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مصدر عام | The Public Source @thepublicsource.bsky.social · 17d

In 2021, Masar Badil was launched simultaneously in Beirut, Madrid, and São Paolo during a period of growing transnational solidarity sparked by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We’re fighting an enemy backed by global imperialism and capitalism,” says Jaldía Abubakra.

مصدر عام | The Public Source @thepublicsource.bsky.social · 17d

At 18, she left Egypt for Madrid.

“When I got here, my struggle was educating people on Palestine and showing them that Palestinians have the right to return and the right to resist.”

مصدر عام | The Public Source @thepublicsource.bsky.social · 17d

Jaldía Abubakra's political consciousness developed at an early age. She was nine years old when her family left Gaza in 1967, a formative rupture that would shape the rest of her life.

مصدر عام | The Public Source @thepublicsource.bsky.social · 17d

🚢🇵🇸Born in Gaza, Jaldía Abubakra sails with the Global Sumud Flotilla.

She's also co-founder of Masar Badil & a leading Palestinian figure in Spain. Julia Choucair Vizoso & Farah-Silvana Kanaan spoke with her last month.

Screenshots from reels posted to Jaldía's Instagram page.

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مصدر عام | The Public Source @thepublicsource.bsky.social · 17d

The Global Sumud Flotilla is about six days from reaching Gaza. Since setting sail earlier this month, it has come under Israeli drone attacks. This week, Spain and Italy have announced they will send ships to protect the flotilla.

Birzeit University and the Fight for the Future of Palestine

مصدر عام | The Public Source @thepublicsource.bsky.social · 18d

The pressures of life under occupation are woven into the curriculum at Birzeit.

Read Maysa Mustafa and Zach Hussein’s reporting, co-published with Writers Against the War on Gaza @wawog.bsky.social: thepublicsource.org/birzeit-pale...

From classrooms to prison cells, Birzeit students navigate checkpoints, surveillance, and arrests in the fight for Palestine’s future.

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مصدر عام | The Public Source @thepublicsource.bsky.social · 18d

Layla was arrested at dawn on Sept. 17, 2024. At Damon Prison in Haifa, she felt that she was walking into a giant cage that was hosting a school reunion: classmates cheered her name when they caught glimpses of her through the glass window of the prison’s large sliding doors.

Two hands are held up in the frame with their pointer fingers touching. Layla and Hadeel Shatara demonstrate how Palestinian student prisoners greet each other while incarcerated, by pressing their fingers together through the iron bars of their cells. (Zach Hussein/Writers Against the War on Gaza)

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مصدر عام | The Public Source @thepublicsource.bsky.social · 18d

Some students have experienced Zionist prison before even starting college. Occupation forces came for Shadi when he was just 16, locking him up for two months, subjecting him to beatings, and mocking his Christian faith.

Image of Shadi's hands. Shadi was arrested when he was 16 years old and beaten in front of his family. He is now a Birzeit University student. (Photo: Zach Hussein/Writers Against the War on Gaza)

مصدر عام | The Public Source @thepublicsource.bsky.social · 18d

Death, too, is stitched into campus life. When a student is martyred, their body returns to the school’s grounds one last time. Classmates carry the martyr’s coffin on their shoulders in a solemn procession before burial.

Photos of young men, martyred students, are taped outside a room at Birzeit University with a sign that says “Student Council.” (Photo: Zach Hussein/Writers Against the War on Gaza)

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مصدر عام | The Public Source @thepublicsource.bsky.social · 18d

Birzeit University has shaped Palestinian political life since 1970, making it a target of the Israeli regime and the Palestinian Authority, both of which seek to dismantle student power and criminalize political expression.

مصدر عام | The Public Source @thepublicsource.bsky.social · 18d

At Birzeit University, getting a degree can mean doing time in Zionist prison.

In our latest (Dis)order Report, Maysa Mustafa and Zach Hussein recount the experiences of Birzeit students who have been surveilled, arrested, or killed by the Israeli occupation.

Image: Zach Hussein/Writers Against the War on Gaza

"The Only Liberated Place"

Birzeit University and the Fight for the Future of Palestine
By Maysa Mustafa with reporting by Zach Hussein
in partnership with Writers Against the War on Gaza

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مصدر عام | The Public Source @thepublicsource.bsky.social · 24d

After the pager attacks last year, we reached out to Jasbir K. Paur, author of “The Right to Maim.”

Read her thoughts on why such a tactic was used and what is being normalized through it: thepublicsource.org/blog/lebanon...

“And the Wounds Stand Witness”: A poster by the Palestine Poster Project that reads: “Dr. Faiz Rashid Issa. And the wounds are witness. Memories of a doctor in the early days of the siege. Foreword by Dr. George Habash. General Union of Palestinian Writers and Journalists. General Secretariat.” Art by Marc Rudin/Jihad Mansour (1983).

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مصدر عام | The Public Source @thepublicsource.bsky.social · 24d

“Maybe I won’t be able to help this country in any way, but at least I will have shown the survivors: I feel with you,” said Wafa, a former detainee of Khiam Prison who hails from Bint Jbeil. “It is not easy to lose your sight,” she said while holding a poster that read: “We are your eyes.”

Photo credit: Lylla Younes/The Public Source

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مصدر عام | The Public Source @thepublicsource.bsky.social · 24d

Hundreds gathered at Corniche Ain al-Mreisseh yesterday to honor the more than 3,000 people injured in the Israeli Mossad’s act of terrorism last year.

⬇️In pictures
📸 Lylla Younes/The Public Source

Inside the Revolutionary Path of Masar Badil

مصدر عام | The Public Source @thepublicsource.bsky.social · 27d

⛵🇵🇸Jaldia Abubakra, Masar Badil's executive committee member, is aboard the Global Sumud Flotilla en route to her homeland: Gaza.

She told Julia Choucair Vizoso & Farah-Silvana Kanaan (@farouha.bsky.social) last month: “We have to valorize the resistance."

thepublicsource.org/masar-badil-...

Jaldía Abubakra on how Masar Badil is building a revolutionary Palestinian movement from exile.

مصدر عام | The Public Source @thepublicsource.bsky.social · Sep 4

Craig Mokhiber (@craigmokhiber.bsky.social) urges the public to hold media civilly accountable — at least in the court of public opinion — by boycotting mainstream outlets, canceling their subscriptions, and supporting independent media outlets instead.

مصدر عام | The Public Source @thepublicsource.bsky.social · Sep 4

“When media agree to military censorship as a condition of embedding with the Israeli army, they cease to be journalists and they become a part of the propaganda machine of the Israeli military,” Craig Mokhiber (@craigmokhiber.bsky.social), international human rights lawyer.

مصدر عام | The Public Source @thepublicsource.bsky.social · Sep 4

Anne Barnard, who was Beirut bureau chief for The New York Times from 2012–2018, also cautioned that good reporting combines embedded access with context and additional reporting from all available sources — including unembedded reporters on the ground.

مصدر عام | The Public Source @thepublicsource.bsky.social · Sep 4

While in other wars, embeds were the only way to see what was happening, Anne Barnard, a veteran newspaper reporter who spent over a decade based in the Middle East, cautioned that journalists must not leave their "critical faculties behind."

مصدر عام | The Public Source @thepublicsource.bsky.social · Sep 4

Stories by journalists embedded with an invading force often become the ‘master narrative.’

Mainstream media comply with occupying forces that also kill unembedded journalists. Habib Battah (@habibbattah.bsky.social) & Christina Cavalcanti unpack this:
thepublicsource.org/media-ethics...

Journalism or Propaganda?

Can journalists who embed with an occupying force be held accountable for complicity inwar crimes?

By Habib Battah & Christina Cavalcanti

Screenshot: Israeli military spokesperson

On the Ethics of Embedding With Génocidaires

مصدر عام | The Public Source @thepublicsource.bsky.social · Sep 2

Help us spread this call as widely as possible by sharing, reposting, and using the hashtag #BoycottIDFEmbeds

Read our statement: thepublicsource.org/media-embeds...

Israel’s military is planning to take foreign journalists on guided tours of Gaza. The Public Source is calling on journalists not to participate in Israel’s war crime propaganda.

مصدر عام | The Public Source @thepublicsource.bsky.social · Sep 2

The Public Source calls on news organizations and individual journalists to stand up and say no to Israel’s propaganda tours. Here’s what a principled news outlet or individual would do: thepublicsource.org/media-embeds...

We call on news organizations and individual journalists to say no to Israel’s propaganda tours.

FOR NEWS OUTLETS:
Refuse to send your reporters on Israel’s propaganda tours of Gaza;
Issue a statement to your readers explaining why;
Hire Palestinian journalists in Gaza and offer them the same protections as non-Palestinian correspondents.

FOR INDIVIDUAL REPORTERS:
Refuse to go on military embeds to Gaza;
Sign letters and statements to newsroom leadership asking them not to send your colleagues on military embeds to Gaza.

مصدر عام | The Public Source @thepublicsource.bsky.social · Sep 2

To go on one of Israel’s propaganda tours is to accept the bargain that Israel is offering: accept the murder of real reporters on the ground in exchange for a brief, stage-managed glimpse at genocide, shown to you by its perpetrators, with the goal of legitimizing it.

Western governments normalized the state-sanctioned murder of journalists. But journalists don’t have to.

They can and should say no.

مصدر عام | The Public Source @thepublicsource.bsky.social · Sep 2

We know what the resulting stories will look like. Journalists embedded with the Israeli military in Oct. 2024 during its illegal invasion of southern Lebanon. The resulting coverage was riddled with distortions, disinformation, & dehumanizing language. ⬇️
thepublicsource.org/media-ethics...

The Public Source conducted an in-depth analysis of the resulting articles and broadcasts.

We found them to be riddled with distortions, disinformation, dehumanizing language, and factual errors: in effect, state propaganda masquerading as actual news — but without any of the questioning, fact checks, or balance that distinguish legitimate newsgathering from public relations.