Related Post
The American newspaper The New York Times published a report about a website that publishes the stories of the victims of the Israeli bombing of Gaza, called “We Are Not Numbers,” which seeks to document the thoughts and details of Asma’s life. Gaza.
The website is a nonfiction project launched by the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Observatory in early 2015, targeting writers who are victims of violations and who write in English, to provide them with intensive training on writing stories and articles, social media, and how to communicate with a Western audience.
The newspaper talked about the story of one of the website’s administrators, the young Gazan Ahmed Al-Naouq, whose older brother was killed by the Israeli army in an air strike on Gaza in 2014, to the point that he “almost lost his desire to live,” adding that he sank into a state of deep depression at that time before his American girlfriend advised him to write about it. his brother and turn his sadness into positive action.
According to the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Observatory, the two friends jointly established “We Are Not Numbers,” a project that trains young writers in Gaza and publishes their personal articles in English.
Al-Naouq obtained permission to leave Gaza in 2019 to attend journalism school in Britain. He now lives in London and helps manage the project from afar.
Stories are the most important
According to a New York Times report, numbers “do not arouse sympathy,” unlike personal stories that do. Al-Naouq continued that the project “changed my life because I realized for the first time that some people can care about us.”
The project provided the youth of Gaza with a vital outlet for self-expression, and more than 350 people have participated in it since its inception, writing about various emotional and humanitarian topics.
According to those in charge of the site, it is part of a broader program for Palestinians to speak directly to the world, as it has always been difficult – for example – in the United States to hear a Palestinian point of view on the conflict.
The report continued that while the Israelis have an embassy in Washington and a number of well-known groups dedicated to communicating with the American public – and scrutinizing what journalists write – the Palestinians did not enjoy these privileges in terms of public relations.
Now this gap is being filled by social media posts from ordinary people whose family members were killed by the Israeli occupation army.
Accusations
The New York Times report stated that some Tel Aviv supporters described We Are Not Numbers as an anti-Israel organization.
However, he said that some Israeli citizens had begun translating the “We Are Not Numbers” articles into Hebrew and publishing them on Facebook. Al-Naouq also started a new project with an Israeli journalist called “Across the Wall” that produced stories from Gaza for an Israeli audience.
As the Israeli massacres in Gaza continued, “We Are Not Numbers” became full of writing “about what it means to know that you could die at any moment” and with tributes to the writers who were martyred, including Hoda Al-Sousi, who last year wrote an article about art, and Youssef Maher Dawwas on October 14. October, who wrote about the destruction of his family’s fruit orchard.
Mahmoud Al-Naouk (Ahmed’s younger brother) was also martyred on October 20 when a bomb destroyed their father’s house to the ground, killing 21 members of their family.
