LONDON: A project featuring the personal accounts of 25 Gazans living under Hamas rule has attracted media coverage from around the world, all eager to share the stories of the coastal Palestinian strip, where the ruling party keeps the media under tight control.
The US-based Center for Peace Communications on Monday launched its “Whispered in Gaza” project, which sheds light on the climate of fear and repression created by the Hamas movement across the territory it controls.
To protect the speakers’ identities, CPC created a series of animated videos in place of images in the original materials, all of which Arab News has authenticated by viewing the original footage used for drawing the reproductions.
Al Arabiya, CPC’s Arabic presenting partner, said the initiative aims to “help overcome” the “informational blockade” in the Hamas-controlled strip by interviewing a diverse group of 25 individuals living there.
According to Reporters Without Borders, in July 2020, Hamas issued a ban prohibiting journalists from working for Al Arabiya news channel in response to a report about the arrest of several members of the movement for allegedly working for Israel.
Some of the accounts in the videos expressed longing for the days before Hamas seized power in 2007. One woman, Maryam, spoke about growing up singing and dancing the dabke, an Arab folk dance, and how her dreams of making a career out of her talent were hijacked by Hamas, who threatened her brothers with imprisonment if she pursued her ambition.
CPC President Joseph Braude told Al Arabiya that “Whispered in Gaza” provides a constructive challenge to the international discussion of Gazan affairs.
“On the one hand, it challenges those who justify Hamas militancy to choose between supporting Hamas and supporting the Palestinians it oppresses,” he said.
“We hope as well that governments and international bodies striving to help the Palestinian people in Gaza through direct aid to Hamas will consider the substantial evidence of Hamas financial impropriety that emerges from this testimony. At the same time, the series also challenges the many who oppose Hamas to recognize that countless Gazans want a brighter and more peaceful future, and ask what can be done to empower them.”
The Times of Israel, which has partnered with CPC to present the series in English and French, opened one of its two articles on the topic with the quote “I want Gaza to be liberated from the government of Hamas,” which features in the episode “Bring Back the Dabke.”
In reference to the video “My Brother is Gone,” the Jerusalem-based online newspaper wrote that “under Hamas rule, the line between taxation and racketeering is a blurred one,” citing a Palestinian poll which revealed that “73 percent of Palestinians believe Hamas institutions are corrupt.”
Many Gazans, according to Braude, already speak out on social media in an attempt to convey their suffering to the world, but are often pressured by Hamas to remove their posts.
The series was also covered by the London-based independent Iranian newspaper Kayhan Life, which cooperated with CPC to translate the stories into Farsi, making them available to an audience that can relate to the Gazans’ suffering.
The Spanish edition of the project has been presented by Infobae a US-based online newspaper, while the Brazilian free-to-air television network Record TV supported the Portuguese version.
