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By Sarah Irving
2 July 2009
Electronic Intifada
Oh Well Never Mind Bye has been focused on by British reviewers as a play about the shooting by the London police of Jean Charles de Menezes, a Brazilian electrician, on an underground train in July 2005.
De Menezes was the victim of the racially-charged hysteria that followed the killing of 52 persons by four suicide bombers on underground trains and a bus in the London rush hour on 7 July 2005, and the failure of a similar series of coordinated attacks two weeks later. A widespread public reaction immediately after his killing suggested that many people were happy to see "another possible bomber" shot dead under whatever circumstances.
But it rapidly became clear that the police had killed an innocent man, and that in an attempt to get away with this they had lied about De Menezes's behavior in the train station in the moments leading up to the shooting.
Oh Well Never Mind Bye is set in the busy newsroom of an unnamed London-based newspaper -- probably a right-wing tabloid -- in the days before and after the De Menezes killing. But in a genuinely brave piece of playwriting, Steven Lally has drawn on wider themes, including the "churnalism" that has turned much of the journalistic profession into a regurgitation of celebrity press releases, the way in which Palestine and related issues are reported in the mainstream media and the influence of the Zionist lobby on news coverage.
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By Rami Khouri, Arab Media Watch adviser, director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, and co-laureate of the 2006 Pax Christi International Peace Award.
1 July 2009
What is the most significant development now underway in the Middle East? Hint: It's not the events in Iran, or the American troop withdrawal from Iraqi cities, or efforts to re-launch Arab-Israeli peace talks - important as these may be. Given the political realities that have defined the modern Middle East and maintained its destructive legacy of widespread and chronic autocracy, political violence and insecurity, the development that could change history for the better in our region is taking place quietly and slowly in Turkey. Broadly, it is the gradual control of the military by the elected civilian government. More specifically these days, it is the current discussion among the leading political parties in parliament to amend the constitution to allow the trials of military officers who carried out coups that toppled elected civilian governments in the recent past.
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During the week of 22-28 June 2009, Al Jazeera English interviewed Arab Media Watch adviser Rami Khouri on the appointment of Saad Hariri as Lebanese Prime Minister; AMW helped Al Jazeera English arrange an interview with adviser Dr Makram Khoury-Machool on Arab and Western media coverage of the Iranian elections; and Arab News Broadcasting interviewed AMW director Muna Nashashibi about AMW's Al Atheer concert in honour of the people of Gaza, the cultural effects of such a concert, and the humanitarian aspects of standing by the people there.
The Guardian published a commentary by AMW chairman Sharif Hikmat Nashashibi, entitled "BBC anti-Israel bias is a myth"; the New York Times published a commentary by AMW adviser Rime Allaf, entitled "Insult to injury"; Al Quds Al Arabi published an article on AMW's study of BBC and Al Jazeera coverage of Israeli-Palestinian violence; and the Global Arab Network published AMW's study on British media portrayals of Gaddafi's visit to Italy, and an article by Khouri, entitled "Iran makes history again."
AMW met with the BBC and the Arab League.
AMW helped the Syrian Embassy with a complaint to the Press Complaints Commission about a newspaper inaccuracy regarding Syria.
AMW liaised with the BBC, Times, Daily Telegraph, Guardian, Reuters, Al Quds Al Arabi, Al Hayat, Al Hiwar, Arab News, Al Akhbar, ANB, Muslim News, Human Rights Watch, the UN, the Arab League and the Palestinian Embassy.
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By Atef Alshaer
30 June 2009
Electronic Intifada
"My homeland, you have spurned me ... I shall never return to you ... I shall never ever return to you ..."
So ends Hisham Sharabi's compelling autobiography, Embers and Ashes: Memoirs of an Arab Intellectual. Sharabi, a leading Palestinian intellectual who died in 2005, uttered these words to himself on board a plane from Amman, Jordan to the United States in 1949. He studied and taught in the US for the rest of his life, retiring as a professor of history at Georgetown University in 1998. Ably translated from Arabic by Issa J. Boullata, Embers and Ashes is a poignant story of an intellectual's exile and struggle.
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By Arab Media Watch adviser Haifa Zangana
29 June 2009
The Guardian
In Iraq, we have an expression: same donkey, different saddle. Iraq's interim government has now formally assumed sovereignty. Official labels and tags have duly changed. The US administrator will now be an ambassador, while Sheikh Ghazi al Yawar and Iyad Allawi, US-appointed members of the former governing council, are to be president and prime minister.
To formalise the change, the UN has issued a resolution under which "multinational forces" will replace "US-led forces". On the issue of control over US troops, the message is clear: the US forces are there to stay only because "Iraqi people" have asked them to. But which Iraqi people? Do they mean the new administration headed by the CIA's Iyad Allawi? And why does all this sound familiar?
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The British Egyptian Society is very proud to announce a new photographic competition alongside the Amateur Photographer and the British Museum.
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29 June 2009
The Council for Arab British Understanding welcomed the decision of the BBC to revise an article by Paul Wood, its Middle East correspondent, removing language that the Council had complained was inappropriate and objectionable.
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The broadcaster favours Israeli over Palestinian sources in its news reports - as does al-Jazeera, a new study shows, according to Arab Media Watch chairman Sharif Hikmat Nashashibi.
26 June 2009
The Guardian
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On 26 June 2009, Al Quds Al Arabi published an article on Arab Media Watch's study on BBC and Al Jazeera coverage of Israeli-Palestinian violence.
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During the week of 15-21 June 2009, Arab Media Watch published a study on media portrayals of Gaddafi's visit to Italy. The Financial Times Rome correspondent emailed AMW saying he was "very interested" to read it.
AMW met with the BBC and Al Quds Al Arabi.
AMW helped BBC Arabic arrange an interview with AMW adviser Makram Khoury-Machool.
AMW chairman Sharif Hikmat Nashashibi spoke at a conference on British media coverage of the war on Gaza. Khoury-Machool also spoke at the conference, and chaired the session with Nashashibi.
Nashashibi wrote to Times chief foreign commentator Bronwen Maddox about Arab Christians in Israel, and to the Independent about Netanyahu's 'acceptance' of a Palestinian state.; and AMW adviser Tahrir Swift wrote to the BBC and Independent about Iraq.
AMW liaised with the BBC, FT, Guardian, Daily Mail, Independent, Sunday Times, Daily Telegraph, Reuters, Al Quds Al Arabi, Asharq Al Awsat, Al Hayat, Arab News Broadcasting, Al Hiwar, Al Akhbar, Pluto Books, the UN, Arab League and the Syrian Embassy.
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