Voices Prohibited by Mainstream Media and Its Role Spreading Islamophobia
by Rula Jebreal
Delinda
Hanley: Go find your seats—we’re in for a real treat. Americans are
very quick to criticize other countries for their restrictions on
their media. The truth is, due to constant relentless pressure from
supporters of Israel, our own media is profoundly restricted. We can
criticize every country, including our own—except for Israel. Our
speakers will discuss Israel’s influence on television, print media,
and in the film industry.
So I have the great honor to introduce Rula Jebreal, who is here to
present the second keynote address today. It’s titled, “Voices
Prohibited by Mainstream Media and Its Role in Spreading
Islamophobia.” Then she will sit down and join our media panel.
Rula Jebreal is an award-winning journalist, author and foreign
policy analyst. Her first autobiographical novel, Miral, sold two
million copies and has been translated into 15 languages. Rula’s
dramatic screenplay turned Miral into a major motion picture, a
rarity for any political film—not to mention a film telling a
Palestinian’s story. Both are available at our Middle East Books
booth, and she’s signing those books during the reception tonight.
Rula was born in Haifa and placed in the Dar El Tifl orphanage,
founded by the late Ms. Hind al-Husseini in Jerusalem, where she
received a superb education. I met her first at a luncheon hosted by
Jumana Areikat, the wife of Palestinian Ambassador Maen Areikat. By
the time she was 18, Rula told us, she was frustrated by the way
Muslim Palestinians were portrayed in the media. I got tired of
throwing my shoe at the TV, she told us. So Rula started writing her
own articles. She received a scholarship from the Italian
government, graduated, and later earned a master’s degree in
journalism and political science.
Rula became the first foreign anchorwoman in the history of Italian
television. Her career in American television has been more of a
challenge. But I will let her tell her own story. Rula, please join
us.
Rula Jebreal: Thank you. I’d like to thank Delinda and everybody at
the Washington Report and IRmep. They’ve been very active lately,
not only in organizing this amazing conference. But I have to say, I
received a phone call from Delinda two weeks ago, and I was visiting
some friends in Florida who had some health issues. Delinda said,
well, I need to send you something urgently and I think you would be
fascinated by it. I didn’t understand why she was secretive. Then
Monday when I came back home and opened it, there was this package
of e-mails [from an IRmep FOIA request] of some producer in Voice of
America asking a former speaker of AIPAC if he would be fine that I
would be the guest to debate whoever they deem as a proper Israeli
official, eventually to debate him on television about the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Obviously I will spare you some of these misogynist, sexist,
disgusting details of the back and forth. But basically this has
been the way my career—somehow, whenever I was hired by anybody in
the American media—I love when they are about to prepare a war,
whether it’s a war in Afghanistan or in Iraq, it’s like, we are
going to liberate women, we will teach these natives how to treat
women. And then you read these e-mails. I was like, sure, I’m sure
you know exactly how to treat women and how to talk about them.
It’s fascinating to have the superior culture, but it’s a glimpse of
the kind of power that they not only established, they exercise and
wield shamefully, without any shame. But I am sure these e-mails
were not the only e-mails. These are the e-mails that we know of.
These are the e-mails that we had access to. But I am sure if you
read private e-mails, internal e-mails of any news outlet—whether
it’s The New York Times, CNN, MSNBC—you will find similar things,
where we are begging.
Gideon said that the government is begging the Israeli government,
that it was like we want to give you the money and they’re saying
basically, no, we want more. Somehow we need to kiss their hands.
But the media has played a major role in making this happen.
I grew up actually admiring the American media. I grew up thinking
American media is, you know, this is a media that managed to expose
major cases of corruption in history and forced a president to
resign. This is the media that inspired me as a child, because I
thought you can live actually in a country where a simple
journalist, a simple reporter, can do his job or her job and can
force the most powerful man in the land to answer some tough
questions and eventually be forced to resign or be impeached. I
thought, that’s the kind of dynamic of a vibrant democracy that
makes this democracy vibrant. That’s the kind of journalist I didn’t
see around me.
I grew up watching Arabic television, where I knew that somehow
somebody in the government has written the questions, and maybe the
answers also. So I grew up with that kind of culture, thinking
something needs to change here. And I always looked up to Western
media. So when I worked in Italian television, they hired me simply
because I was the only woman who spoke Arabic. They needed somebody
to understand the Middle East. They needed somebody that is native
from the region to explain to them what went wrong. That famous
article in Newsweek—what went wrong with the Arab Muslim world? And
I remember going to my director and explaining to him the difference
between Shia and Sunni and why the Iraq war would be disastrous,
because just simply looking at the numbers, the composition of the
population in Iraq—60 percent Shia. They sent me to cover the Iraq
war.
I started my career in Italian television, and I always love to be
underestimated because it gives me somehow more freedom, because as
soon as they realize what they have, as soon as they realize what I
was standing for, what I was doing, then these sexist, misogynist
e-mails were some of the weapons they used and they throw against
me. Obviously it makes me laugh, but it makes me think that there’s
a lot to be done.
American media has been the most disappointing thing I’ve ever seen
in my life. Even working in countries like Egypt, I’ve seen
pushbacks by certain journalists, reporters, TV hosts by far much
more than in this country. And I’m saying that because I’ve seen
what that produced. Iraq was a war of choice. It was a non sequitur
country that was invaded for a nonexistential threat. It could have
happened only with the tacit, silent and vocal consent of American
media, which sold a lie—and none of these people have ever been
fired! They’ve actually been recycled, and they still are called
experienced and the experts on many issues—Iran and the Iran nuclear
deal, they’re writing long essays about Obama’s doctrine, as they
call it. Nobody ever questioned their failures, their lies, their
manipulation. None of that has happened.
But they actually questioned the fact that my hair is long or short,
or I am skinny or fat. I mean, we are reduced to a level that
allowed and enabled every lobbyist to get away with murder and
basically pave the way for Donald Trump to become the frontrunner. I
think we’re responsible for that. And it reminds me very much of the
media in Egypt and Italy before the revolution.
The title of the conference, is this good for America? Not only is
it bad, Israel’s influence here goes beyond Israel and Israeli
borders. If you think of the larger dynamic in the Middle East, if
you think how much money—we’re talking about four billion to Israel,
think of the two billion to Egypt. This two billion is paid to the
Egyptian regime that basically created a deep police state, a deep
state and doomed democracy in that country. This is the country that
gave us Zawahiri, number one of al-Qaeda today. This is the country
that gave us political Islam. Inside the prison cells, more atrocity
has been committed, torture since the ’60s that basically
radicalized an entire generation. And they left with one idea,
transnational jihad. Go after the regime. Create terrorist groups to
go after the regime. Blow themselves up and, guess what, every one
of their backers—starting with the United States.
So somehow we enabled a government that produced mass
radicalization, and why? Because of one issue—because of the Camp
David Accords. Basically we still give money to a regime that is
committing atrocities, and violating human rights, and killing
thousands of people, and imprisoning 60,000 as we speak today
because of that peace accord with Israel, or to keep the peace with
Israel or to do Israel’s dirty jobs, for example closing the borders
with Gaza.
The other ally that we never not only question it—if you think of
what Israel has been trying to push the United States to do, it goes
beyond the Israeli-Palestinian issue. We had Bibi Netanyahu, who
came here to testify in 2002. His words were: We need to go into
Iraq and do the regime change that we need to, because this will
have a positive effect on the entire region. If you look at the
region, I don’t see an area where there are positive effects you can
see. But the whole issue was one, and they’ve been vocal about it.
They don’t even care about the Palestinian issue, basically. What
they care about is the Iran issue, and the Iran issue has been
really the focus of this government for the last 20 years. So you
have the prime minister, the minister of defense, Silvan Shalom, and
even the former Ambassador Oren who basically are telling us that
they’d rather have Sunni radical groups like ISIS, al-Qaeda, the
al-Nusra Front, than any Shia group—as if the answer to the region
is, yes, let’s wage war on the Shi’i. And the Sunni, who gave us
every, not only a radical group, but every group that has committed
atrocities, we can turn a blind eye on these guys.
This is the same reasoning, this is the same mindset, as the Cold
War. This is exactly the same mindset and it’s never changed. I
think they are not realizing that the post-colonial order that’s
been established in the Middle East has collapsed already, it
doesn’t exist anymore, and it collapsed because of their choices.
The Iraqi war basically ended that post-colonial era, but they are
still thinking as if they’re living in 1979. The mentality of the
mujahideen was that mentality. There’s a Russian invasion, so the
Russians are the enemies. And this is the Cold War mentality. So we
need to create an alliance with whoever is there to defeat that
monster. We created a Frankenstein monster that is turning on all of
us.
We keep repeating the same strategies and the same mistakes. I
understand that it’s hard for a politician to change because they
are beholden to the checkbooks of Sheldon Adelson and Haim Saban.
Somehow, sadly, they call it legal corruption in my world. Here they
call it Citizens United.
But the real failure has been my colleagues—the people who are
sitting on television with the revolving door. They served as
spokespersons for AIPAC 10 years earlier, and then they are on CNN
as a neutral TV host, or some prison guard who served [in Israel] is
lecturing people on some website on how they need to behave as
journalists. Somehow the system allowed for these voices to thrive
and to become the establishment voices.
When you listen to people debating, oh, how did we not understand
that Trump would become the frontrunner—the signs were all there.
The writing was on the walls. What were you thinking when for years,
years since 9/11, the idea of us and them went from a marginal idea
to a mainstream idea—that “them” was your neighbor who was Muslim,
or Sikh, or eventually a Hasidic Jew. The war on diversity started
by eliminating critical voices in mainstream media in the United
States. I mean, I can’t even fathom until now how it’s possible
that, in a country that led serious investigative journalism and led
to push an administration to resign with Nixon, can be the country
that allowed not only an administration to abuse its power, and pass
secret memos, and spy on their citizens, or torture some people.
Our surprise today—and some of these speakers are
intelligent—surprised that you have a fascist on the rise and
basically telling you that you didn’t actually do enough. When I
listen to these debates and some of my colleagues don’t even have a
follow-up question for some of these candidates, who are not only
calling to commit war crimes but they’re saying it’s not even
enough, you need to expand those war crimes because waterboarding is
not enough. You need maybe to kill him and kill his family and his
relatives, because this is what will make us all safe.
Look, in my entire life I’ve never worked so hard to make people
understand what the stakes are. But I’m concerned for the next
generation. Because when I grew up, obviously, I watched that kind
of journalist like Dan Rather and others. I think our children are
growing up—if they’re 15, 16, or 14—and they look for people to
inspire them. I mean, if that person is Anderson Cooper, I want to
jump from a window.
The follow-up question matters more than the question itself, to
push back. If your job is actually to expose lies, corruption and
deflections, push them to answer it. The only person on who has been
doing this somehow, and surprisingly—and I’m horrified to say
that—has been on Fox News. I mean, we are looking at Megyn Kelly as
the person who managed to actually challenge some of these
candidates.
But we looked for years at the first African-American president
being smacked by the leader of a country of seven million people,
and here you have a country of 300 million people, supposedly the
leader of the free world, and with Congress basically accepting that
and allowing that. That can lead only in one direction. This is the
beginning of dismantling of a democracy of this country, and this is
what is worrisome.
The Israeli model is not contained in Israel. It’s being transported
and it’s becoming part of the American model. So when you have
police brutality and the cozy relationship with the media, it’s
becoming a cozy relationship in the police departments. So the
police who abused their powers in Ferguson have been trained
actually by Israeli police, and it’s considered normal. Nobody’s
investigating this kind of cozy relationship.
I am proud actually to be sitting with Philip Weiss here, who
reported about some of these executives at CNN who are speechwriters
for Bibi Netanyahu. I mean, the level of cooperation and propaganda
has reached such a level that today it’s normal. We are the
abnormal. We are the aberration. These people are writing the
chapter of this nation’s history. This is the quote from [Antonio]
Gramsci, my favorite European intellectual, who wrote from his
prison cell. He was asked about [Benito] Mussolini, and he said
Mussolini was not an aberration. Mussolini was an autobiography of a
nation. He was part of this nation. He was enabled by the media. He
was himself a journalist. He was enabled by a system that turned a
blind eye.
I think we need to push harder, and we need to fight more. I think
we need to create a community that is—we are part of an ecosystem
that can help each other to expose this more. We cannot allow
ourselves to—obviously 15 years ago I used to throw my shoe at the
television. I can’t do this anymore. I’m very happy to be ejected
from certain TV networks, but I’m very happy actually to be part of
a system that whatever Philip or Max Blumenthal and other people
write, we need to cooperate so we can push that message.
It can’t be a parallel world. It must be a united world, because the
wave that is coming is by far much more dangerous. I’ve seen it in
other places. I’ve seen it in Europe, and I’ve seen it in the Middle
East. These people are beyond ruthless. [Silvio] Berlusconi, when he
was elected in 1994, the first things that he did, he sued 18
journalists, kicked 18 others from television, from networks—people
who dared to criticize him. Some of them were my friends—Marco
Travaglio or Santoro and others.
I worked for an Egyptian television in 2009. After six months I had
to leave, because the level of bullying and abuse was beyond me. I
couldn’t control it. It wasn’t about me. It was about the people who
worked with me. I knew that while the establishment was talking
about the transfer of power from the father Mubarak to his son, the
people were talking about actually three things, and these three
things still exist. They were talking about freedom, democracy, and
dignity. And this is what I kept hearing from the ground.
So the detachment between the base and the establishment, the gap is
so deep, but we need to stay tuned with the base, because actually
the base will lead the change. I don’t believe the establishment
will anymore, but I believe the base will. The millions of people
who were neglected around the Arab world stood up one morning,
apparently without any reason. Three months earlier Hillary Clinton
said it’s a stable country. People ignored those voices to such an
extent that they didn’t even bother to think or to ask them what do
you want, what do you think. These people stood in the streets and
demanded dignity. They overthrew a regime. They had setbacks.
But that kind of power, that kind of sentiment, is still out there.
It’s not dead. It’s dormant, but it’s not dead. I am sure it will
rise again. I am sure just like I’m looking at you. And I hope in
that moment we’ll be ready to help them and build a bigger bridge—a
bridge that will unite us here and in the Middle East. It will not
be about them and us, but it will be about all of us. Thank you.
Delinda Hanley: Thank you very much. You are reminding me of Gideon
Levy’s speech last year. He called for an American Spring, and I
think we are all inspired.
