A Palestinian woman in Gaza Gaza – Mohamed Habib A number of reporters demanded that an establishment for foreign reporters is built in Gaza, in order to ease their mission and enable them to reach official and unofficial sources easily, allowing them to benefit from each other’s experiences and skills in return. The issue was raised during a discussion held by the Center for Women\'s Affairs in Gaza within the framework of the activities of the network Yamama for Palestinian and Arab women in the media.
New Zealand journalist and women’s rights activist Julie Webb stressed the importance of investing in Western media for the sake of the Palestinian case; due to the gap between the way they and Arab media portrays the Palestinian and Israeli situation to their viewers, pointing out that the West focuses on Israel and ignores serious Palestinian issues.
Webb spoke of her experiences in some Latin American countries saying: “many women in those countries are suffering and are oppressed, as men rape them to cause them fear and stop them from standing up to them, but women do and they end up going to prison, or getting killed. Reporters suffer in the sense that their equipment gets smashed, and they get beaten up, humiliated and imprisoned.”
She added: “there are many women suffering chronic diseases in developing countries, who have no medicine or hospitals or electricity or clean drinking water, and many children who have no schools to go to, and if there are schools they are too far and only go up to 6th grade.”
Webb explained that she left her home in New Zealand in 1993 after Webb and her daughter were violated. She now lives in Gaza where she feels safe and secure.
The activist’s opinion of the United Nations is that it makes unfair decisions, and that she very much opposes the organization. She noted that there are proposals to form a parliament in every continent as a substitute for the United Nations, which will make crucial decisions concerning the interests of countries of each continent, in order to freeze the United Nations’ weak and biased resolutions.
Webb concluded by speaking about the damages and destruction caused in Gaza as a result of the Israeli air strikes, and about the way America, with their US veto, have given the green light to Israel to violate the rights of Palestinian civilians.
Samar Al Duraimali, who is the Media Coordinator at the Centre said: “we hold workshops and seminars for foreign journalists in order to find out more about the coverage of Palestine in the West, especially what they report about women, in addition to leaning more about their wants and needs and helping them out in Palestine, so that they are able move away from the vague surface news coverage and are able to report in-depth instead.