Dear Camden visitors,
Have you ever heard the sound of a military drone?
Or been exposed to videos with their incessant buzzing, droning sound? Perhaps you have seen one hover close to a scampering child, then shoot it as it seeks cover. These unmanned aerial menaces are the antagonists of Living with Drones, a live journalism show that documents Israel’s unrelenting use of them as surveillance machines and killers in Gaza.
As the community gatherer of this show, I invite you to join us in reckoning with this story.
Since Israel launched its retaliatory attack on Gaza in October of 2023, we have expected to rely on a global network of news organizations to deliver news from the ground. The hope was always this: that daily news reporting will engage with deeper, thoughtful analysis that will help the public make sense of what we have been trained to think about as just another hotspot, a “conflict”, “the Middle East crisis,” so to speak. That word, conflict, still shows up hundreds of times a day in stories that are posted from newsrooms, as over 60,000 people have been killed.
Editors of national publications in places like the U.K., the U.S. and certainly in Canada (where we are from) have struggled to take a step back and assess the coverage critically and challenge their preconceived biases. In the U.K., for instance, is this the time to assess the legacies of British colonial decision makers, policy makers who oversaw global famines (Mr. Churchill, hello?), or those (Mr. Montefiore, n’est pas?) who lobbied the government to help finance Jewish settlements in Jerusalem and centred Israel’s case in the British Parliament? How do these histories combine to influence current foreign policy and global trading relationships?
There is no better time to set the record on Gaza, and by extension, Palestine straight.
The scholarship on Palestine is, of course, clear as day. Palestinian scholars (Edward Said, the best known among them), artists, filmmakers and storytellers have been writing about orientalism and colonialism and their specific relationship to Palestine for decades, ever since the naqba/catastrophe of 1948 saw the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians from their homes and lands. The competing environment of European antisemitism and the horrors of the Holocaust stitched upon guilty diplomatic and cultural consciences complicated the capacity of newsrooms to wield their journalistic power thoughtfully, or accurately.
Of course, information has been plenty. The United Nations-appointed Special Rapporteur , Francesca Albanese, has been tirelessly traveling the world to make the point over and over again: This is a genocide, this must not continue; it’s in violation of every international legal instrument that has been signed. Despite this, the media has stuck to age-old talking points. And as — what can only reasonably be called a genocide and a famine — has continued, a gradual shift in coverage is quietly emerging. Not, sadly, in Canada, where The Globe and Mail, the country’s alleged paper of record, issued a mundane Hamas-obsessed editorial board letter that demonstrated its weak understanding of a global crisis. An established (media) elite refuses to see the continued treatment of a people employing torturous, extralegal, openly genocidal ways.
The thing is, Israel blocked off access to Gaza for international journalists a long time ago despite numerous demands from international journalists and organizations. Yet, so many Palestinian journalists on the ground made themselves available to cover the events, providing a lifeline of critical information to journalism newsrooms, often being targeted and killed in the process. Still, news editors did not hire them. I imagine they considered them biased. This, too, is a crime. A crime of failed journalism in which the phrase “truth to power” has been rendered meaningless.
This is why we bring you Living with Drones. This is a story about the humanitarian, cultural, legal and political dimensions of life on the ground as Israel wages a war of elimination against a group of people whose plight we have known since 1948, and even before 1917. We focus on drones: instruments of psychological torture, maiming, murder. We bring the show to a one-room, community space so you, too, can engage with the stories we share, the everyday stories of loss, heartache, fear, surveillance and death. Listen to it up close and consider how we, your storytellers, can bring you closer to the story. How can you exercise your voice in a democracy employing such actions in your name? What is your role as a member of the public? What is our role in being the chroniclers of the time in which we share this most horrific story?
Come watch our show and we can talk all about it.
Your community gatherer, Sonya Fatah;
and the stitched! team (storytellers, Christin el-Kholy and Laila Hashem; musician, Mariam Shak'a; social media and tech, Hania Noor; light and sound designer, Skye Anderson, producer & visuals, Diurnus)
Living With Drones is on as part of our Autumn Season, 16 - 18th October at 7pm (3pm matinee on Saturday). Book tickets here.
