Gaza on my mind... and all the forgotten conflicts

Writing in the time of multiplied conflicts

Dear friends, readers, passers-by,

You don’t need me to tell you that we live in a mad, heartbreaking time, in which human values have been torn apart very deeply.

I was in the UK last week.

There were protests all over the country, and more are scheduled, to support civilians, and decry the suffering and injustice felt by the Palestinians, in this terrible and bloody resurgence of the conflict.

Including in Scotland and in London.

Here are images from Bristol, England, on Friday:

Lots of conflicted emotions: paralysing sadness, anger, feeling of terrible injustice, helplessness, desire to act, to join all the protests, to recreate communities, to explain the experience of a post-colonial lives in the West, then powerlessness, and immense fatigue…

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In my case, if the start of the war in Ukraine made me want to return to news and international journalism full time, it was mainly to report on all the other, forgotten or abandoned conflicts, catastrophes, crises and needs.

This war in Gaza poses another grave journalistic problem, if not worse: the rise of misinformation, lack of factual treatment, propaganda, right-wing-isation of the news treatment (pardon the neologism).

In the same way every unjustifiable “terrorist attacks” do.

September 11 did change the media in the whole world. The two attacks of 2015 in France did in Europe.

Now, suddenly, after October 7, the far-right government of Benjamin Netanyahu is “our” ally.

Only yesterday did the media warn against Meloni, Orban and Putin.

Now, the renewed “war on terror” justifies every military decision.

And Western governments turn blind eyes on all his crimes against civilians.

I’m appalled and my contribution can only be minimal…

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As I wrote before, on a daily basis, I work for a news website, RFI, for Radio France Internationale, in English.

When I can, I also write longer, feature articles.

The most recent ones on Palestine, are here, here and here for instance, for The New Arab.

Every hour, though, I post on social media, mostly here on BlueSky for now.

And on my blog, as often as I can, to help select the most important facts:
http://melissa-on-the-road.blogspot.com/

Just doing my part, as a trained journalist with almost 20 years of experience.

The Middle East was one of the subjects I covered the most when I had my first full time permanent job as an international news journalist.

I travelled to Israel and Turkey in 2005, to Egypt and Cyprus in 2006, before moving to the USA to be a correspondent in Miami, and look more towards the global south in general, from Haiti, to the Caribbean and from 2009, Africa.

The conflict around Palestine and Israel has always been with me.

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When I wrote my previous letter in June, ‘Summer of Fires, Angers, and Warmongers’, I couldn’t imagine things would get much worse…

Despite the political context, the Western governments moving more to the right each year, and the near impossibility to speak our mind without feeling threatened, here are a few more words.

If the criminal attacks on 7 October 2003 shocked the world, with the powerful reacting with strong words, the bombing on powerless and besieged civilians in the largest open air prison in the world can’t even make a US President bend on his warmongering prospects…

The West has a huge responsibility in normalising an unfair situation that shouldn't be and forgetting the plight of the oppressed.

If, up until 2005, I believed that peace and a two-state solution were possible, when I first saw Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, I’m more doubtful now.

The hardening of Israeli politics, its lack of commitment for peace or negotiation, its ongoing and increasing colonisation of the West Bank, its oppression on Gaza, the win of the far right at elections, the pure situation of apartheid, well documented by Amnesty and Human Rights Watch among others NGOs and lawyers, all these elements show that Israel doesn’t want peace, may never have wanted peace, but wants to eradicate their neighbours.

In 1998, the International Criminal Court (to which Israel is not a party) defined ‘apartheid"‘ as “inhumane acts committed in the context of an institutionalised regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group, and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.”

We, whether Indigenous, Arabs, Muslims, or post-colonial offsprings of immigrants, whatever you want to call us, we’re only the ghost memories of our parents’ decolonial dreams, long lost.

We cannot not care…

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Meanwhile, away from North American media, so many other conflicts go unreported…

If you have the courage, read my work via these links on Sudan and the Sahel…

If not, I couldn’t judge you.

Take a break, breath, disconnect, try to be happy for a moment.

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Thanks for reading, thanks for caring.

Stay strong.

Melissa