Six years of Electronic Intifada: Selected milestones 2001-2006
February 2001
On February 23, 2001, The Electronic Intifada website was launched five months after the beginning of the second Palestinian Intifada and shortly after the election of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. After a pre-launch sneak peek, The Nation columnist Alexander Cockburn praised the site: "Even the relatively better-informed mainstream accounts fail to convey the brutality of [Israel's apartheid policies]. There are a number of excellent news outlets for those who want unjaundiced reporting.... The Electronic Intifada...is trusted."
March 2001
EI publishes an annotated version of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's official bio, filling in the many events that the Israeli Foreign Ministry had skipped over concerning his role in the Qibya, Sabra, and Shatila massacres; as well as Sharon's role as one of the key architects of the Israeli settlement drive and his sparking of the second Palestinian Intifada. The bio, created to address the lack of media coverage of Sharon's seamier side, has since been viewed by hundreds of thousands of visitors and translated into French.
April 2001
Al-Bassaleh ("The Onion"), a satirical section of EI's website was launched. The Bassaleh News Network (BNN) continues to be a very popular part of the site, attracting thousands of visitors who otherwise might not have been exposed to information in the other sections of EI's website.
May-August 2001
During this period, EI focused on systematically adding information to its website, issuing regular action items and offering alternative analysis to that available in mainstream reporting. Larger research projects included a feature that debunked Israel's 'unilateral cease-fire': an incomplete chronology of continuing Israeli violence and military occupation' was juxtaposed with Israeli claims that it was pursuing a unilateral ceasefire, showing day-by-day accounts from human rights organisations of the situation on the ground.
September 2001
One day following the 9/11 attacks, EI published an important coverage trend that challenged the widespread media usage of footage of Palestinians "celebrating" the attacks. Our report, read by hundreds of thousands of visitors since then, noted the footage was unrepresentative of wider Palestinian society and was repeatedly framed in a misleading manner by American news anchors that suggested the images were representative.
October 2001-January 2002
In common with other websites, EI experienced increased traffic following 9/11 as interest in the Middle East grew. During this period, EI's founders were repeatedly interviewed in a variety of national and international publications and television/radio programmes, all of which increased EI's visibility.
February 2002
EI breaks the story that National Public Radio's Israel correspondent, Linda Gradstein, had been receiving cash honoraria from pro-Israeli organizations for years in violation of NPR's written policies. Democracy Now! carried this story on 55 radio stations nationwide, and the public broadcasting trade newspaper, Current, also picked up the story. NPR was subsequently forced to make a series of public statements and policy pronouncements following EI's revelations.
March/April 2002
As Israel launched what it inoffensively termed "Operation Defensive Shield", the biggest military operation in the West Bank since 1967, it simultaneously barred foreign journalists from entry to Ramallah, creating a news blackout from that key Palestinian city. In response, EI launched Live from Palestine, an Electronic Intifada Diaries Project featuring continually updated and dramatic accounts from local residents detailing life under a punishing curfew and military invasion.
For a period of two weeks, these were literally the only voices heard from Ramallah. On April 2nd, the Washington Post featured EI's diaries project on its Newsbytes technology wire service. On April 5th, the Daily Star (Lebanon) wrote about the project: "Intended as a news source, the site has slowly been transforming into a work of art, a human testimony of collective grief and a will to survive... Diaries and eyewitness accounts, from Anne Frank's to Elie Wiesel's, have long been the way that we understand history. In the end, Live From Palestine does not read all that differently from a novel of fragments, each of the different voices coming together to make sense of a collective tragedy. The site is different, though, in large part because of its remarkable immediacy. It is art in progress, history in the making, a document not discovered in an attic but available simultaneously as the events themselves occur."
EI's website saw well over 600,000 visits during the first month of Israel's invasion. The official Palestinian Authority website -- then found at www.pna.net -- was knocked off the air during the events and the pna.net domain was pointed at EI's website, a tacit recognition of the high levels of faith in EI's credibility and professionalism.
May 2002
According to a 26 May 2002 article in Newsday, EI is one of two sites "credited with making the pro-Palestinian cause more prominent with the media in recent years".
July 2002
On July 26th, leading British Internet consultant David Bowden described EI's website in the Financial Times (UK) as: "...something quite spectacular...a highly professional site."
August 2002
EI launched a vastly reorganised and professionally redesigned website with a dynamic backend that allows EI's four founders and trusted writers/photographers on the ground in Palestine to directly publish material at a "top speed" of more than 50 articles a day, if needed. The new system -- which allows content addition to be devolved into the hands of several non-technical editors, features printable and e-mailable pages that encourage dissemination, and permits the syndication of automatically-updated web headlines -- immediately increased our baseline number of monthly visits from 120,000 to one quarter of a million.
September 2002
On September 27th, the Jerusalem Post (Israel) described EI as: "...very professional, user-friendly and well written...the Palestinian CNN."
November 2002
On November 16th, an EI investigative report highlighted that the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs had falsely claimed that "worshippers" were "massacred" in an attack in Hebron, when in fact the clash had taken place between Palestinian gunmen and both Israeli soldiers and a paramilitary settler force. EI continues to put a high emphasis on deconstructing damaging assertions about the Palestinian people, which are typically used to deflect international criticism from Israeli "retaliatory" attacks against Palestinian civilian neighborhoods. On November 22nd, EI published an account by someone present in the area that cast doubt on Israel explanations for its killing of UN worker Iain Hook in Jenin.
December 2002
On December 10th, an EI investigative report uncovered the fact that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences had actively dissuaded the submission of Divine Intervention, a film by Palestinian director Elia Sueiman that won two awards at the Cannes Film Festival. On the same day, EI published an important report noting that 43 Palestinians, including 15 children, had been killed in the previous month, with minimal coverage in the international media.
On December 16th, ITV's (UK) "The Web Review" praised EI and gave it "10/10" possible points for quality and newsworthiness. On December 18th, an EI exclusive was the vehicle for breaking news of a petition signed by 800 U.S. academics warning of possible ethnic cleansing moves by the government of Israel. On December 20th, EI published a follow-up to the Divine Intervention story, an exclusive interview with James Longley, director of the well-reviewed documentary Gaza Strip and a winner of a student Oscar, who told EI that he would be giving back his award in protest at the Academy's exclusion of the Palestinian film.
January-February 2003
With a clear information gap to fill and a steady visitor base, EI began 2003 with plans to make its unique content more accessible and develop new resources that have been repeatedly requested. Today, EI's readership includes editors, journalists, diplomats, academics, activists and researchers from around the world. As the Israeli occupation heads towards its fourth decade, human rights indicators on the ground show no movement bar a steady worsening of conditions. The need is greater than ever to provide information and analysis of developments by trusted alternative media sources.
March 2003
EI's reporting, op eds, and analyses in March were heavily dominated by the death of Rachel Corrie, an International Solidarity Movement Activist who was crushed by an IDF bulldozer as she and other ISM activists attempted to prevent another house demolition near Rafah. Corrie's murder marked the end of an era: The presence of internationals would no longer prevent or minimize Israeli violence against Palestinians. Israeli impunity had now reached a new level. EI began publishing this breaking story the very day that Rachel was killed, and was quick to offer annotated images of the event as well as wide-ranging and fine-grained political and legal contextualization of Rachel's murder. These articles remain some of the most read pages on EI a year later.
April 2003
April saw two more IDF attacks on ISM activists, and more Israeli rationalizations of these attacks as "mistakes," or attempts to blame ISM members for their own deaths and injuries by virtue of their presence in a conflict zone. EI presented a special Coverage Trend feature entitled "The Brian Avery shooting: When will we realize that there can't be this many accidents'?", calling attention to Israeli and mainstream US media misrepresentations of the actual context of Avery's shooting. Avery survived, but with extensive damage to his skull and facial musculature. Just one week later, however, another ISM member, Tom Hurndall from the UK, was shot and left brain-dead, prompting EI to present eyewitness accounts that challenged and critiqued media depictions of these attacks as occurring in "crossfires," when that was not the case. EI authors and analysts began to make the case that the IDF was willfully targeting internationals in the West Bank and Gaza.
At the end of April, EI ran an exclusive feature, "The manipulation of the US public," detailing the aims and strategies of a confidential document EI obtained. The document, prepared for pro-Israeli activists by the public relations firm Luntz Research Companies and The Israel Project, revealed the tactics Israel and its US advocates use to maintain support for Israel and its hard-line policies. Entitled "Wexner Analysis: Israeli Communication Priorities 2003," the document urged pro-Israel advocates to keep invoking the name of Saddam Hussein, and to stress that Israel "was always behind American efforts to rid the world of this ruthless dictator and liberate their people." It also advised supporters of Israel to appear to affect a "balanced" tone, but admitted that in arguing for Israel's policies, the illegal "settlements are our Achilles heel," for which there is no good defense.
On 11 April, EI co-founder Laurie King-Irani was a guest on the weekly CBC national television programme, "At the End," which is similar to the US "Politically Incorrect" programme. King-Irani discussed International Humanitarian Law and double standards in politics and the media.
On 30 April, EI co-founder Ali Abunimah was a featured guest on the WashingtonPost.com's live chat about the selection of Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas.
May 2003
Following up on its in-depth reporting about IDF targeting of Internationals in March and April, EI co-founders Nigel Parry and Ali Abunimah presented a special feature entitled "Israel's 'we have the right to kill you' visa for Gaza'." On 8 May 2003, the Electronic Intifada obtained the text of a document distributed by the Israeli military to foreign visitors. The document, entitled "Form to be filled out and submitted to IDF authorities prior to entry to the Gaza Strip," aimed at excluding foreign peace activists from undertaking nonviolent direct action against Israeli military operations in the Gaza Strip.
June 2003
EI Co-Founder Ali Abunimah, writing in the pages of the Chicago Tribune and on EI, offered trenchant critiques of the "Road Map" while assessing the state of affairs on the ground in Palestine on the 36th anniversary of the beginning of the Occupation. Meanwhile, EI's "Live from Palestine" diaries project featured hard-hitting reports from Rafah as it endured more military onslaughts and deaths - most of which were underreported in the Western media.
EI's founders were awarded ADC's "Voices of Peace" media award at the 20th National Convention of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in Washington DC on 14 June 2003. Nigel Parry and Ali Abunimah accepted the ADC's Voices of Peace Award on behalf of the founders of EI and sister site Electronic Iraq. The award was presented to EI and eIraq "in recognition of EI's commitment to bringing the concerns, voices, and experiences of the Iraqi and Palestinian peoples to audiences the world over via the Internet."
Entering new dimensions of communications media, EI launched a Multimedia section in June. With the aim of establishing and consolidating links with activist groups around the world and on the ground in Palestine, EI hopes to offer an increasing variety of video and audio depicting daily life for Palestinians and reports on solidarity events from the global movement for Palestinian rights around the world. Announcing the launch of the Multimedia section, EI issued a call asking all those with video cameras on the ground in Palestine who can submit footage to get in touch with the co-founders.
Continuing its in-depth reporting on and analysis of new horizons in international criminal prosecution in the Middle East, EI featured articles by co-founder Laurie King-Irani interpreting legal and political developments in Belgium, where a landmark case lodged by survivors of the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre was scheduled to go to court. Explaining backroom political pressures on the Belgian government exerted by the US and Israeli governments, King-Irani, who also served as North American Coordinator for the International Campaign for Justice for the Victims of Sabra and Shatila, presented a number of articles on EI detailing the dangers of US and Israeli impunity for war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Middle East, including "On learning lessons: Belgium's universal jurisdiction law under threat."
August 2003
EI begins focusing intensively on Israel's Apartheid Wall. In an illustrated Coverage Trend feature, "Is it a fence? Is it a wall? No, it's a separation barrier," co-founder Nigel Parry presented a comprehensive physical, geographic, socioeconomic, and legal analysis of Israel's Separation Barrier, dubbed the "Apartheid Wall" or "Berlin Wall" by Palestinians.
EI contributor Michael Brown penned a Coverage Trend feature at the end of August entitled "Shebaa Farms: CNN and the US media encounter difficult terrain," detailing how his organization, Partners for Peace, had repeatedly contacted CNN to explain that Shebaa Farms in southern Lebanon is not in Israel, but in occupied territory.
On 21 August, EI co-founder Ali Abunimah was a featured guest on USA Today's "Talk Today" Live Chat. Abunimah answered questions from readers of USA Today on what it takes "to stop the violence between Israel and the Palestinians."
September 2003
EI launched its new BY TOPIC section, a continuation and completion of the site's original "Reference Library." BY TOPIC is an important reference tool as it offers an alphabetically-organized, browsable interface to all the content on EI. Rather than using the search engine to find material on a particular topic, visitors to EI are now able to enter the BY TOPIC section and browse a single page that lists all our news reports, human rights analyses, opinion/editorial pieces, and multimedia relating to that topic, as well as external links to useful, related resources on other websites.
On 13 September, EI co-founder Ali Abunimah was the guest of Amy Goodman on the popular "Democracy Now!" programme. Abunimah discussed intra-Palestinian politics during a month when the Israeli Security Cabinet had authorized the IDF to "remove" Yasser Arafat. Meanwhile the Jerusalem Post had called for Arafat's death and the Israeli government authorized the army to "remove" Yasser Arafat, giving its security services a green light to move against the 74 year-old Palestinian leader "in a manner, and at a time, of its choosing."
The last week of September, the EI team remembered and mourned renowned Palestinian-American professor Edward W. Said. In an obituary penned by the co-founders, Said's role as an engaged, public intellectual was lauded:
"When images and narratives of the Palestinian struggle were dominated by misrepresentations, caricatures and hateful stereotypes, Said was for years often the sole and most effective advocate for this cause in the United States. Despite relentless and vicious personal attacks, Said never abandoned a vision of peace between Israelis and Palestinians based on deep mutual recognition of the other's histories and narratives, and reconciliation leading to complete equality. He taught and inspired a new generation of activists to speak with clarity and always search for truth no matter who it offends...Yet the greatest significance of Said's contribution is not that he was an outstanding advocate for justice and peace in Palestine, but that he located this cause within a much greater struggle for a truly universal and humanist vision, and a rejection of ethno-nationalism and religious fanaticism. He taught by example that being faithful to a cause did not mean blind loyalty to leaders or symbols, but necessitated self-criticism and debate. This fact meant that his engagement with the Arab world, and fierce criticism of its status quo, was as important as his work communicating with people in the west."
EI's obituary for Dr. Said was reproduced in a variety of print and on-line publications throughout the world.
October 2003
On 15 October, EI received special mention in an article by Mark Glaser in the Online Journalism Review. Noting a growing number of English-language sites conveying the Palestinian position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Glaser singled out EI as a news portal that "combines original commentaries and news with views from other outlets."
EI co-founder Ali Abunimah helped open a wider debate on the one-state versus two-state solution to the Israeli Palestinian conflict with his 16 October essay on EI entitled "Palestine/Israel: one state for all its citizens." Abunimah stressed that "Peace in Palestine through territorial partition is a doomed fantasy and the time has come to discard it. It is the moment, therefore, for us to declare the era of partition over and commit to a moral, just and realisable vision in which Israelis and Palestinians build a future as partners in a single state which guarantees freedom, equality and cultural self-determination to all its citizens."
November 2003
EI focused intensively on the Apartheid Wall throughout November, supporting the Anti-Aparthied Wall Campaign's "Week of action against the Wall" on 9 November, which was followed by a number of articles, analyses, and photo essays about the wall and its impact on Palestinian communities living in its path and beyond. EI contributor Michael F. Brown took CNN to task in a Coverage Trend feature entitled "Correcting CNN's measurement of Israel's Apartheid Wall." Brown noted that "For months, CNN has misrepresented the facts of where Israel's apartheid barrier will run...When CNN contacted the Israeli government to check they found that 'According to Defense Ministry spokeswoman Rachel Niedak-Ashkenazi, the planned fence route, which has been approved by the government, will be 690 kilometers (429 miles) long. Cost is estimated at $1.5 billion'." Other EI special reports and commentaries focused on the international legal dimensions of the Wall and the negative impact on humanitarian conditions for Palestinian communities cut off from their fields, orchards, families, and medical and educational services by the Wall.
December 2003
Electronic Intifada Version 3.0 was launched on 10 December, International Human Rights Day. The new version represented a major upgrade of EI, adding the following new features:
Stronger visual design
New BY TOPIC directory
Improved navigation
New search tools
News from other sites
In a press release introducing EI v3.0, co-founder and designer Nigel Parry noted: "Since we launched The Electronic Intifada in February 2001, millions of people all over the world have used our site as a resource for the latest news and in-depth analysis about Palestine and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In barely three years, the scope of our coverage has grown -- covering not only the fundamentals of the conflict, but human rights, activism, the pro-Israel lobby, Arts, Music and Culture; and the good, bad and ugly of the mainstream media. Today EI is recognized as the leading web resource on Palestine. A major factor in EI's success is that it has been a window through which people in Palestine and in the Diaspora can make their voices heard."
At the close of 2003, EI's Ali Abunimah offered a sobering analysis of systematic media misrepresentations of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, "117 Palestinians killed, hundreds injured during media's 'relative calm'," his analysis revealed that leading media sources had declared an Israeli assassination in Gaza, followed by a Palestinian bombing in Tel Aviv on 25 December as the end of a period of "relative calm" or a "lull" in Israeli-Palestinian violence, that had supposedly lasted since the last Palestinian suicide attack in Haifa on 4 October. In fact, said Abunimah, "the period since 4 October has been one of intense Israeli violence, in which 117 Palestinians were killed, including 23 children. At the same time, Israel destroyed almost five hundred Palestinian homes throughout the Occupied Territories."
January 2004
Appraising a year of tumultuous changes in international humanitarian law in the Middle East, EI co-founder Laurie King-Irani presented a detailed two-part analysis, "2003: A year of US and Israeli defiance of International Law" in early January, linking trends in Occupied Palestine with emerging issues in Iraq.
EI's continuing in-depth coverage of the Apartheid Wall ushered in the new year, giving special attention to the ecological and economical impact of the Wall. In an Israeli Lobby Watch feature, EI co-founder Ali Abunimah criticized the IDF's policy of uprooting thousands of ancient olive trees. Asking, "If it's against Jewish law, then why is Israel doing it?" Abunimah drew attention to the disconnect from reality that allows "a staffer at the Jewish National Fund for Israel (JNF) to write that, 'it is against Jewish Halachic law to uproot fruit bearing trees.' Yet the Jewish National Fund (JNF) has been essential to the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, and the destruction of its landscape" for decades.
February 2004
In a 6 February 2004 essay assessing the role of the media in ongoing conflict in the Middle East, former BBC reporter Tim Llewellyn explained why the BBC has not done a better job of accurately reporting on and about Palestine.
EI featured more coverage trend pieces on the role of the US media in obscuring the nature and extent of Israel's Apartheid Wall, taking Thomas Friedman and 60 Minutes to task for their part in a self-imposed US media blackout on the Wall's construction.
March 2004
In what became a serial expose, EI co-founders Nigel Parry and Ali Abunimah, along with EI contributor Jonathan Cook, presented hard-hitting investigative reporting on the McDonalds Corporation's Israel Branch, which had reportedly fired an employee for speaking Arabic The Electronic Intifada published an exclusive investigative report by Jonathan Cook detailing evidence supporting the claim by a former worker at McDonald's Israel that she was fired for speaking Arabic on the job. EI encouraged its readers to contact McDonald's Corporation about this disturbing matter and demand justice for all its workers. EI's focus brought needed attention to this glaring example of discrimination in an American corporation's Israeli workplace.
EI received a number of press mentions this month, including a piece in the The New York Sun by Jacob Gershman entitled "Columbia Considers Limits on Political Expression at University" on 19 April, which featured an EI interview with Columbia University Professor Rashid Khalidi, who said critics of his academic writing have intended to "silence such perfectly legitimate criticism" of Israel "by tarring it with the brush of anti-Semitism." That same week, EI co-founder Ali Abunimah participated on the washingtonpost.com Online Chat Session about the Bush-Sharon meeting and President Bush's alarming decision to openly endorse Israel's annexation of colonies on occupied Palestinian land, and Israel's refusal to implement Palestinian refugees' internationally recognized right to return to their homes. Journalist Christopher Farah, writing in Salon.com about Kurdish websites, singled out EI as a exceptional example of a successful site: "A web site such as the Electronic Intifada tries to represent, by definition, an electronic uprising, carrying the Palestinian struggle for a nation -- nonviolently, through information, education and communication -- to Palestinians beyond the West Bank and Gaza, helping to create a unified Palestinian community that extends from Europe, to America, to the Middle East." In early March, EI co-founder Laurie King-Irani was a guest on the KPFK-Pacifica weekly news show "Middle East in Focus."
May 2004
On 6 May EI's Ali Abunimah appeared on the BBC World Service programme "News Hour" to comment on the meeting between US President George W. Bush and HM King Abdullah II of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, during which Bush stated that "I remain committed to the vision I laid out here in the Rose Garden on June 24, 2002, of two states, Israel and Palestine, living side-by-side in peace and security, and to the establishment of a Palestinian state that is viable, contiguous, sovereign, and independent."
Providing psychological and sociopolitical background analysis usually absent from most mainstream reports, Riaz Hassan, a professor of sociology at Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia, examined the motives driving suicide bombing attacks. Hassan noted that "at a time when the Western world worries about weapons of mass destruction in terrorist hands, a more basic device has emerged as the weapon of choice - a life itself. This use of life as a weapon - now exercised mainly by Islamic youths - is frequently presented as the manifestation of Islamic fanaticism. But studies by serious scholars and recent surveys show that the spate of suicide attacks in the Middle East is linked more to politics than to religion."
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A Palestinian woman sits amid the rubble of her destroyed home in the Brazil neighborhood of Rafah, Gaza, May 2004. (Johannes Abeling)
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In its comprehensive coverage of "Operation Rainbow," which destroyed thousands of lives and homes in Gaza in actions that clearly contravened the Geneva Conventions, EI provided a detailed, daily chronology of events, and offered two searing photoessays on the suffering and desolation in Rafah and Brazil Camp during the latter half of May. EI's characteristically solid analyses and commentaries were supplemented by the hard-hitting photography of European and Palestinian photographers. Johannes Abeling, a freelance Dutch photojournalist, on 19 May found himself in Rafah in the middle of the peaceful protest march by local residents that ended with Israeli combat helicopters and tanks firing on the demonstrators, killing at least 8 people and wounding about 50, including many children. In another multimedia feature, Mahfouz Abu Turk, a Palestinian photojournalist based in Jerusalem, recorded disturbing images in the aftermath of Israel's "Operation Rainbow." The EI team critically examined US and Israeli media coverage trends of the IDF's actions in Rafah, while providing legal and political interpretations of the roots of IDF impunity.
June 2004
EI continued to shine a searching and critical spotlight on the role of the US media in ignoring, spinning, and obfuscating news of daily IDF violations of International Humanitarian Law in Gaza, some aspects of which are approaching the legal definitions of genocide. Despite Israeli government officials' claims, reflexively echoed by CNN, that "Operation Rainbow" had concluded, Israel razed another 24 dunums of Palestinian land and destroyed another 39 Palestinian homes in Rafah between May 29th and June 4th, leaving another 500 Palestinian civilians homeless. Google News continuously crawls more than 4,500 news sources from around the world, yet a search for the keyword "Rafah" shows that, beyond the Israeli press, supplementary news websites such as the Electronic Intifada, and a handful of US newspapers, coverage of the latest demolitions had been minimal, particularly in the United States.
EI's Arts, Music, and Culture editor, Maureen Clare Murphy, presented a special EI feature section reviewing offerings at the third annual Chicago Palestine Film Festival, and also initiates a new EI feature: "EI Bookstore," a resource located in our BY TOPIC section. EI Bookstore features brief reviews, book covers, and links to texts on Amazon.com.
July 2004
In December 2003, the United Nations General Assembly asked the International Court of Justice to render an Advisory Opinion on the legality of Israel's West Bank Barrier. The opinion was due to be announced on 9 July 2004.
On 8 July 2004, the Electronic Intifada received a leaked copy of the text of the court's ruling to be read the next day, and was the first media organisation to publish the full text. The next morning, EI was cited in publications and wire services around the world, including the New York Times, The Guardian, the Australian, the Associated Press, Agence France Presse, and others.
January 2005
This month’s reporting was dominated by photo essays, reports, and commentaries about the Palestinian presidential elections and the victory of Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen). EI offered sobering and critical perspectives, in contrast to the mainstream media’s heralding of “elections elation” and the dawn of new opportunities for an Israeli-Palestinian peace in the post-Arafat era. EI reported on election irregularities and provided up-to-the-minute reporting on polling results, while also giving voice to a wide variety of Palestinian perspectives on the ground in the West Bank and Gaza.
March 2005
In an EI Exclusive report, co-founders Nigel Parry and Ali Abunimah, along with EI contributor Michael Brown, revealed that official US government studies have ascertained that the population of Palestinians living in Israel, the Occupied Gaza Strip, Occupied East Jerusalem and rest of the Occupied West Bank combined now exceeds the number of Israeli Jews. The figures came from the U.S. State Department's annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2004. Although the report provided population figures, it failed to “connect the dots” to arrive at the explosive new demographic reality.
Sounding a theme that would recur throughout 2005, EI co-founder Arjan El-Fassed examined the Dutch and EU involvement in the Middle East diplomatic process. According to the EU-Israel Action Plan, El-Fassed noted, "the EU and Israel are now closer together than ever before and, as near neighbours, will reinforce their political and economic interdependence. Enlargement offers the opportunity for the EU and Israel to develop an increasingly close relationship, going beyond co-operation, to involve a significant measure of economic integration and a deepening of political co-operation." El-Fassed concluded that “instead of providing incentives to ensure Israel respects international humanitarian law, under the Netherlands’ leadership of the EU, Israel received rewards without withdrawing one single soldier from Gaza.”
April 2005
In another EI Exclusive, Ali Abunimah wrote that “the British government assisted a leading UK company to obtain a lucrative contract with Israel in violation of UK policy and international law on the status of Occupied East Jerusalem. Under the contract, signed with Israeli Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the UK consulting firm A4e will establish an employment center in Jerusalem. Despite assurances from officials at the British Embassy in Tel Aviv that ‘we cannot and will not support any work’ by A4e in Occupied East Jerusalem, there is conclusive evidence that they did exactly that, damaging UK credibility as an honest broker.”
EI was one of three alternative/supplementary media sites reviewed and rated favorably by Canada’s Ryerson Review of Journalism, which gave EI high marks for fresh and reliable content. The author of the piece, Lisa Sarracini, stated that “this site is packed with information that is organized, accessible, and thorough. It offers visitors historical, legal, cultural, and political information about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict…In 2002, the EI team decided that instead of critiquing the media, they would instead try to become the ideal.”
July 2005
In an op-ed entitled “Gross misinformation: the media in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict,” EI co-founder Ali Abunimah noted that although the conflict received a disproportionate share of mainstream western media attention compared to brutal conflicts in Africa, the U.S. public remains grossly misinformed. Abunimah examined trends in media coverage of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and found that as news organizations come under increasing pressure from pro-Israel groups, there are fewer places to go for solid, independent coverage.
August 2005
This month's news was heavily dominated by reports and commentaries on the Israeli pullout from the Gaza Strip, as well as critiques of media coverage of the IDF’s removal of illegal settlers. EI co-founders and contributors noted that while the pullout was seen by many commentators as an official Israeli strategy to consolidate its hold over the West Bank and East Jerusalem, others consider the pull out as a necessary step in the roadmap to peace in Israel-Palestine.
September 2005
EI co-founder Nigel Parry offered an engaging and inspiring profile of the UK graffiti artist known as “Banksy,” who asked on his website introducing his Wall project, "How illegal is it to vandalize a wall, when the wall itself has been deemed unlawful by the International Court of Justice? The wall now stands three times the height of the Berlin wall and will eventually run for over 700km -- the distance from London to Zurich.” Banksy’s humorous and moving artwork, applied directly to the Wall, speaks volumes about human rights violations in Palestine.
EI co-founder Laurie King-Irani introduced a new culinary feature in our BY TOPIC section: From the EI Kitchen.
October 2005
Cindy and Craig Corrie, the parents of Rachel Corrie, the American peace activist bulldozed to death in Gaza in 2003, wrote a moving theatrical review of a play, “My name is Rachel Corrie,” which debuted in London. Expressing their initial doubts about the project, the Corries related that “when our daughter was killed in the Gaza Strip on March 16, 2003, our immediate impulse was to get her words out to the world. We realised that her words were having an effect on others, whose lives were being changed. Earlier this year, when a play created entirely from Rachel's emails and journals first opened in London, we saw in a very immediate way the impact that Rachel's words can have on others.”
The Electronic Intifada announced the launch of a multimedia DVD for distribution to journalists, editors, producers, politicians, entertainment industry contacts, activists, and others interested in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. EI invites all multimedia producers, filmmakers, musicians, visual artists, and photographers to submit content for inclusion on the EI DVD.
November 2005
EI contributors Jeff Handmaker and Adri Nieuwhof made a solid argument for banning Israel’s long history of administrative detention, i.e., detaining people without trial, quite often for long periods, based on an administrative rather than a judicial order founded upon secret evidence. In a two-part essay, Handmaker and Nieuwhof demonstrated that Israel's administrative detention policy is not only grossly immoral, but it also violates numerous principles and binding obligations of international law. They urged human rights advocates to raise their voices anew against the injustices caused by the use of administrative detention.
In an EI Exclusive Report in out Israeli Lobby Watch section, Ali Abunimah offered an alarming report on the culpability of Jack Straw, in “selling out” Jerusalem. Abunimah revealed that “new documents obtained by EI under the UK's Freedom of Information Act (2000) indicate that Foreign Secretary Straw was asked to personally lobby Israeli officials on behalf of a UK company whose work helps extend Israel's administrative and legal structures into Occupied East Jerusalem, in violation of international law and long-standing UK policy.
December 2005
EI’s Arjan El-Fassed criticized the European Union’s threat to curb aid to the Palestinian Authority if Hamas wins next month's Palestinian Legislative Council elections. EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, following his recent shelving of a report critical of Israeli policies in Jerusalem, said during a visit to Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories that if Hamas won the elections, it would be "very difficult that the help and the money that goes to... the Palestinian Authority will continue to flow."
January 2006
The Electronic Intifada provided its readers with in-depth and informed reporting and analysis of the January 2006 Palestinian elections and the changing landscape of Palestinian politics, US and EU attitudes and policies towards the new Hamas dominated government, and examinations of the fault lines in Israeli and Palestinian political thought and action.
The website also affirmed its role as a supplement to the incomplete narrative to the conflict offered by the mainstream media with its coverage of the removal of then Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon from political life. With the breaking news of his stroke, EI's Arts, Music and Culture Editor Maureen Clare Murphy interviewed average Palestinians and policy-makers alike on their perception of Sharon, countering President Bush's characterization of him as a "man of peace."
February 2006
In an open letter to Europeaid published by The Electronic Intifada, a group of 40 filmmakers and artists questioned the substantial funding of a cultural project with a troubling relationship to the Israeli government. The letter was just one of many important documents published by EI that publicized Palestinian civil society, culture-makers, academics, and other interested parties calls for the boycott of Israeli institutions that help support Israel's human rights abuses in and occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Throughout the year, EI continued to be an important venue for the continued debate over calls for boycott, sanctions and divestment against Israel.
Meanwhile, it was evident early on in the year that 2006 would be one of the costliest years of the conflict for the Palestinians. EI scrupulously published reports on Israel's illegal assassination operations, including a February 2006 intervention to diplomatic missions present in Israel-Palestine by Palestinian and Israeli human rights organization protesting Israel's assassination policy.
March 2006
Comprehensively represented on EI was the growing food crisis which unfolded in Gaza following the closing of Gaza's commercial crossings. The Electronic Intifada began its thorough documentation of the collective punishment of the Israeli and Quartet sanctions against and cutting of aid to the Palestinian Authority. EI carried dozens of articles throughout the year related to the crisis that resulted from the sanctions, providing analysis and opinion on the measures, reporting on the humanitarian and economic impact, diaries by those most affected by the policy, as well as coverage of the civil society strikes that followed, and government and NGO responses to the problem.
The Electronic Intifada also continued to provide unique analysis regarding the changing political landscape in Israel-Palestine. EI made media appearances regarding the Israeli elections, and EI contributor Patrick O'Connor provided the first of several analyses featured on EI regarding the mainstream media's failure to cover the troubling rise in Israeli mainstream politics of Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beitenu party, which advocates for the transfer of Palestinian citizens of Israel as well as those in the West Bank.
April 2006
There are some problems unique to Palestinians that just don't appear on the news radar but can be learned about on EI. Take EI contributor and Gaza resident Laila El-Haddad's predicament of trying to purchase a plane ticket on British Airways' website but unable to find anything applying to her in the country of citizenship and residence drop-down menus. "Where in the world is Laila El-Haddad if not in Palestine," she wrote in an April piece for EI's Live from Palestine diaries section, adding, "Certainly not in Israel (as one of many customer relations representatives casually suggested)."
Meanwhile, Palestinians in Iraq were not finding much peace either. Reminding that the plight of Palestinians is not limited to the occupied Palestinian territories, EI published articles on the Palestinians being increasingly targeted in the violence in Iraq, further disseminating disturbing reports being put forth by humanitarian and human rights organizations.
May 2006
The Electronic Intifada continued its annual coverage of the Chicago Palestine Film Festival, providing some of the first critical coverage of groundbreaking Palestinian films and films related to Palestine, this year featuring reviews by special contributor Maymanah Farhat.
During the month, EI also shed light on various bureaucratic means Israel employs which have a profound impact on daily Palestinian life. EI contributor Jonathan Cook reported on the discriminatory effective ban on marriages between Israelis and Palestinians after the Israeli Supreme Court affirmed the 2003 ban on family unification. Also in May, EI began to report on the phenomenon of effective deportation of human rights defenders and foreign passport-holding Palestinians from the West Bank. EI broke this story long before the mainstream media, and throughout the year published first-person narratives by those personally affected by Israel's "denial of entry" policy.
June 2006
With the series of massacres in Gaza that lead up to the devastating Israeli "Operation Summer Rain," EI began its unparalleled coverage of the attacks on the Gaza Strip. While the collective punishment being inflicted on Gaza's civilian population was not covered by the mainstream media, in June and the months that followed, EI presented its readers with dozens of human rights reports, original articles from those on the ground, political analyses, media commentaries, and aid, development, and activism news relating to the events unfolding in Gaza.
Also in June, EI published a series entitled Portraits of Palestinian Resistance, written by EI contributor Rima Merriman who interviewed the families of four of the Palestinians killed and one of the 57 wounded in Ramallah on 24 May 2006 as they struggled to protect a Palestinian activist and political prisoner from an undercover Israeli unit. The portraits painted of these five men revealed a story much larger than the events of that deadly day in May.
July 2006
Within 48 hours of the beginning of the Israeli bombardment of Lebanon, The Electronic Intifada launched its new project site, Electronic Lebanon. Electronic Lebanon published dozens of diaries during the first days of the war, when many mainstream media outlets had not yet dispatched a reporter to the country. Electronic Lebanon helped further project the voices of Lebanese on the ground by facilitating media interviews with its writers, and EI cofounders made frequent media appearances to make the connection of what was happening in Lebanon and wider Israeli and U.S. policy vis-a-vis the Middle East. Electronic Lebanon also provided a balanced and informative "Lebanon for Beginners" Backgrounder including maps, historical time-lines, and explanations of the political lay of the land in Lebanon, which journalists and scholars utilized extensively.
Meanwhile, EI did not compromise its coverage of the prolonged assault on the Gaza Strip. Readership spiked during this month, and a new readership developed as a result of the launching of Electronic Lebanon. During the 33-day war, EI did not fail its readers by neglecting the story of Gaza, unlike major mainstream media which dropped the crisis in Gaza almost entirely from the radar.
August 2006
In the beginning of August, EI cofounder Laurie King participated in a Palestine Center experts briefing which was televised live on C-Span, to discuss the meaning of democracy, terrorism and international law. It was one of many media appearances EI cofounders made during 2006, when the question of Palestine and human rights in the Middle East came to the forefront.
EI continued to be a central resource for activism news, and in a month of continued Israeli siege on both Lebanon and Gaza, the website carried news and photostories of actions in cities including Dublin, the Amsterdam, Boston, Brussels, Tel Aviv, New York City, and London.
September 2006
In an analysis written exclusively for The Electronic Intifada, Israeli academic and author Ilan Pappe for the first time described the situation in Gaza as "a genocide," setting a new discourse regarding Israeli actions towards the Palestinians. He wrote, "This morning, 2 September, another three citizens of Gaza were killed and a whole family wounded in Beit Hanoun. This is the morning reap, before the end of the day many more will be massacred."
Throughout the year, EI published investigations into corporate involvement in Israeli violations of international law. For example, in September, EI contributor Adri Nieuwhof published one in a series of exposes into the French company Veolia's involvement in a tramway project in occupied East Jerusalem. Such reports published by EI are resourceful for activists and advocates in their calls for the boycott of and divestment from such corporations and projects that abet Israeli violations of Palestinian rights.
November 2006
The Electronic Intifada's profile was raised with the release of cofounder Ali Abunimah's book One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse. Reviewed in influential publications throughout the US, Abunimah also made numerous media appearances that brought new readership to EI.
EI continued to forge partnerships with cultural projects such as the New York Arab-American Comedy Festival. Covered by EI, it was also used as an opportunity to establish relationships with subversive culture-makers to keep EI on the cutting and creative edge. EI also recorded footage of the festival for inclusion in the upcoming EI DVD project.
December 2006
Israel came unflatteringly into the limelight with the publishing of US President Jimmy Carter's book Palestine Peace Not Apartheid. Though Carter said in his book and in interviews that Israel behaves as a democracy within its own borders, news on EI filled in this gap of his analysis. Throughout 2006 EI published reports and commentary that shed light on Israel's discriminatory policies towards its own Palestinian citizens such as the demolishing of homes in the unrecognized Bedouin villages, the discriminatory compensation of Israel's summer war victims, and the continued injustice of the October 2000 killings.
EI also thoroughly covered the intensified internal crisis that reached a deadly climax in December. Pieces such as EI cofounder Arjan El Fassed's Who is Mohammad Dahlan? gave EI's readers the historical perspective they need to make sense of the escalating violence between Fatah and Hamas.
The Electronic Intifada has amply demonstrated that it can meet this important challenge with professionalism, very high quality resources, and a timeliness important in the media environment. With your help, we will continue to enhance and expand our important work. Donate now.
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