An Open Letter/Appeal from Nigel Parry to Palestinians in the Diaspora during the September 2000 Clashes[click here for news about this appeal]
7 October 2000
Dear Palestinians (and friends of the Palestinians) everywhere,Some of you might remember me from Birzeit's website (www.birzeit.edu), which I helped to create and launch in 1996. If not from there, perhaps from "The Complete Guide to Palestine's Websites" (www.birzeit.edu/links), the "On the Ground in Ramallah: Reports from a Town Become Battlefield" website from the September 1996 Clashes (www.birzeit.edu/palnews/war), "A Personal Diary of The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict" (www.birzeit.edu/diary or nigelparry.com/diary), or the "September 1996 Memorial website" (www.birzeit.edu/martyrs/september96). It's been five years now since I started working on Palestinian websites. I did this for one reason: I believe the main reason that the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict has carried on as long as it has is simply because the Israelis have learned very well the importance of winning the war of words. They have invested billions of dollars in this area. One thing in common with all of the above websites, is that they are intentionally aimed at a Western audience. That's the most important target for information. Unlike the Israelis, it is still true to say from the available evidence that the Palestinians haven't understood this this. From the official Palestinian Authority website which looks unprofessional, to the fact that Birzeit University currently has no webmaster, it's the same story. Consider the case of the main supporter of Israel in the world, the United States: Have you *really* ever taken on board that your average American isn't fundementally positioned against the Palestinian people or their cause? It's not that Joe or Jane American don't care about the plight of the Palestinians. It's not even that they have been convinced by Israeli propaganda. The banal reality is not conspiracy, but rather that most Americans just don't have an idea what's going on there. Their mainstream media is by and large shallow, and mostly runs brief segments from wire service copy. I spent some of my two years in the US trying to raise money for a project, based on "A Personal Diary of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict" (nigelparry.com/diary), which would put people in every main Palestinian city with a laptop, video camera, and connection to the Internet. This is a radical idea only because the reality is that just a handful of the 700 or so foreign correspondents registered in the country at any one time actually live outside of Israeli-controlled areas. From my time in Palestine, I have bits of footage that the commercial media never got, simply because they don't live there. For the overwhelming majority of foreign correspondents, it is preferable to live among the comfortable Western-style amenities of Israeli-controlled Jerusalem. As I went around asking Palestinians in the US to support this project, I was told time and time again by Palestinian activists that Palestinian Americans will not give money for this kind of project. The fact is that most of the funding for projects in the occupied Palestinian territories comes from non-Palestinians. Anniversary projects in Palestine to commemorate fifty years since the Palestinian Nakba were not funded by Palestinians. They were rather funded by the same Europeans who voted in 1947 in the UN to give the Israelis your country. Mohammed or Samira Palestinian-American in Chicago or Michigan needs to accept responsibility for making sure their people don't become the Middle East's version of the Native Americans who they can see around them in their American parks, their hope stolen by centuries of injustice, their pain cushioned by alcohol and drugs. It was the same situation with the equipment appeal during the 1996 September Clashes. The $15,000 we raised to buy computers and scanners so that we could tell you what was going on, was given to us mostly by Europeans and Americans. Not by Palestinians. The irony was that Palestinian-Americans were one of the main groups that visited and responded positively to the site, the first Web-based news reporting by local residents of a conflict zone in history no less. But it was the Europeans and Americans who responded to the appeal for equipment. So I gave up trying to go for big information fundraising projects. In the end, it is truly not my war. I am Scottish. I am not Palestinian. It makes no sense to beat my head against whatever it was that gave birth to that shameful unwillingness to help us let you know what is going on. That's your job, as diaspora Palestinians -- to help people on the ground in Palestine create resources to communicate the realities taking place there to the voters around you. Those stories of lush olive groves and those memories of pastoral Palestinian bliss that are passed on from generation to generation in exile mock those who live in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Life on the ground hasn't been like that for years. A lot of the ground you remember doesn't exist any more and won't. It has been stolen, bulldozed, concreted over, built on, polluted, and if you ever did move back there to the same place your family came from, you would have to endure the racial prejudice and hatred from the Israelis who currently live in those areas. And I doubt very much that the current leaders on the ground would even manage to secure you that bleak vision. The Israelis didn't make peace with these people because they respected them. They made peace with them because they knew that they could control them, and because the world would be too relieved to look at the deal closely and would therefore go along with it. In short, the dream is over. It's time to consider reality. In today's West Bank and Gaza Strip, things are going to hell. Palestinians there have been torn apart inside by over 50 years of displacement, over 30 years of military occupation, and 7 years of a peace deal that has brought in new repressions on top of the old ones we hoped would pass into memory. Have you ever really wondered why a Palestinian would confront well-trained Israeli soldiers who armed with high velocity ammunition, to throw stones from a distance too far to hit them? Let me spell out what this means. In essence, we have been watching the desperate mass suicide of a people with nothing left to lose -- on our TVs, no less -- which as I've already said, are not the most reliable sources of information. Understand above all that I'm only giving you a hard time here because I think that deep down you do actually care, although my experience has been somewhat different. I understand that these last seven years have been confusing and hope-destroying. It is only because that is ten times more true on the ground that I'm writing to you all today. Right now we need to help the people on the ground with something very easy and something very specific, which I will get to in a minute. The board of directors of the Israeli Broadcasting Authority had a meeting on October 5th, in which they decided "not [to] provide a stage for the leaders of the Palestinian inciters and rioters and not give excessive voice, exposure, or coverage to radicals." You can bet the various pro-Israel lobbies around the world are pressuring the big TV networks and wire services -- the people who provide the international news to the majority of media stations and publications in the world -- to do exactly the same. Like the tenuous Israeli permits to enter "Israel" or Jerusalem that have been granted to only to a few Palestinians at a time, and withdrawn without warning, today Palestinians are also having their permits to narrate taken away from them. The problem is that I doubt you could find a single Palestinian in Palestine today that would say anything different than this mythical group of "inciters and rioters" described above. Everyone is angry. Everyone has had enough. They have the right to be. Since the begininning of clashes -- as of Saturday 7 October 2000, 12:32 am Palestinian time (GMT+2) -- Palestinian human rights organisation Addameer (www.addameer.org) notes that a total of 64 deaths in the West Bank and Gaza have been reported, and a total of 12 in 1948 areas, bringing the total to 76. Addameer also notes that 2,394 injuries have been reported in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with 1,000 injuries to Palestinians from 1948 areas. The sheer scale of the current situation would seem to me to be something that should not be left up to these 700 foriegn journalists to report from the frontlines of the American Colony Hotel Bar. Reports from inside Palestine have cited three very disturbing events that I have yet to see reported in the Western media. Rest assured that no foreign journalists based there are going to spend much time hunting down the full stories in the current climate:
The one thing that gives me hope in the current situation is that information like this *is* available, for those that want it, regardless of what the media does or does not report. Palestinian human rights organisation Addameer has provided this information in a new website titled the "September 2000 Clashes Information Center" at http://www.addameer.org/september2000/ This website, ironically enough, is being put together by the same people who put together the websites relating to the September 1996 Clashes. The site has updates several times daily. It includes news of the latest developments, photographs and information about the martyrs who have been killed, eyewitness stories, a list of protest actions taking place worldwide, and other information. Key sections have just been translated into French. The people making this site, just like for the September 1996 site, are doing so voluntarily. In its first week, including before CNN began linking to it from every story about the clashes, the Palestinian server of the "September 2000 Clashes Information Center" has seen 14,259 vistors (an average of 2,031 a day). These 14,259 visitors have looked at a total of 49,242 pages on the site. [Editor's note: By the end of 10 October, 5 days later, this number had risen to 34,417 visitors and 138,473 page views.] This number is increasing, as more people hear about the site. Here's my request: The people building this site have access to one computer. They stand in line for it. They work until 2:00 a.m. each day to compile, HTML, upload, and send out update notices, so that we can know what is going on. The computer crashes often. It is very frustrating. They are tired and stressed out. Like all the people around them, they are very disturbed by the events going on and they are reacting in one of the most constructive ways in which you can react in that kind of situation. They need one, preferably two laptops (US $2,500 each), a printer (US $300), and a scanner (US$ 200), which will be used by Addameer for reporting on these and any similar events in the future. This will cost US$ 5,500 in total. There is no time for fundraising. If you can help these people do what they do to let you know what is going on in Palestine, please get in touch with me at help-addameer@nigelparry.com and I will send you both my contact details (if you have any further questions), and the details for how to wire money to Addameer staff in Palestine via Western Union. All donations will be acknowledged on the Addameer website, which is a registered NGO. Please help out with this request if you have the power to do so.
Nigel Parry 7 October 2000 This page is archived at http://nigelparry.com/help-addameer.html |
