousands if not millions of people are doing every day when they wake up in the morning is checking their social media accounts to make sure that Motaz, Bisan and Plestia are still alive.
As of May 2022, about half of Gen Z say they prefer to get their news from social media. Traditional news outlets are (rightly) concerned about this trend and what it might mean for lowered standards of reporting and fact checking, the spread of misinformation, and the devaluation of expertise. I got into journalism during the digital media boom of 2010s, a democratizing era when more young marginalized voices were given bylines and platforms than ever before, but even I can see the benefits of at least a little institutional gatekeeping. How else are we supposed to know who best to trust?
And yet the old standard-bearers have utterly failed to preserve that trust. Last year a Gallup survey revealed that only 34% of Americans trust the mass media to report the news "fully, accurately and fairly,” which was just two points higher than the lowest trust in media Gallup has ever recorded, during the 2016 presidential election. There’s a big partisan divide here: only 14% of Republicans have a great deal of confidence in the media, while 70% of Democrats do. And I’d be shocked if Democrats’ numbers continue to hold that high.
Of course young people would be looking to social media for their news right now. I have never felt such a profound disconnect between what I’ve seen reported on the Times, NPR, CNN and the BBC and the pure horrors on the ground, which have been extensively documented and disseminated through social media. It’s no wonder that powerful people are freaking out about TikTok “indoctrination”:
In recent weeks, powerful politicians, including senators Josh Hawley and Marco Rubio and House Representative Mike Gallagher, have reiterated calls for a ban on TikTok, citing the app’s alleged bias towards anti-Israel and anti-Jewish content.
Of course TikTok skews overwhelmingly pro-Palestine. It’s where Palestinians themselves are, so often denied platforms on mainstream media. For 75 years news outlets around the world have largely failed to convey the simple and devastating facts of Israel’s illegal occupation.
But I haven’t yet lost all my faith in journalism. The heroes working in Gaza are a large reason why, alongside reporters the world over who aren’t simply stenographers for the Israeli regime. I have very much appreciated, for example, master interview Isaac Chotiner’s work since October 7th. His Q&As for the New Yorker these past few weeks have included essential reads on where the Palestinian political project goes from here, the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, and the Gaza-ification of the West Bank. Chotiner’s most recent interview, published November 11th, exposes the extreme ambitions of West Bank settlers. He spoke with Daniella Weiss, a leader of the settler movement, who said Arabs in Israel shouldn’t have the right to vote and that she feels no emotional reaction to Palestinian children being slaughtered in Gaza: “My children are prior to the children of the enemy, period. They are first. My children are first.” She also helps make clear where Netanyahu’s government and extremist Israelis stand on the question of Palestinian sovereignty:
“In Israel, there’s a lot of support for settlements, and this is why there have been right-wing governments for so many years. The world, especially the United States, thinks there is an option for a Palestinian state, and, if we continue to build communities, then we block the option for a Palestinian state. We want to close the option for a Palestinian state, and the world wants to leave the option open. It’s a very simple thing to understand.”
She’s right — it is a very simple thing to understand. The only question is whether those who still doubt her will finally start listening.
Thank you for reading. This post, like everything else I’ve written about Palestine, is unpaywalled; feel free to forward it to a friend. If you’d like to support my work, you can sign up for a full subscription for just $5 a month, or else send me a one-time tip via PayPal.
I really hate self-promotion. At the best of times it feels kinda gross. Now it feels shameful. Intolerable. But that’s the name of the Substack game. I’m one of so many writers trying to make a self-employed living in increasingly inhospitable circumstances. If I were a savvier entrepreneur I’d stop posting about Palestine, because I lose subscribers every time I do so, but like I said at the start of this post: I have no idea what I’m doing. Sharing this information is all I can think of, as well as supporting direct action on the ground. It is the absolute least I can do.
“I have never felt such a profound disconnect between what I’ve seen reported on the Times, NPR, CNN and the BBC and the pure horrors on the ground, which have been extensively documented and disseminated through social media” -- this is exactly it, and the disconnect is even more disorienting when you’re supposed to be inside this media bubble, wondering what you can do to change the tune.