Towards Media Justice
A Statement of Solidarity with the Palestinian People from Listen Up
Listen Up is invested in building community through media justice. This mission is connected to real stakes with global resonance. Writing from the perspective of a majority of Listen Up’s leadership and membership, we unreservedly condemn the ongoing violence against the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank at the hands of the Israeli regime.
Alongside this condemnation of violence, we, as an organization with an unwavering orientation towards media justice: (1) condemn the mainstream media narratives that normalize this violence; and (2) stand with Palestinians in their aims to exist freely and without threat of settler state violence. Below we will elaborate on how we have come to these positions and why it matters.
On Listen Up’s own stakes and sense of responsibility
Before elaborating on these stances, we would like to acknowledge that sharing such a statement may come with its own risks to our financial security as an organization. We are writing this to you in a time of difficulty. As with many other small organizations that rely on philanthropic support, it has been a challenging year financially, which puts us in a position where philanthropic support is even more critical. Some would look at this and be deterred from drafting a letter of support for a cause that has been deemed controversial. And yet we are writing this because it is morally and ethically imperative to use the platform we have to speak urgent truths, and encourage our partners and all of those who believe in building a just future to do the same.
Listen Up Youth Radio is a social enterprise non-profit working at the intersection of youth employment, civic engagement, and media storytelling, providing programming for Twin Cities young people ages 14-24. We work from a perspective of - and towards - media and narrative justice. What is media justice? In short, it is the access, ownership, and accurate representation of historically disenfranchised and under-empowered communities in the media and media industry (including news and popular culture, TV, radio, literature, social media, you name it). We are seeing the failure of a media landscape that falls short of this vision today.
On State Violence and Media Injustice
As a multigenerational cohort of journalists, artists, media makers, and storytellers, we are appalled at the one-sided mainstream coverage of the unfolding genocide taking place in Gaza. It should be unnecessary to say this, and yet we are obliged to state the obvious: all civilian death - in fact, all death - is a tragedy. All war crimes are a tragedy. More than 1,400 Israelis were killed on October 7th, and more than 10,000 Palestinians in Gaza alongside more than 155 in the West Bank have been killed since October 7th. We must also mention the 240 Israelis taken on October 7th, the 5,200 Palestinian children and adults already detained - often indefinitely and without charges - by Israel, and the thousands more Palestinians detained, tortured, and killed in the decades leading up to these events. None of these people deserved to be reduced to a number, to a statistic, to a pawn in geopolitics.
The vast majority of voices with mainstream platforms have failed to condemn what has been described by scholars of genocide as a "textbook case of genocide," enacted by the Israeli military and backed by billions of US tax dollars against civilians in Gaza. People with names, families, dreams, and stories, who have been described by Israeli military officials as "human animals," have been killed through a month of over 25,000 tonnes of bombings. After 16 years of blockade and 75 years of occupation, Gazan families have now been denied access to food, water, fuel, electricity, and communication to the outside world. Those in northern Gaza were ordered to evacuate, and then bombed on those evacuation routes with US-funded bombs at Wall Street’s tacit approval. Other bombing targets have included hospitals, ambulances, churches, apartment buildings, and entire neighborhoods, leveled. The Israeli military has targeted journalists and their families, as it has for decades of occupation. White phosphorus has been used in civilian neighborhoods (a war crime). Approximately 2,000 people are now trapped under rubble, roughly 25,000 people have been injured, and 1.5 million have been forcibly displaced from their homes. Roughly half of the 2.3 million people in Gaza are not yet 18 years old.
The UN body voted on a ceasefire resolution, with an overwhelming majority of member countries in support. As a member of the Security Council, the US vetoed this resolution.
The death counts, reported by the Gaza Health Ministry and verified by published lists of the dead, are publicly doubted by high profile US officials despite the Ministry’s numbers being historically backed by the UN, WHO, and other international humanitarian agencies after Israeli Military violence. Instead, Israeli Military talking points have been shared without critical fact-checking. Despite this:
Israeli military officials have repeatedly admitted to past lies after the fact,
Recent evidence shared by Israeli officials has been debunked as fabricated, and
Israeli politicians have openly called for "a second Nakba." This refers to the 1948 event in which Zionist settlers killed or expelled an estimated 700,000 Palestinians from their homes.
This gaslighting is pervasive. Journalists have been instructed not to provide historical context and to downplay Palestinian casualties. Some are losing their jobs or are under investigation for promoting peace on their personal social media accounts. Social media platforms have censored content calling for an end to violence. US government departments have been told to refrain from using words like "ceasefire" or "deescalation" while hundreds of staffers have spoken out or even resigned in protest. People expressing sympathy for Palestinian survival have lost contracts, jobs and received threats. Wall Street executives have pledged to blacklist students who sign petitions calling for a ceasefire. American politicians have called to “eradicate” or “level” Gaza on live TV. Hate crimes against Arab-, Jewish-, and Muslim-civilians have risen, and 6-year old Palestinian-American Wadea Al Fayoume was stabbed 26 times by his landlord who was convinced of a world in which all Muslims were evil. A world - an illusion - created through the propaganda and uncritical media platforms he was exposed to. Wadea should be alive today. The over 4,000 - and counting - children killed in these weeks should be alive today, as should their parents, their uncles and aunties, their cousins, their teachers, and their doctors. As in the aftermath of 9/11 (and preceding the Gulf War before it) false propaganda is being spread to push for wide-ranging war; in that instance, the result was the death of over 1 million Iraqis. Once again, media platforms are being used to manipulate the US population to turn a blind eye to massive harm inflicted on a distant population. To stop this violence, we need to understand the root of it, and we need to understand its history.
Towards Media Justice
The future that we want to build has no room for Arabophobia, Islamophobia, antisemitism, Christianophobia, or any form of ethnic nationalism or apartheid, despite a current media landscape in which these ideologies thrive. There is no room for such hate in the future we will build together. As part of the MediaJustice Network, our partners MediaJustice have stated the "movement for media justice is inextricably intertwined with the struggle for Palestinian liberation." We concur wholeheartedly. There is a deep history of collaboration between organizers for racial justice in the US and those who resist oppression in Palestine - as simultaneously the Israeli military has directly trained US police forces in militarized tactics and use similar practices to the neck restraint used in the murder of George Floyd in 2020. Israeli arms and training has supported the Rwandan Genocide, Apartheid South Africa, the Mayan Genocide, the Srebenica Genocide, India's violence in Kashmir, and the ethnic cleansing of Armenians. This context is missing from the national discourse. With this context we believe we can unite in a movement to stop the violence. Collective liberation includes this full and nuanced story.
We see threads of this collective liberation being spun now. Brave journalists speak out, despite the risks. Tens of thousands take to the streets in protest throughout the country, and hundreds of thousands throughout the world. In Israel too, those with courage have spoken out publicly against the genocide, at their own peril. In New York, hundreds of anti-Zionist Jewish allies underwent arrest while protesting for a ceasefire in Grand Central Station, with signs saying things like “Never Again - For Anyone.” People have refused to stay silent and that has had an effect. According to a Data for Progress poll conducted in mid-October, 66% of Americans agreed that the U.S. should call for a ceasefire. Only 25% disagreed.
Gazans have been asking people of conscience to bear witness to their lives, their deaths, and to share their stories. We encourage everyone to follow voices (especially Palestinian voices) that call for peace. To listen to those considering the context of the Balfour Declaration, the Nakba, the Sabra and Shatila massacre, the Intifadas, the Great March of Return, and 75 years of violence, illegal occupation, and war crimes. To seek out those voices on the ground in Gaza and closest to them. We call on all those of moral conscience to use the platforms they have to share these stories, to educate, to advocate, and to do everything in their power to end the genocide.
We are not powerless when we come together.
Not sure who to listen to right now?
Here are some voices we believe are worth amplifying:
Local:
If Not Now Twin Cities
Jewish Voice for Peace Twin Cities
American Muslims for Palestine - MN
Students for Justice in Palestine - UMN
Nonlocal:
Plestia Alaqad, 21 year old journalist in Gaza @byplestia
Motaz Azaiza, 24 year old photographer in Gaza @motaz_azaiza
Abod Battah, 15 year old journalist in Gaza @abod_bt77
Bisan Owda, 25 year old journalist in Gaza @wizard_bisan1
Wael Dahdouh, journalist in Gaza @wael_eldahdouh
Hind Khoudary, journalist in Gaza @hindkhoudary
Defense for Children International - Palestine
US Campaign for Palestinian Rights
Statement in Solidarity with Student Protestors
Listen Up stands in solidarity with students - locally and across the country - who call on their colleges and universities to divest from the ongoing apartheid and genocide against the Palestinian people. We reiterate our eight-month old call for media justice (above).
Since releasing our statement we have seen every university in Gaza destroyed, as part of a systemic attack on K-12 and post-secondary institutions. We have seen more journalists and journalists' family members killed than in any other country in such a short timeframe. We have seen this because of the work of journalists that refuse to stop talking about Palestine, even as institutions that we had been taught to respect and trust - like the New York Times and CNN - continue to actively dehumanize the Palestinian people while their own stories are debunked. We have seen these same institutions stoking antisemitism by refusing to distinguish the ideology and war crimes of a right-wing government from the Jewish faith it claims to represent. We have seen nine year old Lama Jamous courageously reporting on the events in Gaza while her home is destroyed around her, alongside other youth and young journalists Sumayya Wushah, Bisan Owda, Plestia Alaqad, Motaz Azaizais, and other Palestinian journalists of all ages.
At Listen Up, we promise to keep talking about Palestine. We stand with other media makers in our collective power to fight against this genocide.