GAZA CITY: First, there was the sputter of what even my sleep-addled mind could identify as gunfire, coupled with the thump of what I could guess were detonating shells. Second, there was the apprehension that the Israeli-Hamas ceasefire was less than four days old, and the upshots of the crackling and thudding outside could be huge.
I was up and at the window fast. Drawing back the curtains, I saw a flotilla of sardine boats descend upon the Gazan shoreline. Warships on the horizon and sporadic ring-shaped splashes confirmed the source of the thuds as shells. A Hamas spokesperson would tell me later that five people were injured that morning, though an Associated Press article would report it was only two.
So went my first morning in Gaza.
Admittedly, I was a bit out of place in a war zone. As a reporter, I stick mostly to business news, which means a lot of my time is spent in dimly-lit conference halls, reviewing press releases about interbank lending rates and current account deficits, trying to distill them into something intelligible.
So what brought me to a region as beset by conflict as the Gaza Strip? The question has come up a lot since I’ve returned to Cairo. This is understandable: Though I officially entered Gaza as a reporter, I went only partially to report. For me, a relatively young journalist, it was more important to try to move the issue from the abstract to the tangible in my own mind; that is, to see what was actually happening. In the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, I have long been wary of both sides’ eagerness to use the media to its advantage. Seeing this firsthand, I thought, might help me better distinguish truth from invention, fact from bluster.
And what I saw inside Gaza did confirm just how fraught the place is with confusions of purpose, contortions of truth and conflicts of interest. Grinning, English-speaking Hamas spokesmen lounge at the Al Deera hotel alongside reporters from the West’s papers of record, puffing shisha and offering soundbite-laden commentary on the iniquities of the Jewish state. Israeli spokespeople serve up plenty of calculated bombast as well, retracting and revising statements on white phosphorus, for instance, as evidence of its use becomes increasingly hard to refute.
Add to this that many journalists, immersed in the wretched statistics and anecdotes of war, have trouble keeping their distance. Basic humanity would compel even the most war-hardened reporter to be moved by the case of Dr Ezzeldin Abu Al-Aish, a doctor active in seeking reconciliation with Israelis who lost three daughters to tank fire, for instance.
So what is the journalist’s place in war? How can a reporter hope to portray the moral flux of it with any degree of equanimity? Is it naïve to believe that one can ultimately resist choosing a side? I had plenty of time to mull these questions as I waited to enter Gaza with over 40 other journalists last Wednesday, but the answers were hard to find.
In an interview with the Christian Science Monitor, Jill Carroll, an American journalist held hostage for a time in Iraq, offered the following advice to young journalists bound for conflict-ridden regions:
“. If you want to do it, make sure you are doing it for the right reasons. If you are trying to do it for money or adventure, those are for the wrong reasons. If you are trying to do it because it is exciting to be in a war, then that s a wrong reason. You should be going there because you feel journalism is a duty and a noble cause, and that the only way to fulfill that noble cause, and to perform that duty to the utmost, is by going to a place that needs understanding.
That realization is the easy part. Doing the job well is another matter.
It seems simple enough. State the facts, provide context, tell the truth. But doing a good job at this can be tricky even when reporting export figures, much less writing on a place like Gaza, where something as intuitive as labeling Hamas’ 2007 coup “violent can get you labeled as a Zionist, an apologist, or whatever brand of “ist the times demand. Just look at the uproar over the BBC’s refusal to air an international plea for aid on the grounds that it might affect their journalistic neutrality.
All this is not to say there aren’t journalists doing good work in Israel and Palestine. There are many. The complexity of the conflict has even spurred many to do better, more thoughtful reporting than they might otherwise.
But still, it is essential to be skeptical. Check facts for yourself. Be careful of the traps of conviction. In Gaza, emotions cloud both sides and seep into the reporting of even the most impartial observers. Regrettably often, it is as the old saying goes: In war, the first casualty is truth.
