SPEAKERS
Samah Sabawi, 4PR – Voice of the People
Outline
Introducing Samah. 0:00
What was the British Mandate of Palestine? 3:17
When he left, he didn’t think it would be permanent. 8:18
How did he get permission to come to Australia? 12:33
The media’s denial of the existence of the Palestinian people. 16:27
Australia is out of touch with the will of the people. 22:12
How armed resistance manifests itself in all forms of resistance, with armed resistance being one of them. 26:19
Gaza’s wealthy population is mainly made or sustained by people who work abroad and send their money back. 30:00
What is the way forward for Palestinians like yourself? 35:14
The media is about marketing and selling. You need to be credible. 41:11
4PR – Voice of the People
Okay, could you please introduce yourself?
Samah Sabawi
Yes, my name is Samah Sabawi. And I am a Palestinian from Gaza. Originally. I’ve lived in many different places around the world born in Gaza, forced into exile in the aftermath of the 1967 war and occupation of my of my city and left, you know, had the really the typical Palestinian story where, you know, you’re in exile in the refugee camp. A lot of Palestinians ended up in the Arabian Gulf. Initially, we ended up in Saudi Arabia, where my father was able to get some work. And then later, we emigrated to Australia. And so I had my early childhood years were in Saudi Arabia, my teenage years. And my early adult years were here in Australia, I graduated from Monash University, and then got married and lived in Canada for 20 years before coming back here again,
4PR – Voice of the People
When you left the Middle East. What passport did you travel on?
Samah Sabawi
My father, in Saudi Arabia? Well, actually, the trick was leaving Jordan, we we went into Jordan with, with the 1967 refugees. So you were part of this large group of exiled, crossing the (Allenby) bridge into Jordan. And we were handed un documents, temporary ID cards by UNWRA, but the trick was to try to get out of Jordan. And that’s why so many refugees get stuck in the refugee camps, it is very difficult to acquire a travel document that would get you out, my father had to do some incredible stunts. And he’s a very resourceful man, and he was able to get us Jordanian travel documents. But these travel documents are not like citizenship documents or passports, they just, they’re just a document that would allow you to leave basically Jordan and and they were, they have to be renewed every so many years. So with that document, we went to Saudi Arabia, where, you know, the country was during those years open for anybody who, you know, wanted to work and many Palestinians ended up in the Arabian Gulf, not just in Saudi Arabia, because there was, you know, this was a time of making a fortune in these countries, they were under resourced. They needed the skills, the Palestinian refugees are a skilled people, they, you know, they we had doctors and engineers and lawyers, my father was a teacher, and a writer so he was able to lend himself a job at the newspaper in Saudi Arabia. And that’s how we got out. But to get out of Saudi Arabia, my father had to create a business plan and apply this business plan to the Australian Embassy. And it was basically to start a business bringing in sheep, Islamically killed sheep into Saudi Arabia from Australia. And you know, back then this was a whole new idea that you could export into Saudi Arabia. This was in the late 70s, from Australia, and I guess the Australian Government liked the idea, and we ended up getting our immigration and coming here.
4PR – Voice of the People
So to get this historically correct. Your family were in Gaza, and prior to 1948, they would have been under the British Mandate of Palestine, and then post 1948. They would have been, what was what their their Egyptians okay.
Samah Sabawi
Yeah, they were under the Egyptian mantis. Or the Egyptian it wasn’t, what was its administration under the Egyptian administration, they would have been under Egyptian. That’s fine.
4PR – Voice of the People
Okay. And then coming forward to your when you’re a young person in the 1967 War, Israel then occupied all of the West Bank, and they previously the West Bank was Jordanian land. And then so you, you then moved further east, to Jordan, and then you got Jordanian papers to travel to Saudi Arabia?
Samah Sabawi
Yes.
4PR – Voice of the People
Okay. I’m not sure whether I’ve explained that very well, but I’m just trying to get the picture of
Samah Sabawi
and the reason it happened that way is because Egypt was not taking in refugees. There were no refugee camps set up. As far as I know, you might have to check the fact that I don’t think that you could have exited through Rafa at the time into Egypt. So which might explain why there are no Palestinian refugee camps in in Egypt, but I’m actually you know what, it’s because Sinai was under occupation at the time as well. Israel occupied Sinai in 67 escaping through Sinai would have meant going through more Israeli military. And if you want the exact historic reason as well for us leaving it’s because the people in Gaza were under Egyptian administration. In the lead up of the 1967 War, and when the rhetoric became very hot Palestinians living in, in Gaza, under Egyptian administration rules were drafted into the Liberation Army and were made to, they had these militias that they were that operated under the Egyptian army militias. And so they, they were basically taking my father said he had absolutely no training. They didn’t even have the right boots when they weren’t spewed out into the desert, in training camp, supposedly, basically, they never really fought the war within 67. But they never ended, the war went by so quickly, and they were so under resourced, and under trained that nobody knew what the hell that was supposed to do from from that specific militia. And, and so when my father returned, the occupation had taken place of Gaza. And his his, his plan was to just resume working and continue to live there like everybody else. But because he had served under the Egyptian army, Israel was arresting anybody who had fought in this liberation army against Israel as a tactic to get rid of more people. So they were giving people a choice, either you stay, and you face imprisonment, or you take your family and leave. Now, for someone like my dad, who’s very poor, his job as a teacher didn’t bring in all that much money, but it sustained his wife, his four kids, I was number four. I was just born at the time. And he was also looking after his, his crippled father and his six brothers. So the idea that the breadwinner and the oldest in the family would be imprisoned would mean that everybody else is going to starve until the next in line is old enough. And the next in line I think, was 14. And so that idea was just not one my dad could entertain. So he chose to leave. So he could, you know, his freedom, basically, so he could continue to work and send money to his family. So he left the formula mom, and asked if my mom had to wait till I was strong enough for the journey, because I was just born when my dad left. And she waited for about four weeks, wrapped me up in a blanket, grabbed my other three siblings and went to look for him and Jordan, because she didn’t know where he was. He didn’t have cell phones or internet or whatever. And, you know, she was lucky that they they found each other some families didn’t actually find each other for many years. Some ended up in two different countries in two different refugee camps. And, you know, you know, did not connect, so we were one of the lucky stories, the success stories.
4PR – Voice of the People
It sounds like a good move to me that your dad took because I’m old enough to remember the 1973 war, were in Egypt tried to retake the Sinai Peninsula. But the Israeli military managed to not only get all the way to the Suez Canal, but got within 100 miles of Cairo. Before that, there was a treaty, peace negotiation started out. So by that time, the it was Gaza was well and truly under the control of the Israeli military. And it’s only been recently that Gaza has had freedom from actually direct military occupation.
Samah Sabawi
That’s right. And you know, when when he left when he chose to leave, in his mind, he never thought that this would be permanent. No Palestinian ever leaves their home thinking permanent. You know, he just thought he’d leave for a year or two until, you know, things calmed down, and he’s able to return. The shock came to him on the bridge when he was leaving. And on the Allenby bridge, because he went through the process, that the other Palestinians, every Palestinian, who’s leaving, was forced through this process, which is to sign under duress, a document that says that I give up my right to ever return. Now, this document doesn’t stand anything under international law, because it’s a document that is signed under duress, as you know, people were leaving. But still to my father, it was indicative that Israelis weren’t planning to leave anytime soon, you know, they were planning to stay for a very long time. And this occupation is more than just an occupation. It’s it’s an extension of, of the State of Israel. And so I think that was probably the hardest. He says that he still gets tears in his eyes every time he remembers standing at the bridge and being forced to sign that document.
4PR – Voice of the People
So the Allenby bridge is named after the British General Allenby and where is it located?
Samah Sabawi
It’s between Jordan and the West Bank.
4PR – Voice of the People
Okay, so he finally got Jordanian papers and then the family moved to Saudi Arabia. And how how were you educated?
Samah Sabawi
What Well, how was I educated? When you’re a Palestinian child, the only expectation your parents have off you is to study and bring in high marks. And the it varies from family to family, how strongly they will push for this. Most families are almost neurotic about their kids grades, and how, you know, year 12, for example, in any Palestinian home is an emergency year where they stop functioning socially, and, you know, raise the red flag outside their door. So we grew up, even though my dad didn’t have a university degree. And my mom doesn’t have a university degree, by the way, but they raised us to, to understand that this is the most important thing that we can have. And that is that it wasn’t an option not to have it. And it was the lack of choices of university education in Saudi Arabia, that forced our immigration to Australia, ultimately, because when my sister was old enough to graduate, you’re 12, the oldest one of us were seven, in total, my parents had three more after we left Gaza. So we were seven in total. And my eldest sister finished high school in Saudi Arabia and had 94% average, which would have landed her nicely into the best universities doing the best degrees in any other country. But because she didn’t have citizenship because she was stateless. She didn’t. And because we were living in Saudi Arabia, the university’s system there was only open to Saudi students. And to apply anywhere else, you needed to have citizenship, you couldn’t go anywhere on the papers we had. So my father went to Lebanon, where the PLO was what was set up at the time. And you could get into university in Lebanon, and bypass all the bureaucracy if you were a Palestinian, because the PLO was very connected to people in the in the educational structure there. And so she got accepted in Beirut University in the American University in Beirut, and the civil war started. And my father said that doesn’t, let’s just get out of the Middle East altogether, in order to make sure that we get an education for all the kids. And that’s where he started putting his mind outwards, thinking outward? How do I get out of here? And we ended up in Australia.
4PR – Voice of the People
So the civil war in Lebanon began in about 1975. And how did he get the permission to actually come to Australia?
Samah Sabawi
He started a, a, I’m just gonna have to cough give me a second. Allergies. He started a business in Saudi Arabia, that was one of the first of its kind in demand. And what it was, was a meat processing business where you bring in meat from Europe and Australia, and you process it and you make hamburgers and hotdogs, which didn’t exist at the time. And Saudi is not in plenty anyway, not like now. And frozen meals, and so on. So he started this business and, and the business was really, he’s a planner. So he was thinking ahead. But if you had this business, and if he built strong relationships with either Britain or Australia that he could ultimately on a business, Visa be able to, to, to get us immigration to these countries. And very quickly, he decided it’s Australia, and that Britain that he wanted to put his focus on, so he increased his shipments from Australia, and built a portfolio of deals between Australia and Saudi Arabia that he was managing. And all he had to do was just go to the Australian embassy and say, Look, you know, I, I am doing business with Australia. And rather than have agents do the work for me in Melbourne and in Sydney. I’d like to go there and start a farm and be able to be at both ends the export, export and import. And he was able to get his immigration almost right away. We had no issue in trying to come here because the business idea was quite solid at the time. Well, you
4PR – Voice of the People
came to Australia and the Australia that I remember of that period, was extremely pro Israel. Australia had supported the US. It’s stance against, really the, the future of the Palestinians that was expressed by the Palestinian Liberation Organization that you mentioned. How did you feel as a Palestinian woman in growing up in this in this place that was really quite Pro, pro Israeli?
Samah Sabawi
I think when you’re when you’re that young, I was about 1011. When we first came here, you don’t really process a lot of the politics. What I did process very quickly is that nobody knew where Palestine was. Every time we said Palestine, they would say, Pakistan, if we’re lucky, they would know that there is a Pakistan with us, if that’s what we met. So we found out very quickly that Palestine was just not on anyone’s mind. And it wasn’t on a map or anything. But I didn’t. I didn’t really process that there is a strong pro Israel bias or any of that until Sabra stealer happened. And I think I would have been 13 at the time. And there was an article in The Age and basically the article, the editorial was along the lines of Why is the world so upset about the deaths of Palestinians in Sabra and Shatila and of course, I’m talking about the massacres that took place in 82, in Lebanon. So the article was along the lines of why is everybody upset? Could it be that the Palestinians have oil, and not blood running in their veins. And to me, that was just a huge trigger, and a realization and a wake up call, and really my first entry into the realm of politics, I couldn’t put it out of my hand, the newspaper. And, you know, I’d only been speaking English for a couple of years, as I learned it as a second language. And yet, I just felt so passionate about wanting to respond to this horrible claim, because I’ve been through Saudi Arabia, because I know how hard my father struggled to make his money. Because there were many mornings that I went to school on an empty stomach. I knew that we didn’t have oil running in our in our veins. And I knew that we were different from Saudis. And we were different from the rich people in the Gulf. And so to me, this was just such a sneer, and such a way to, to, to really tell a lie. That just seemed like a truth because it was in the newspaper. So I wrote a letter to the editor. And that was the first thing I’ve ever written in my life. That was political. And it was the first thing that gets published as well. And in that letter, I said, if they had oil instead of flood, they wouldn’t have been living in refugee camps in Lebanon. That was a very short letter. But it was, that was the first time I realized just how terrible the media was in its portrayal of the Palestinian people. Not Not too long after that, maybe a few years later, the golden lightyear movie came on TV on channel 10. And again, that was another for me another slap in the face to see this retelling of history that was just so inaccurate and full of lies in the way the Arabs were portrayed. And I led my first campaign by calling everyone I knew and asking them to call everyone they knew to call channel 10. And to get that film stopped and actually stopped it after the first episode. And I don’t know why. And I don’t know if they’ve just rescheduled it. And I’ll never find out because I was so young and unable to really follow up. But I know that we got hundreds of people to call that night, and to complain to the channel that That movie was just so biased, and so on. So I started pretty young. But it took it took different phases of realization, for me to really understand where we’re at, but never have I felt that the media was impossible. Everything I’ve tried to do with the media, be it here in Australia or in Canada. If I put my mind to it, I was able to get the message across. I think our problem most of the time is we don’t know how to put our mind to it. And we give up too quickly, and we don’t have the resources. And but I’ll talk a little bit about that. As we go through this interview,
4PR – Voice of the People
just to get some sort of background on this. You mentioned the golden age. She of course, was the Prime Minister of Israel in the 1970s. And she famously said, Palestinians, there are no Palestinians. So this was a denial of really, your very existence.
Samah Sabawi
Exactly. Exactly, and Palestinians are very rightly offended by the idea that she is looked at as a great person because she really supported the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. And not only that, but erasing the Palestinians. And to me, erasure is the emotional, physical erasure of the Palestinian, they go hand in hand and, and the idea that we can do physical ethnic cleansing on the ground is one thing, but to also try to erase them from people’s memory and from people’s thoughts. As if we don’t exist. It’s the most dehumanizing thing that you can that you can face. And the Palestinians have faced this repeatedly. And like I said, when I first came here, people didn’t know what Palestine was or what Palestinian was. And so this constant, want to say, This is who I am, I am a Palestinian I exist. And I have a really compelling story to tell. And I want you to listen, because this story explains to you why you don’t think that I exist, but I’m here.
4PR – Voice of the People
This week, the Australian Prime Minister, Julie Gilad said that she wished to have to oppose the motion in the United Nations that Palestine would get. I think it’s called non member status in the United Nations that non member observer status she wished to oppose that. Now, how did that make you feel? Because that’s another denial of in one form of the presence and the the existence of the Palestinians.
Samah Sabawi
Absolutely, that it really for me, it’s, it’s also, when you think about it, it explains to us why we are stuck, where we are, and have been for so many years. It’s because countries like Australia, that talk about peaceful resolution and to state solutions and all of this, I really don’t want to do anything beyond talking. Last year, when when the PA was asking for a full membership at the at the UN, Australia voted no. against that. And it was one of 14 countries that voted no. And this year, the plan was to also vote no. But that for me, to me, that shows not only that Australia, the government not only that the government is out of touch with its own rhetoric, and is inconsistent with its own policies. Because our you know, international law is very, the 1967 areas are areas that are illegally occupied by Israel. So when a state of Palestine wants to be formed along the 1967 border, it really should not be a difficult idea to grasp and to support. And yet Australia was going to vote against it this this year as well. But more than that, it also shows that the government is not responding to the wishes of the people it represents. The Australian people have spoken through polls. Last year, the Fairfax poll was done last year, which showed that the majority of Australians wanted the government to vote yes, this year. I’m not aware of polls other than the Sydney Morning Herald one yesterday. But again, the sentiments you would get would be similar. I don’t think anything changes over from one year to the other, if anything, it probably has grown since then. And yet the government continues to support Israel unequivocally and blindly. And so the question here, if you’re not representing the will of the people, and the majority of the people who voted for you shouldn’t be a matter of of concern for Australians, that you’re actually representing foreign interests. You are representing a government. Other, you’re not representing the people, you’re presenting a foreign government, and you are bowing to minority interest groups, and ignoring the majority of the people. That’s not what we vote for governments for that’s not how democracies are supposed to operate. And so there’s a lot of concerns that arise out of that. And it’s not just with the question of voting yes or no, for the non member observer status. It’s an everything else. We just had Gaza, being bombed for eight days nonstop by Israel. Lots of people were killed. Lots of houses were destroyed, infrastructure was destroyed more. Around 40 children were killed. And Australia could do in its official statement was to talk about Israel’s security, but never never saying that the Palestinians have a right to security. This is another form of dehumanizing the past. Palestinians, if we’re not entitled to security in the same way that Israelis do, are we less are humans? Is that why we are lesser humans? That’s what you’re telling us. And that to me is again, very problematic and a cause for concern. And I think the Australian Government needs to be able to, to listen more to the voices of the majority of its people, rather than to continue to cater for the interests of foreign countries or for foreign interests.
4PR – Voice of the People
I wonder if you could explain why it is that Palestinians in Gaza, find it necessary to fire rockets into southern Israel.
Samah Sabawi
Palestinians, in Gaza, firing rockets into Israel, I can try to explain it. Like the Palestinians in Gaza, don’t have any way of having their the attention of Israel or the international community. Except let’s just say anyway, of expressing and putting their issues on the agenda. And so what often happens is that you end up with these frustrated groups who really have nothing to look forward to us. Gaza has a very high unemployment rate, it’s most people live on $2 a day. It’s an impoverished strip of land, it’s under people face great restrictions, even people who make it through university and graduate don’t have jobs when they graduate. So you’re dealing with a huge amount of despair, and a huge amount of frustration. And all of the frustration and despair is aimed, of course at the country that is occupying them and preventing them from having normal life. So this manifests itself in in armed resistance in all forms of resistance, but armed resistance being one of them. And that’s why you have groups in Gaza, who are extremely annoyed, a huge chunk could use the word annoyed or what’s the word they’ve given up on on the peace process, they’ve given up on negotiations, they can see that Mahmoud Abbas has not provided his people with anything they’ve even given up on Hamas. Because the the people who are firing the rockets recently, it used to be recently it was mostly other groups than Hamas, Hamas tried to hold on to a ceasefire until November 14, when unless you’ve got the timeline for the gods of bombardment, that they they tried at their end not to, to fire rockets. And so they became the moderates in Gaza. And you know, other groups were saying you’re not, you’re not coming through for us either. And so it is, it is a way for them to, to, to exhibit their frustration and to express their kind of resistance to Israel. So occupation and ongoing military invasions and so on.
4PR – Voice of the People
Recently, I’ve been having an exchange on a website with an Australian journalist who went to Tel Aviv University, and she was taken on a tour of the Israeli village called CDOT, which is the subject of some of those rockets. And this is what she actually wrote. I’d like you to respond to this. She said, Gaza is not an open air prison, anything but the abundance of five star hotels, nightclubs, sports centers, water parks, shopping complexes, spas, etc. is amazing. They even have an Olympic sized swimming pool, something Israel doesn’t have. By the same token, Israel only has one five star hotel compared to four or five in Gaza. This is presumably what she was told when she went to Siddharth, but she didn’t go to Ghana, so that was clearly shouldn’t go to Gaza. But what know how can you get around this sort of this information that comes out?
Samah Sabawi
Well, look, when when you’re talking about a prison, you’re talking about one one thing, which is people’s ability to exit and enter freely. You can have a prison that has great facilities. You can have a prison that doesn’t. It doesn’t mean that it’s less of a prison. You can have a cage that has great furniture in it, but you still can’t get out of that cage. There is there has always been a a class of wealthy Palestinians. It’s a very small class. It’s about maybe 2% of Gaza. As population, and they’ve inherited this wealth for generations from, you know, even during the Ottoman Empire years, they some of them already had these lands, and they already had that kind of wealth and it gets handed down from generation to the next. Currently, the wealthy population in Gaza is mainly made or sustained. It has its wealth sustained by people who work abroad, and send their money back. Like I said earlier, education is very important. So every family that has been able to educate their kids, and I don’t know any Palestinian family that that isn’t, does not send money and doesn’t send money back into Gaza. So the money, the fact that they’ve got resorts, and they’ve got the Olympic sized swimming pool, which I think is the one that my dad had built, but I’ll talk about a little about that a little later on. The fact that they have these facilities is a testimony to how much Palestinians risk investing, knowing that Israel is going to destroy, but they still do it because they want to make their city beautiful. They’re bringing in money from outside hard earned money, I have to say, and they are trying to, to invest into structures so that children have parks, that they can go to and have swimming pools that they can swim in. A lot of the material for these things come in through the tunnels, especially in the last six years or so it’s been brought in through the tunnels not not through any of Israel’s gates, that’s that’s for sure. And people have paid triple for that. There is no money to be made in Gaza. So the Gazan population is not a wealthy population. But there is money coming in from outside from people who want to see facilities want to see nice schools and nice restaurants and so on. And there is a wealthy like I said population about 2% in Gaza who have refused to leave. And they’ve they’ve made their money work for them abroad, but they refuse to leave to leave the city because they’re they’re very attached to it. I think the fact that they keep bringing this up, I find it somewhat between amusing and and really insulting to one’s humanity. What do they want? Do they want people in Gaza to be all living in demolished homes? Do they not want any infrastructure? Is that why Israel keeps going in and destroying infrastructure? Is that why we have a siege that cripples the economy. So even if Palestinians send their hard earned money from outside to build in Gaza, they know that the economy will be suffocated, and they cannot create jobs. Now, the Olympic sized swimming pool, my father actually built one during the last four years in Gaza. And I can’t tell you the number of times that the Israeli Navy have fired into the resort that my father built. And my father built this resort from the money he’s made throughout his life. So it was his life savings. My father now lives on attention. And he doesn’t have a lot of money left because he literally put everything he has saved in his life into that, because he wanted them to have actually the the the resource is more like it’s based on an idea of a country club, except it doesn’t have membership. And it’s very cheap, because he wanted the refugee camp children to be able to enjoy it as well. It had an Olympic sized swimming pool, it had a theater, beautiful theater and amphitheater. It had beautiful big reception halls cafes along the beach, and the whole thing was on the beach in Gaza, which made it an easy target for the Israeli Navy. And it was supposed to be something that the people in Gaza can work. And my father didn’t want to have his to be to directly involved with it. So it was supposed to generate work for people there and they had special days where the poor kids from the camps can come and they only have to pay very, very little to get in and to have a swim and to feel like they’re, you know that like they have a place they can go for leisure and for culture and you know, they were going to have concerts and it had grand plans now the siege suffocated all of these plans because people couldn’t come in from outside. The Army kept using it for target practice. And so we had to keep rebuilding the destroyed structures every time they fired at it. And eventually it just really died as a as a plan. And it’s been sold recently and hand it over to new management. I don’t know if they’re able to resuscitate it or not. But it was it was very difficult to have it survive, given the Israeli ability to destroy everything beautiful that the Palestinians tried to build. And so when I hear stories about, well, they have an Olympic sized swimming pool. Well, I’m sorry if if some people feel that they love Gaza enough to literally sink their money into Israel’s bombing grounds.
4PR – Voice of the People
I remember a couple of years
Samah Sabawi
ago getting emotional, but it just
4PR – Voice of the People
Well, I remember a couple of years ago, you were at your brother’s film returned to Gaza, and you were speaking at the Chanel Theatre in Brisbane. And your dad was actually in the audience that that night. And I remember you showed a picture of that hotel. And you mentioned, you know, the post Oslo years where there was some enthusiasm for change. And I remember you describing how that hotel was built. And the pictures that you showed, then were, you know, the hotel was just idle, and it was going to wrack and ruin. But I also remember that your dad did speak briefly from the back of the hall. And he said that he was actually staying just over outside of Gaza, in Egypt, and he could look back at his homeland. And I’ve got to say that really, was he talking about being emotional? I felt very emotional when he said that.
Samah Sabawi
Yeah, we he’s talking about a journey we took in 2000. And Tom 2006, just after they clamped down everything, just after that movie, all right, what, actually now I know, that scene in the movie, where he’s looking at Palestine over the fence. Yes, you remember it? Yeah. And that’s the one my father was referring to when he spoke, he’s looking through Italy. That actually happened in 2006, that the year that the film was was, was documented. That was the year of the elections, and most of the film was about the elections and my brother trying to get in. We were stuck in rough during that time. And we were stuck in rough Egypt. And my father, this was the first time he tried to get into Gaza, post Oslo, and he was denied. And he has he tried many times since and he was, he hasn’t been able to get in. So to him, he would, and he spent many summers there. And winters actually, he spent a long time. I think he only stopped trying last year, traveling every year to Egypt, taking that treasure journey from Egypt, in the car from Cairo to Irish past Irish to refer to try to get in and then being told that the gates, he can’t. And then he would just go sit on on the other side of the fence and just look at Palestine. And he did that for a very long time. But now he can’t try anymore. He’s just his health is just not right anymore. And he just can’t take that journey. And he’s got to stop trying. And that’s just heartbreaking, because he’s put so much into the idea that we can all return we had a glorious year, in 1995. When we all went to Gaza for the first time. My dad had all his brothers under one roof. I met all of my cousins, and we spent two months there, we knew that there were holes in the peace process, but nobody wanted to talk about them. Everybody just wanted to believe that this is going to work. And that we’re going to have peace, and we’re going to be in Gaza again.
4PR – Voice of the People
So with that as your experience, what do you see now? What what is the way forward for Palestinians like yourself?
Samah Sabawi
I don’t know what the way forward is, I think. For me, I believe that we need to stand for our convictions, and support human rights and support the concepts of equality, freedom and justice and do anything we can to get there. I think we waste too much time talking about a political solution. What we need to do is establish values and, and convince other people of these values. Are we all equal? Are we all worthy human beings? Are we all do we all deserve freedom? And how do we advocate for Palestinian rights within a rights based approach? I think that’s where we need to be at because if we get this right a political solution will present itself and it will have it will be based on good foundations which is human rights. But to try to advocate for a political solution, like it seems like the only thing that we can do, people talk about one state or two states or supporting more data or supporting negotiation Since we are supporting concepts that could carry so many different meanings, I’m much more interested in supporting rights. And a very clear concept of rights. A very well defined concept of rights is is the concept of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And how do we apply these to the Palestinian people, Israel is an apartheid state. Let’s talk about that. Israel is an ethnocentric state that gives preferential treatment to the Jews at the expense of the indigenous population. Let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about the way Palestinians are being treated. And let’s call for justice, freedom and equality. And let’s boycott Israel until it offers us political solutions that we can either take or reject right now Israel doesn’t feel it needs to do any of that. There is no pressure on it, to offer any kind of compromise. And until, until we have the strength to force Israel to offer a solution. We can’t talk about solutions. Because these, these are all just concepts in the air. And in the meantime, Palestinians will continue to lose their rights and their lands and their freedom.
4PR – Voice of the People
I’d like to thank you very much, Mr. Bailey for this interview and just ask you if there’s anything else you wish to add?
Samah Sabawi
We didn’t talk about the media. Well, we didn’t talk about the media. What I wanted to say about the media is, and I don’t know if you have time for that now, no, go ahead. Okay. There are certain concepts that we have to deal with when we’re talking about the media, it’s an to me, you have to make sure there’s reciprocity, they’re not going to come to you, if you just want to give them your your two cents worth. And they get nothing out of it. media corporations are about marketing and selling. And so you need to be credible, you need to have enough knowledge, you need to have special expertise, you need to be presentable. But But more than that, you need to be able to hook them so that you are useful to them as well as they are to you. And the way I’ve seen a lot of people do media here is they’re not using that useful hook. For example, during this last bombardment in Gaza, I started putting out tweets saying we have people who speak English, in in Gaza, for English speaking people to do interviews with because you had Israel is popping on all the news channels talking from federal, but very few Palestinians were actually being interviewed. And so I started the service. And within three hours, I had five languages. And not just three days, I should say, I gotta focus here. We had five languages I had people helping me in in the West Bank, from the International Solidarity movement, we had people listing their names and their resumes as wanting to speak to the media. And that put me in touch with people from ABC and people from different channels here. And in Australia, as well as in Canada. And I was doing business with people in the in Madrid, people in the US reporters were calling me and asking me for contacts. And so you start to build a relationship. And then you’re able to put people up on a podium and to offer voice to those who don’t have voice. This is just one idea. But there are so many different ideas of engaging the media. And to think that we have an entitlement to to have our voice heard, I think is ridiculous. Nobody is entitled, the media does not go bend over backwards to be balanced. We have to work to to get our voice heard. And we have to be able to understand how the media works. And unfortunately, we’re still lacking in resources and an expertise but I’d like to see the day when we can build those resources and expertise so that we can have a proper voice out there.
4PR – Voice of the People
Okay, thank you. I’m gonna have a listen to that again, and just see if I can pick up on some of your points. Because there’s, you know, there’s a lot to be said for local community radio here trying to get the ears of our audience and, and maybe we need to work a bit on that as well.
Samah Sabawi
I think there’s a lot to be said to for not just local radio, but really local newspapers, people ignore their importance that they get read. And like in the first Gaza, during cost lead, what I did is I I had people from the Palestinian community who lived in different suburbs, for all the newspapers in all of our area in Ottawa, I had different people write their story, and how they’re connected to Gaza, and we got them published in all the local newspapers because they had the local connection. And, and it was just great. You know, we had stories about God so we put in them the the points we wanted about, you know, the numbers and the background that it was told through somebody in the community who’s concerned about loved ones who are under bombardment. There’s a lot of there’s a lot To be sad about the media, I just wish we had more time for that. I think maybe one day we can put together a strategy paper on how to address the media issue.
4PR – Voice of the People
Yes, definitely. I know our local newspapers here in Brisbane, I don’t know about in Melbourne, but they’re called Quest newspapers. And they’re owned by Rupert Murdoch. And whether that has some effect on the local editors, whether they would publish the articles about Palestinians, especially when there’s something horrific happening, like recently occurred in Gaza. I don’t know whether that whether they would be subject to pressure in the way in the same way that Australia’s national newspaper, the Australian is clearly subject to pressure from Rupert Murdoch. But that’s a good question. Yeah. Okay. Well, that’s good. We’ve, we’ve pretty well covered a bit of a bit of the beginning and hopefully we’ll talk again soon. Yep. Thanks very much.
Samah Sabawi
Thank you so much.
Bye bye now.
Samah Sabawi
Bye.
Tue, Nov 22, 2022 6:41AM • 46:06
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
gaza, people, palestinians, israel, palestinian, australia, saudi arabia, palestine, year, father, media, leave, egypt, refugee camps, business, support, jordan, document, money, living