Week 2
Monday, June 22nd 2:00pm
Monday, June 22nd 2:00pm
Were you aware of Omar El Akkad as an author before this? Had you read either his novels or his journalism?
Have you read any other books about Gaza/Palestine? What knowledge or curiosities are you bringing about the subject into this book club? What is something you are hoping to learn from this book and/or this club?
What emotions did the acronym WCNSF evoke?
With the scale of violence being described, what does it mean when tragedy becomes common enough to require a formal name?
Chapter 1
This chapter begins with the author living, at the time of the writing, in Oregon, then traces the author's path from his childhood in Egypt, then to Qatar, and then to Canada. While recounting specific instances of prejudices and oppression, both personal and cultural, he and his family has faced, he lays the cultural groundwork for how systems, particularly liberal centrism, can lead to events like the genocide in Gaza, and why they can persist without intervention.
Chapter 2
This chapter recounts how Omar came to become a journalist. At its core, the chapter argues that journalism is caught between two competing identities. On one hand, journalists are expected to be neutral observers who report facts without advocacy. On the other hand, journalism's highest purpose, the author argues, has always been to expose abuses of power, reveal hidden realities, and bring about public accountability. With the example of Gaza and the public statements of Antony Blinken, the chapter's ultimate concern is not merely journalism but witnessing itself. It asks what it means to bear witness to suffering and injustice when institutions of power can absorb criticism without meaningful change.
Chapter 1
1. Chapter 1 begins with Omar in Oregon, then retraces him and his family’s moves from Egypt to Qatar to Canada. This type of memoir is not a conventional move for a non-fiction work about Gaza. Did this work for you as a lead-in to his analysis of the genocide in Gaza in October 2023? Why or why not?
2. In the coming years there will be much written about what took place in Gaza, the horrors that have been meticulously documented by Palestinians as they happened and meticulously brushed aside by the major media apparatus of the Western world. As it stands, the death toll is quite literally uncountable—tens or hundreds of thousands of people, likely tens or hundreds of thousands more to be found under the rubble, or wasted away from disease and starvation imposed by an occupation force that seeks, actively and for all to see, their expulsion or else extermination. (25-26)
In this chapter, the author continues to foreground two topics from the introduction: the importance of the safety of children and the ways language can distort and malign. What are your takeaways from his exploration of these? Were there any other points of focus that stood out to you from this chapter?
Chapter 2
1. Journalists are human. They have mortgages and bills. They work jobs so precarious, demanding, and poorly paying that about half the cohort of reporters I began my career with now work in public relations. It’s a common refrain that the news industry has failed to come up with a functioning business model in the Internet age, but that’s not entirely true. Jettisoning the requirement to report news in favor of inciting the rage and fear and hatred of your audience before serving them up ads for guns and bunkers is a perfectly functional business model. It might not be journalism, might be the opposite of journalism, but the checks clear. (39-40)
Did this passage make you more sympathetic to journalists or more skeptical of them? How does the need for profit shape what becomes news? What can be done to restore the value of facts and truth over outrage in contemporary media?
2. As of July 2024, at least 108 Palestinian journalists have been killed, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. There is nowhere else on earth with an even remotely comparable death toll. For the crime of reporting in a way the Israeli government disapproves of, Al Jazeera correspondent Wael Dahdouh sees his family summarily executed in a missile strike. He continues reporting the next day. Shortly thereafter he himself is wounded. He continues reporting the next day. (44)
Thinking about Wael Dahdouh, which news stories have changed how you understand the world and more importantly? Do you trust journalists more as witnesses or as analysts? Do you think journalist should strive solely to be objective, or should they advocate for the people or causes they report on?