CAIRO: When 21-year-old American student living in Cairo Lily Sussman decided to vacation in Israel three weeks ago, she had no idea that her little trip was going to turn her into a big YouTube sensation on the Daily News Egypt channel.
But before she became a YouTube favorite, Lily’s blog post “I’m sorry we blew up your laptop (welcome to Israel) had her blog hits shoot up from about 2,500 to over 286,000 between Nov. 30 until time of press, with the numbers growing by the thousands everyday.
On her post, she relayed a surreal experience braving the Israeali border with Taba, where Israeli security officers questioned and searched her for about two hours, and “pressed every sock and scarf with a security device, ripped open soap and had [her] strip extra layers, according to her blog lilysussman.wordpress.com.
She was quizzed on why she lived in Egypt and not Israel, on the nationality of her boyfriend if she had one, on Judaism and on what she knows about the “conflict there. Then a while later, after hearing an announcement in English, Arabic and Hebrew warning travelers not to be alarmed if they hear gunshots aimed at “suspicious passenger baggage, she was approached by the chief security officer that day who apologized for blowing up her laptop. She was outraged, until she found out that her hard drive was miraculously left intact – thankfully they had just put three huge bullets through the laptop.
Her blog post received over 825 comments since it was published, with comments spanning the gamut from angry Israelis who refused to believe her story, despite the fact that she had also posted pictures of her ill-fated Macbook Pro, to those who plausibly questioned the reasonability of shooting any device security officers may have deemed a possible bomb threat. Wouldn’t “confiscation and examination work just as well? asked one commentator.
It’s fascinating to read some of the ensuing discussions about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with insightful comments on Jewish identity and the right to criticize the state. The transition from blog sensation to YouTube sensation was made thanks to Daily News Egypt’s multimedia team video journalists Jon Jensen and Ian Lee, who managed to get a hold of Lily as soon as she returned to Egypt and convinced her to agree to shoot a video interview to be posted on DNE’s YouTube channel (www.youtube.com/user/TheDailyNewsEgypt).
Between Dec. 15 when the video was uploaded and Dec. 18 in the afternoon, the 2-minute, 51-second interview with Lily reported and produced by Jensen and Lee, had received 83,957 views and 270 comments, making the Daily News Egypt’s channel the 36th most-viewed YouTube video channel worldwide on Dec. 17, beating Al Jazeera English and even Playboy.
The video included a response from the Israel Airports Authority which manages the Taba Border Crossing. After pursuing officials there for a full working day, the Authority replied to an email inquiry by saying that “During the security check performed on Ms. Sussman an indication was raised that required the security representative to follow procedure and call the police bomb sapper, and that he did.
In the age of the information technology revolution, this example of how the single experience of one person crossing a border has spread like wildfire within the span of a few days and triggered such heated reactions from so many people only serves to reinforce the power of new media for giving voice to the voiceless.
It is new media that has become instrumental in raising public awareness of the humanitarian crisis resulting from the Israeli siege of Gaza and the continuous violations of the State of Israel in the West Bank, where they continue to build settlements and evict Palestinian residents from their homes.
It is not a coincidence that a little over a week ago the British government recommended that a prominent label be placed on hundreds of Israeli products made in Israeli settlements. British officials said that the new move does not constitute a boycott, but rather, “aims at transparency in a bid to warn consumers who do not wish to purchase such products.
The efforts of pro-Palestine lobbyists in the UK are beginning to bear fruit. But what they have been able to achieve so far cannot be dissociated from the new tools they are using to achieve them.
What Lily went through on the border just to spend a two-week vacation in Israel, where she has Jewish family in Tel Aviv, is the daily ritual Palestinians endure at checkpoints on their own homeland just to go to work everyday to feed their families.
As for Lily, at least the Israelis promised to compensate her for her laptop.
To watch DNE’s video interview with Lily Sussman, please go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihXtbB-4GWw
Rania Al Malkyis the Chief Editor of Daily News Egypt.
