Rahma Zein is Defying Journalism

RAHMA ZEIN: I was always a field journalist. That was my main occupation. I tried to leave it because it was becoming stressful… that was at a time when media was very orthodox. Whatever channel you’re working for, you’re going to be following that agenda. But now in the age of social media, everyone is their own journalist. When I was a field journalist, I saw media bias… you’re seeing other journalists who are pouring in from other countries, and you’re seeing their work ethic, and their values. They report about you, not with you in a way. So, you’re being talked about as if you’re a species in a jungle. “Look how they behave.” You have to understand that your words carry responsibility.

The dehumanization process was something you could see happening in regards to the Palestinian cause. After years of watching your people being dehumanized in this way, you see how this affects communication between your people in the region as well as in the West. Many US citizens didn’t realize where their tax money was going; many US citizens didn’t realize the extent of Israel’s interference. So instead of reporting on us being uncivilized, on us eating with our hands, on the state of our women, report on the interference of a foreign entity in our internal politics. This frustration led to a boiling point where I couldn’t take it anymore, and I used my old school field reporting tricks to find my way to the border.

It was October 20, 2023, and I didn’t know that she (CNN reporter, Clarissa Ward) would be there [at the Rafah Border Crossing, the sole crossing point between Egypt and Palestine’s Gaza Strip]. It was actually a UN conference, surprisingly enough, and António Guterres, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, was there. You don’t see the whole video, but I was screaming at everyone [Zein accused Ward of biased reporting legitimizing the ongoing Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip]. When I went up to talk to Guterres, he said essentially that there was nothing they could do. You could tell that the man was just so ill-equipped, a manager who didn’t have the authority to be a manager. A puppet, basically, which is what I said. The UN is inadequate. They are mouthpieces… That was the boiling point that got me to scream the way I screamed.

CELINE: The video went viral. People shared your video because you spoke from the heart on behalf of all of us who wanted to say what you said to the people in power and the people who are responsible for the harmful narrative. What was it like to interact with them? What was their reaction when you were there?

RAHMA: I was staying overnight in a tent about 3 miles from the border. Other journalists were there, but CNN’s Clarissa Ward was not. You cannot walk in with brushed hair on the second day to report when you weren’t even in the field. I was there the night before, and at around 2:33 am I got woken up by the bombing. My tent was shaking; the bombings were relentless. I was a field journalist. I’d been to Libya. I’d seen dead bodies, I’d experienced shootings, I’d experienced bombings, but nothing like what I was experiencing that night. I was so shaken; each bomb was a family, a building, and another family… waiting to be next. I got out of the tent and looked around. There were aid workers there, but they were used to bombs, so they were snoring away. I kept on walking around… the heartbreak of it, the fact that it was so close and no one could do anything. The feeling of helplessness.

Later, when I approached Clarissa, she rolled her eyes at me and walked away, and the cameras caught it. Her cameraman was feeling guilty and said to me, “I served in Gaza.” I was like, “That’s even worse… you have even more of a responsibility.” He’s the one who got her to come back and talk. She was never planning on talking to me, ever. Words carry weight. Messages carry weight. Speaking out carries weight. Man is born on earth with free will. You can choose to be a good person, or you can choose to be an egotistical individual…

CELINE: How has journalism changed in the past three years, and how has the Global South’s perspective on journalism impacted the Global North’s perspective on journalism?

RAHMA: That’s a very interesting question, because I’ve seen it through different generations. My grandparents were journalists, and my mother was a journalist. I’ve seen it from the ultra-orthodox perspective, how journalism ought to be, to how journalism is today.

I remember sitting at the dinner table with my grandparents discussing what the role of a journalist was—a storyteller, impartial. Were you supposed to show the footage, and as a field journalist, just say this is what’s happening behind me and leave?

There are so many aspects to it. Old school journalism. You wait for the newspaper, you wait for the TV program, and what you watch is what is approved, be it here or in the West.

I was covering the Mitt Romney/Obama election in 2012, and we were going on tour. You see how media is done; they feel they are in a bubble. You’re not part of the world, you’re either dictating it or you are impartial to it. There’s no bridge between you and the world. And this is how US politics and its foreign agenda has been able to be so hard and cool. There is a lack of connection between what the US is doing abroad and their internal politics. Journalism, at one point, turned into merely propaganda. I’m taking away from the story of the other in order to then justify an action against them politically. But this is the case in most countries when you’re going to raise a certain price, and you know that people aren’t going to take it well, you write a specific news story that gets the crowd going. In a way, there’s no more journalism because you decide, as an audience, who you’re going to listen to. Because of the growth of the atrocities around the world and what we are now aware of because of globalization, which is actually Westernization, people are waking up to their responsibility to be their own journalist. As a journalist, my mother believes that you should be impartial. This is the footage. This is the subject. This is what’s happening. You analyze based on your own experience, your own prejudice. I feel you have a responsibility not to preach, not to teach, but to at least explain this footage in the context of history. I’m not just going to show you subject and action. I’m going to show you what happened that led to subject and action. What’s the story? A beginning, middle and end. I can’t just come in the present and tell you this is what it is without giving you a backdrop, because everything is a threat, and therefore, this is where I take away my impartiality. I’m still making it about the story and the subject, but I have a responsibility to tell you how this man came to be and how this action came to be. That is what I believe journalism ought to be.

I believe that people now have their own responsibility. Everyone is a journalist. This is why I loathe the word activist, because it compartmentalizes you. It can be seen in a negative light. These words are so dangerous because they are easily manipulated and hijacked, and a certain meaning is normalized. Normalization doesn’t make something right. Every single individual has a responsibility to care for the world. It is not up to the activist; it’s not up to the politician. It is not up to the journalist. It is not up to the teacher. You can work your nine-to-five job and do something actively to make this world a better place.

CELINE: I know you were a part of the era of citizen journalism, back in 2010, during the Arab Spring. With citizen journalism, how do we figure out what’s true and what’s made up.

RAHMA: We have, as people, a responsibility to listen, to read and come up with our own understanding, our own conclusion. And there is also a responsibility not to tear each other down. You need to ask yourself, are you venting, or are you actually wanting to create change? For us to have been silent about Iraq and now this is happening in Palestine, for us to have the world on fire around us and not be active participants anymore is no longer an option, and it is really up to every single individual.

I have a friend who said to me that it was very hard for him to look at what was happening in the world. I said that it was hard because he was not doing something about it. It’s not so hard if you don’t have an unhealthy relationship with the world where you’re too attached to it. You respect it, you understand it, you get its value, and you also understand that bad and good is a very Western thing. People don’t want to know what’s happening in the world because they think they’re helpless to do anything about it. And it starts with understanding that you’re not helpless. You have to know that there is something for every single one of us to do, and that resistance comes in different forms. You will use diplomacy. I will shout. This person will take action. It’s okay, as long as we’re heading towards the same path.

CELINE: Absolutely, it resonates deeply with me, what you’re saying. How can you center yourself in a way that’s not harmful, but productive? I want to highlight the work you’ve done recently. You met with people who had been imprisoned by the Israelis. How did you manage to meet them? And what was it like for you?

RAHMA: It was very inspiring. Some of the Palestinian hostages I’ve had conversations with have been in Israeli jails for over 20 years, in horrific circumstances. I cannot imagine lasting two days in that kind of environment where there is a person whose sole purpose is to break you. They are well-versed in psychological warfare. When I was in Rafah, they opened up the border so aid could be made available, and families would rejoice. Then they would bomb the crossing. Just absolute, pure evil.

One of the prisoners I spoke with spent 20 years digging a tunnel, and he managed to escape for five days. I asked him if it was worth it. He said he would have done it even if he were out for only an hour, because it showed them (the Israelis) that they were nothing.

I can think of nothing more cowardly than someone who shoots a child in the head. (“Foreign doctors who have volunteered in Gaza say they have treated more than 100 children shot in the head or chest, clear evidence, they argue, that Israel is deliberately targeting minors.” - Al Jazeera) So the fact that you should fear that does not even make sense. How can you fear someone who’s able to kill a child? You don’t fear a person like that. You’re disgusted, you find a way to fight a person like that.

Another prisoner I spoke with, interestingly enough, was a Palestinian Jew. We were doing the interview, and I said to him, “How do you not break? I’m breaking listening to you.” And he said, “Because our humanity is the very opposite of their inhumanity. That’s how you stay sane. You remind yourself that you’re human.”

CELINE: From a journalistic point of view to a human point of view. What’s your relationship to perfectionism, and how do you break away from perfectionism as a journalist, as a human, as a woman, as an Arab woman?

RAHMA: My mother told me early on that once you start speaking to appease people or to appease an audience or to get a pat on the back, then you shut up. Not that I don’t like a pat on the back. Are you kidding me? I love it, but you have to check yourself. You have to constantly say to yourself, Am I saying this to be a hero, because someone is going to like me, or am I saying this because it’s actually strategic and it’s going to help, even though it’s going to make this person not like me?

My grandmother was everything, and it’s opposite. She is detached, and at the same time, very attached to her identity. For you to question yourself means you’re confident and happy in your skin, for you to admit that you’re wrong, or for you to realize a different perspective is a good thing. Why can’t we have these healthy conversations with ourselves? Don’t take yourself so seriously.

CELINE: You’ve been categorized as too loud by some Arab men, and somehow, you seem to trigger Arab men, or men in general. How do you reconcile what you do with the idea that you may ruffle some feathers?

RAHMA: Criticism for being too loud or too emotional came from the tokens, the ones who want to assimilate. They are the ones from the School of Appeasement, and they need to realize that we’ve tried appeasement. We’ve tried appeasement, to sit at the dinner table and be quiet and be accepted. But now it is time to make our own dinner table. When these men criticize me, I tell them to self-reflect and be proud of their identity.