Global Voices Advocacy » Palestine

Global Voices Where Every Voice Counts

Sana Saleem — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 22:02:09 +0000

Every year Human Rights Day provides an opportunity, to many of us, to highlight issues that matter to us and to advocate human rights for all. This year the spotlight is on the rights of people – the poor, the marginalized and the indigenous, women and youth and those across the gender spectrum. Every one has the right to be heard and the right to participate.

The idea that every voice counts is one that is very close to the notion of Global Voices as a platform and as a community. As netizens unite to have their voices heard when the world's authorities argue on who should run the internet, we decided to ask our diverse community to participate and speak out on issues that matter to them and look back at issues we have covered over the year bearing in mind that every voice counts.

Global Voices community members make their #VoiceCount. Image collage by author.

With Syria and Gaza plunging into information by pulling the plug on the internet, the right to access remained one of the most pertinent issues. Our special coverage included Syria,archiving online reactions to Syria's internet blackout and the resurgence as parts of Syria regained connectivity, protests in Bahrain and Yemen amid media blackout, conflict voices from Caucasus and Sudan revolts, in-depth coverage of Russia's protest movements,bearing witness to Egypt's historic presidential elections and the aftermath and the intense elections in Venezuela, seeking indigenous voices representing 370 million people that speak more than 4000 languages, a spotlight on the forgotten voices of Myanmar's Rohnigya, keeping an eye on the worldwide #occupy movements and SlutWalks a new protest movement defending women's rights and most importantly monitoring and defending internet freedom, free speech and freedom to access with Global Voices Advocacy evolving in to a community determined to take a stand.

Then there were other stories that needed the world's attention as we stood true to the notion that we are reminded of today; every voice counts.Qatar's life imprisonment of a poet that praised Arab spring,Russia's crackdown on online satire, women being barred and penalized from using mobile phones in villages in India, stricter SIM card registration process hampering communication in Zambia, Pakistan's consistent pursuit to replicate the great firewall of China, Tajikistan blocking of facebook and summoning Mark Zuckerberg – a move startlingly similar to that of Pakistani authorities, Internet companies overlooking user privacy, the fight for free expression as authorities muscle in more control, we continued to speak out against impunity and for justice for threatened voices, these are the few issues global voices as a community has been able to bring attention to. As we move forward towards the end of the year, there will be a more comprehensive overview of the year through the eyes of the networked.

For now, on Human Rights Day, we stand in solidarity with people around the world and believe in every individual's right to be heard, to participate and be counted. Our commitment remains, to amplify the voices of the networked and to enable and support the indigenous communities to become a part of the larger community.

In Case of Disconnection: Preparing Gaza for an Internet Shutdown

Jillian York — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 20:24:05 +0000

For days, rumors have abounded that Israel—which controls the telecommunications infrastructure of Palestine—plans to shut down the Internet in Gaza. While thus far the rumors have proven false, various organizations and actors are working to ensure that Gazans are prepared.

Telecomix, a group notable for its assistance to Egyptians during the January 2011 Internet shutdown, has put forward a guide entitled “Telecomix #Gaza Emergency Room,” offering up tips for staying connected in the wake of an Internet shutdown. The guide includes tips on using an Egyptian SIM card, tweeting from one's mobile device, and accessing dialup connections.

Anonymous has also put together a comprehensive guide to keeping the lines of communication open in the event of a shutdown. Their package of tips includes the following:

FIND THE PRIVATELY RUN ISPs: In densely populated areas, especially in central business districts and city suburbs there are multiple home WiFi networks overlapping each other, some secure, some not. If there is no internet, open up your WiFi by removing password protection: If enough people do this it’s feasible to create a totally private WiFi service outside government control covering the CBD, and you can use applications that run Bonjour (iChat on Mac for example) to communicate with others on the open network and send and receive documents. **needs more clarification If you are a private ISP, it’s your time to shine. Consider allowing open access to your Wi-Fi routers to facilitate communication of people around you until the grid is back online.

Another package circulating was created by “the dod” and contains advice on using Tor, Tails, and PGP and is open for additional suggestions.

On the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Deeplinks blog, Eva Galperin provides analysis on the ongoing social media “battle” and offers the following reminder:

It is important to remember that dial-up connections are not secure. Your communications can be intercepted or spied upon. EFF recommends that you encrypt your browser traffic using HTTPS Everywhere.

There are also numerous guides available in Arabic. A blog entitled Resistance Tools for Gaza offers links to both a first aid guide and a guide to tech tools.

Nadim Kobeissi, the creator of CryptoCat, has been tweeting suggestions and offers of assistance. In one tweet, he cites a guide from Movements.org, suggesting it be translated into Arabic:

PRIORITY to get this into #Gaza, needs to be translated to Arabic:http://www.movements.org/how-to/entry/how-to-prepare-for-an-internet-connection-cut-off/ …

The guide, written by Susannah Vila, offers tips like:

Take all your contacts out of the cloud. It's a good idea to make sure you have a list of your contacts’ emails printed out and readily available. For example, the We Are All Khaled Said Facebook page prepared for a possible Facebook cut-off in Egypt by asking supporters to share their email addresses and other contact information on a Google spreadsheet.

Kobeissi also created a tutorial for using OTR (off-the-record chatting) with Pidgin, a commonly-used chat client for PCs:

PalConnect: Palestine's First-Ever Social Media Conference

Jillian York — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 19:43:31 +0000

From Tunisia to Syria, the year 2011 has brought to light the potential of social media as a tool for positive change, as well as the ways in which governments and other actors are able to harness such tools for oppression. Though Palestinians have a rich online history spanning more than a decade, recent increases in Internet access–particularly in the West Bank–expose an entirely new set of individuals to the Internet’s potential.

With that in mind, the idea of a conference emerged. Organized by AMIN (the Arabic Media and Internet Network), “PalConnect,” the first-ever Palestinian social media conference, was created with the goal of “bringing Palestinian social media activists from across Palestine together in order to increase the efforts and unite the forces for promoting the culture of social media in Palestine and increase awareness on the crucial role social media can have in Palestine.”

The entrance to the conference, at the Ramallah Cultural Palace

AMIN Executive Director Khaled Abu Aker also emphasized the conference’s role in “[encouraging] Palestinians, particularly marginalized groups with marginalized voices, to express themselves and speak their minds and to use social media tools to convey their messages to raise their voices.”

I was fortunate enough to attend the conference (December 4-6, 2011). Sponsored by the US Consulate*, the Representative Office of the Republic of Germany in Ramallah, Al Jazeera, Deutsche Welle, SoukTel and UNESCO, among others, PalConnect was held at the Ramallah Cultural Palace, and live-streamed on the conference website, including to a group of participants gathered in Gaza.

The conference featured a fascinating, if somewhat narrow, cast of speakers, a mix of foreigners and Palestinians with an expansive focus on social media. Though the theme was broad, it became immediately apparent that a primary interest of both speakers and participants was the use of social media to tell Palestinian stories.

The first day of the conference was likely also the best attended, with nearly three hundred individuals filling the auditorium by the end of the day. The talks (many of which I missed, as I arrived late) were focused in the first part of the day on education, and in the latter on governance, but the real highlight of the day were the short films shown by Leaders Organization, a Ramallah-based organization. The day was not without disappointment as well: In the afternoon, participants were informed that the group in Gaza, gathered together to watch the conference live-stream, had been disbanded by police.

Day 2 had a focus on journalism, with morning talks from the LA Times’ Robert Lopez and Al Jazeera’s Boutaina Azzabi. Lopez discussed the use of social media to report on protests, highlighting his own experience in covering the Occupy LA protests using tools such as FourSquare and Twitter. Azzabi spoke primarily about Al Jazeera’s methods of covering protests, including the use of citizen content and methods of vetting it, and concluded her talk by asking: “We need the Palestinians to tell their own stories but we are there to help – what do you need from Al Jazeera?” In the afternoon, speakers Katrin Verclas (of MobileActive) and Uqba Odeh gave talks on the use of mobile technology–relevant in that Palestine’s mobile penetration rate is estimated to be 97.5%–with focus on social change and bridging communities, respectively.

The third and final day of PalConnect saw more of a focus on activism. My own talk on the innovative history of digital activism in the Arab world (slides available here) opened the day, followed by an extremely complementary talk by Palestinian researcher Majd Beltaji, who provided a slew of statistics and anecdotes from across the Arab world to illustrate the use of social media in this year’s revolutionary uprisings.

The afternoon was the highlight of the day, with a panel of speakers who had been brought in from Gaza (I’m afraid I don’t have their names, as the agenda was shifted at the last moment). The panelists discussed the various challenges faced by bloggers in Gaza, with one female speaker noting that many women bloggers in Gaza avoid the use of their real names and photos, considering it too risky. The panel of bloggers did agree that blogging has allowed greater connection between online communities in Gaza and the West Bank divided by geography and occupation. Later in the day, I joined a panel with Dawood Hammoudeh of the Stop the Wall campaign and German blogger/journalist Christoph Sydow to discuss online safety; we received a slew of questions, many of which focused on Facebook’s safety and privacy record, and advised participants to take basic online safety measures (note: I also came equipped with loads of materials in Arabic, thanks to my organization, EFF, as well as Access and Movements .org).

One criticism agreed upon by many participants was in respect to the absence of Palestinian activists present at the weekly protests in Nabi Saleh, Bi’lin, and elsewhere in the West Bank, many of whom could have provided excellent insight into protesters’ use of digital tools for organization and documentation. As Joseph Dana tweeted from the conference on day two: “Can you have a social media conference in Palestine and not highlight the youth activists which are using the platform?”

There were also complaints and—from what I heard secondhand—refusals to attend on the basis of US government funding. That said, as someone who is largely critical of US government funding for programs like this, I personally felt that the Consulate’s presence was fairly minimal; though they had several employees and State Department guests at the conference, none spoke beyond the introductions and in my opinion, their influence was not felt in the programming.

All in all, PalConnect should be considered an excellent start to what will hopefully grow into a more inclusive and diverse conference series. But if I could make just three small recommendations to the organizers of the next edition, here’s what I would say:

Make the conference more interactive. Allow “barcamp” style sessions for participants to break away in interest groups and learn from each other.
Include youth activists in the speaker lineup. Palestinian activists have a rich history of using online tools; there are plenty that could share their knowledge.
Provide basic training. Many participants admitted to not using Twitter–the most oft-discussed tool at the conference–while others lacked basic awareness of online safety measures. Responsible training could go a long way.

*Full disclosure: I was invited and financially sponsored by the US Consulate of Jerusalem, but my talk was independently prepared and not at all influenced by my sponsor.

Palestinian blogger arrested for criticism of Islam on Facebook

Sami Ben Gharbia — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 15:13:06 +0000

Palestinian blogger, Waleed Khalid Hasayin (pen name: Waleed Al-Husseini), a 26-year-old barber from the West Bank city of Qalqilya, has been arrested by the Palestinian authorities for creating a facebook page named “Allah”. According to blogger Marwa Rakha, the page has been reported and shut down, but Waleed has created another page. It's worth noting that other facebook pages carrying the same name “Allah” are still active here and here:

On his blog “Nour Al Akl” or The enlightened Mind, he refuted all religious arguments – specially Islam – and he wrote long detailed posts on the fallacy of religions. In the beginning of Summer 2010, a facebook page titled “Allah” was created by an anonymous user. The creator of the page used his excellent command of the Arabic language and composed poetic stanzas that mimic Qura'anic verses. The page attracted many fans; there were those who liked the creativity of the author, those who were offended and joined to defend their religion, and those who were merely curious.

According to this report, an Internet cafe worker, where Waleed has been spending several hours a day, after his mother cancelled his Internet connection at home, has provided the Palestinian intelligence services with a snapshots of his Facebook pages. His online activities have been monitored for few months before arresting him in the cafe on October 31, 2010. Waleed has not been charged yet. A facebook group and a petition dedicated to his support have been created recently:

News has surfaced that [Waleed] is undergoing torture where he is being detained and that his life is at the stake because he could very likely be facing a death sentence (at best prolonged imprisonment), and in addition, the angry Muslim masses are demanding his head, as also evidenced by their comments on reports of his case in the internet. The Palestinian intelligence has reportedly told the media that he will be referred for a martial court. His legal position is not clear, and all evidence is pointing to that he will be brutally persecuted for using his right to freedom of expression. Waleed's case is of utmost importance because it also signifies the persecution of a whole minority class which is atheists and freethinkers in the Muslim world. Waleed needs the attention of the international media, plus strong legal assistance which his friends and supporters unfortunately are not able to provide for him.

Facebook: Interested in Palestine? Not anymore.

Jillian York — Fri, 07 May 2010 16:06:58 +0000

When Facebook rolled out its latest feature, “Connections,” in April 2010, many users were confused by the changes. The opt-in feature, intended to create a broader sense of community around user interests, converts a user's listed interests, books, movies, and network into “likes,” linking the user to the community page for each topic.

In some cases, users have noted that their interests have gotten lost in translation on their way to becoming Connections. When Palestinian Facebook user Diana Buttu was presented with the opt-in screen for Connections, she was shocked. Prior to the rollout of the new feature, her “info” page looked like this:

Diana Buttu's Facebook interests

The opt-in page Buttu was presented with for Connections, however, looked like this:

Buttu's interests and activities on the Connections opt-in page

A number of Diana's book and movie interests, listed outside of the standard format (e.g., “Anything by Gibran”), simply disappeared, while her “interests” and “activities,” both previously listed as “Palestine,” were changed to “Israel” (the text under the Israeli flags state “Israel – activities” and “Israel – interests”). Users who have added “Palestine” as an interest since the Connections feature was rolled out have been able to do so successfully, however.

With the new Connections feature, users must also link to the community page for their home location, or remove their location altogether. It appears from a search, however, that no community page exists “Jerusalem, Palestine,” meaning that Palestinians living there must either list their city as being in Israel, or remove their location altogether.

Facebook has faced controversy before for listing Golan Heights as being in Israel, barring Syrian users from listing their location as Syria. That decision was eventually overturned, but the Golan Heights community page now uses Wikipedia information, which outlines the dispute over the Israeli-occupied territory.

A quick search for other disputed cities, including Grozny (Chechnya/Russia), Sokhumi (Abkhazia/Georgia) and Laayoune (Western Sahara/Morocco), shows inconsistencies. Grozny is listed twice, as “Grozny – city” (like the Golan Heights page) and “Grozny, Russia”, while Laayoune is listed only as Western Sahara (Morocco claims sovereignty over the Western Sahara).

While there are numerous reasons to be concerned over Facebook's new feature, the site's foray into geopolitics is alarming for many users, particularly those who live in disputed areas. Whereas before, and on most sites, users are able to input their location as plain text (and thus are able to list it as anything they like, real or otherwise), Facebook's continued insistence on controlling user content–from their “real name” policy to these latest changes–should be cause for alarm.