Food, water, shelter, healthcare… internet?
How E-Sims for Gaza reveals the need for an essential new category of aid
As Israeli forces push ever further across destroyed Gaza, leaving rubble and crushed civilian livelihoods in their wake, the international community remains almost cruelly indecisive about sending relief to the Palestinian victims of Netanyahu’s violence. Facing famine, water shortages, and a complete lack of access to sanitation and hygiene, the Palestinian people unquestionably require basic humanitarian aid. It seems strange that a fact so blatantly obvious is conveniently left unaddressed by the international community; especially in an era where media and exposure are easier to get than ever.
So, what’s different about Palestine?
Besides the complexities of race and religion that steep the Israel-Palestine conflict and current Palestinian genocide in nuance- something we could argue that modern digital media historically never does too well with- one can argue that Israeli activity in Gaza and the West Bank reveals a new and distinctly modern dimension to warfare: one where communications are a tool of war.
To trace the path from lack of international aid to the problems with the Internet in Israel-occupied Palestine is a fairly simple task. We wonder why the world is reticent to the needs of Palestine- well, look at the coverage that the war gets on the Internet. We wonder what kind of aid, exactly, Palestinians need- for this we have only to look at what Israel is doing to them. Here I’ll try to briefly address these two questions and make the argument that the role of digital media in the Palestinian genocide is unique in that:
1. It highlights existing and established problems with digital media but in a way that has distinct and serious real-world consequences for Palestinians
2. It highlights the need for Palestinian aid: not just basic aid, but a new kind of aid that is entirely digital
Before I get started, I’d also like to provide some clarifications with regards to terminology. Palestine refers to the current state of Palestine inclusive of Israel-occupied territory, while Israel-occupied Palestine refers to only territory that is officially occupied by Israel (like the West Bank) and not the Gaza Strip. While the situation is a matter of international conflict it appears in rather poor taste to call it an Israel-Palestine war because war is typified by two or more armed forces engaging in active conflict. One force extensively devastating the civilian population of the other long after the other has ceased to engage in conflict is not war; and so I refer to the current situation as the Palestinian genocide or Israeli genocide of the Palestinians.
On to the Internet Review.
The Internet is biased. We know this, because most media is biased. But bias on the Internet works in an interesting way because the Internet, for the most part, shows you what you want to see: as a passive or average person online you consume not only biased media but media that draws you comfortably into an epistemic bubble that is algorithmically tailored to one point of view that you enjoy.
The Internet is also great at putting people at either their most radical or their most reticent. Within these epistemic bubbles it is stunningly easy to fall into radical and often harmful rhetoric, especially if any part of a radical ideology is adjacent in any way to what you already believe in (which is common for most radical ideologies). But also, in the vastness of the Internet, it is very easy to simply not care. There is more media to sift through nowadays than ever: as a consumer, you swipe through it as fast as possible and select for consumption only the things that are appealing to you. There is no incentive to look beyond immediate biases and perceptions; in fact this is counter-productive, as if you spent enough time thinking about your perspective on a certain issue and realizing you needed to look at different viewpoints you would never be caught up with any issues ever. While you think critically, everyone’s moved on to the next big thing.
These are points that have been repeated more times over and in better phrasing by more qualified people than me. But the reason they bear restatement in this article is that here, while analysing the way digital media operates in the Palestinian genocide, we see these problems with the Internet take on a new and visibly dangerous form: abetment for very non-digital genocide. If one wants to ask why Palestine isn’t getting the aid it needs, or even how we as an international community are letting an active genocide continue without any decisive action, one has to look at many factors, and I make the argument that an important one of these factors is the Internet.
The premises are simple. One, the Internet is biased; you see what you want to see, and you have no incentive to leave your comfortable bubble filled with the things you want to see and talk about. Two, this makes you either radical or reticent.
Three, most people don’t want to see or talk about a war that doesn’t directly concern them. Conveniently, violence against Arabic populations never seems to directly concern any of us. So you don’t want to see or talk about Palestine, because it’s either too uncomfortable for you to see or talk about war or too uncomfortable for you to think about it and realize you care less about this war because of the kind of people being murdered as a result of it, and therefore you don’t. It’s just too easy. Another end of the spectrum is, of course, that you actively endorse the Israeli occupation of Palestine for misguided religious reasons or plain racism, and then you walk happily into a radical pro-genocide bubble. The problem with this is that politically speaking the Palestinian genocide receives no response because the U.S.A. backs Israel and most countries try not to oppose the U.S.A. So any mobilization of international aid has to come as a result of a call from the people, or from governments that are willing to stand up. South Africa, for example, took a step forward with their ICJ case against Israel. But this kind of biased digital media coverage and consumption translates to very little action, and so the world is silent while Palestine crumbles.
The second part of what makes the role of the Internet in the case of Palestinian aid interesting is the introduction of a relatively practical idea: if the world isn’t communicating with the people, we must help the people communicate with the world. Unfortunately, Palestinians are left to deal with the communication gap on their own, and broadcast their plight to the world in the hopes of coverage. Brave Palestinian journalists like Motaz Azaiza, Wael Al-Dahdouh, the late Roshdi Sarraj and countless others killed by Israel are actively employing the Internet to raise awareness about the genocide and break the epistemic bubbles of people’s regular digital lives through sheer effort. However, this kind of coverage is hard to accomplish on the ground in Palestine. Intentionally poor Internet access and connectivity in Israel-occupied Palestine and what is effectively a targeted destruction of Gaza’s connectivity in 2023 has isolated the Palestinian people and allowed Israel to conduct their genocide in silence. Journalists unable to reach the outside world, family and friends unable to contact each other amidst the rubble: this lack of noise makes it painfully easy for the decimation of a population of people to go uninterrupted.
So, how do we conclude? I would like to end this review with the idea that the Palestinian genocide shows us it might be time to re-examine the way that Internet communications can translate into real-world life or death, but most importantly that this situation distinctly defines the need for connectivity in the modern day. Aid to Palestine is not just food, water, sanitation, and medical care. Aid to Palestine is a way to get the Palestinian people back on the grid, so that they have an international voice, and so that Israel loses one of their greatest tools: international ignorance. One important organisation directly addressing this need is E-Sims for Gaza, a program which allows international mobile users to sponsor digital SIM cards for mobile users in Palestine, who can then receive access to a functional mobile network and practical connectivity. Having established that better communications are lifelines for Palestinians, it is our responsibility to translate analysis into praxis.
Donate now. https://gazaesims.com/