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Sunday, June 29, 2025

Pakistani journalist says Gaza bombardment is not an equal war as ... Women, children killed in thousands

by

IRA MATHUR
581 days ago
20231126

IRA MATH­UR

“As of No­vem­ber 21, the Com­mit­tee to Pro­tect Jour­nal­ists pre­lim­i­nary in­ves­ti­ga­tions showed at least 53 jour­nal­ists and me­dia work­ers were among the more than 14,000 killed since the war be­gan on Oc­to­ber 7—with over 13,000 Pales­tin­ian deaths in Gaza and the West Bank and 1,200 deaths in Is­rael.”

Source: Com­mit­tee to Pro­tect Jour­nal­ists (CPJ)

Con­sid­er­ing the 14,000 civil­ians ca­su­al­ly, bru­tal­ly and re­lent­less­ly butchered in Gaza (70 per cent of them women and chil­dren)–a child is killed every 15 min­utes in Is­rael’s on­go­ing bom­bard­ment. This is a geno­cide in re­al time. Source: De­fence For Chil­dren In­ter­na­tion­al–Pales­tine (DCIP) and to ho­n­our jour­nal­ists work­ing in con­flict zones, this Sun­day’s Book­shelf presents the per­spec­tive of a Pak­istani jour­nal­ist.

Jour­nal­ist Sabin Muzaf­far, with 25 years of ex­pe­ri­ence in print and dig­i­tal me­dia, is the founder and Ex­ec­u­tive Ed­i­tor of Anankemag.com (www.anankemag.com), a dig­i­tal me­dia and de­vel­op­ment plat­form “em­pow­er­ing women through aware­ness, ad­vo­ca­cy and ed­u­ca­tion”. Her on­line plat­form, Ananke, she says, “en­cour­ages women’s eco­nom­ic em­pow­er­ment by rais­ing aware­ness about the im­por­tance of equal par­tic­i­pa­tion in the tech­nol­o­gy rev­o­lu­tion”.

Muzaf­far says Ananke, her on­line plat­form strives to “trig­ger con­ver­sa­tions on in­clu­sion and gen­der in every sphere of so­ci­ety in dig­i­tal space. “Most im­por­tant­ly, Muzaf­far says, “Ananke of­fers lead­er­ship pro­grammes with a vi­sion to cre­ate a tal­ent pool of fe­male trail­blaz­ers.”

Muzaf­far was among 20 jour­nal­ists se­lect­ed from the EMEA re­gion for the Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics, Jour­nal­ism AI + Google News Ini­tia­tive Pro­gram, and AI Acad­e­my for Small News­rooms. Muzaf­far, an In­ter­na­tion­al Cen­tre for Jour­nal­ists (ICFJ) Fel­low, is a reg­u­lar speak­er at glob­al events and lead­ing uni­ver­si­ties, in­clud­ing Cam­bridge and the Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics.

As a jour­nal­ist, Muzaf­far is all too fa­mil­iar with vi­o­lence, par­tic­u­lar­ly against women in her na­tive Pak­istan. Liv­ing in the South­ern Coastal city of Karachi, Pak­istan, Muzaf­far has grown up hear­ing of clash­es be­tween eth­nic com­mu­ni­ties and re­li­gious sects.

She says, “Gun­shots–we have heard them too many times. But as jour­nal­ists know, gun­shots have a new mean­ing when it hits home. When you are told some­one you have known for years has been shot and killed–mur­dered in cold blood–that is when it cuts like a knife. Or when a jour­nal­ist or those serv­ing the in­jured or dy­ing are gra­tu­itous­ly mur­dered as “col­lat­er­al”. This is when jour­nal­ists don’t just seek the truth but jus­tice.

Muzaf­far’s grand­fa­ther’s pre-par­ti­tion work in In­dia, her fa­ther’s jour­nal­ism and ad­vo­ca­cy dur­ing a mil­i­tary dic­ta­tor­ship in Pak­istan in the 1980s, and the famed and rad­i­cal Pak­istani po­et/jour­nal­ist/mil­i­tary of­fi­cer/trade union­ist Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s in­flu­ence have all pushed Muzaf­far to­wards both the beau­ty of the writ­ten word and hard jour­nal­ism that tells the world the truth about in­jus­tice and vi­o­lence di­rect­ed at in­no­cent civil­ians.

Jour­nal­ist Sabin Muzaf­far on Gaza’s dai­ly bom­bard­ed pop­u­la­tion ex­clu­sive­ly for the Sun­day Guardian:

“Muf­fled screams, ashen faces of chil­dren not open­ing their once sparkle-filled eyes; ashen faces of moth­ers who have lost their ba­bies; fa­thers des­per­ate­ly dig­ging to find life un­der­neath the rub­ble on­ly to find life­less bod­ies–dy­ing, leav­ing this hell in the hopes of find­ing heav­en? A land they might hope­ful­ly … fi­nal­ly call home, where they might at last be free?

“I am not just a num­ber!” This tweet of a young Pales­tin­ian woman was chill­ing. With­out com­mu­ni­ca­tion, there is no telling if she has be­come what she feared the most–be­com­ing but a num­ber.

“Since the be­gin­ning of the siege in Gaza, the most vul­ner­a­ble cit­i­zens–women and chil­dren have borne the brunt of as­phyx­i­at­ing hate and dev­as­tat­ing vi­o­lence.

“Forty per cent of the wound­ed in Gaza are chil­dren, and the world now bears wit­ness to Or­phans who are known by a wretched acronym coined in Gaza as WC­NSF (Wound­ed Child No Sur­viv­ing Fam­i­ly) and are in dire need of care. As an ex­am­ple, 37 pre­ma­ture in­fants were out of their in­cu­ba­tors: Three in­fants were al­ready dead. The de­struc­tion is mind-numb­ing.

“A UN Women re­port re­vealed that more than 493,000 women and girls have been dis­placed from their homes in Gaza, and 900 women are heads of their fam­i­lies due to the deaths of male fam­i­ly mem­bers.

“Since Oc­to­ber 7, Is­raeli at­tacks have killed at least 5,500 chil­dren. An ad­di­tion­al 1,800 chil­dren are miss­ing un­der the rub­ble, most pre­sumed dead. A fur­ther 9,000 chil­dren have been in­jured, many with life-chang­ing con­se­quences. Many of these chil­dren have lived through the trau­ma of mul­ti­ple wars. “Source: Al Jazeera

“This is not a war. Wars are not fought with those fight­ing for sur­vival in Con­cen­tra­tion camps.

It is not even an un­equal bat­tle if one’s as­sumed foes are civil­ians. Sad­ly, op­pres­sion does cre­ate path­ways to re­sis­tance and in­escapable rad­i­cal­i­sa­tion. There can nev­er be any jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for vi­o­lence, re­gard­less of which side one is on. My mis­sion as a jour­nal­ist is to be a voice for women suf­fer­ing in si­lence or amidst vi­o­lence every­where. The work is un­end­ing.”

–End of ex­cerpt.

Sabin Muzaf­far is the UN Women’s Em­pow­er Women Glob­al Cham­pi­on for Women’s Eco­nom­ic Em­pow­er­ment and a Cherie Blair Foun­da­tion Men­tor, men­tor­ing and train­ing 100+ girls glob­al­ly, fo­cus­ing on dig­i­tal me­dia, on­line ad­vo­ca­cy and com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

Muzaf­fars Ananke’s dig­i­tal in­tern­ship pro­gramME has men­tored and trained over 50 girls from Kenya, Nige­ria, Pak­istan, In­dia, UAE, the US, Mo­roc­co, and Aus­tralia. For its 2019 co­hort, Muzaf­far re­ceived more than 100 ap­pli­ca­tions in just 20 days world­wide. The fi­nal co­hort com­prised 18 girls from Chi­na, Be­larus, Tan­za­nia, Kenya, Pak­istan, Chi­na, Egypt, Be­larus, Nige­ria, Rus­sia, Den­mark, and Bangladesh. Ananke’s dig­i­tal in­tern­ship pro­gramme aims at lever­ag­ing tech to em­pow­er women by of­fer­ing ac­cess, mean­ing­ful en­gage­ment and safe on­line spaces.

 

Ira Math­ur is a Guardian Me­dia colum­nist and the win­ner of the non-fic­tion OCM Bo­cas Prize for Lit­er­a­ture 2023.

(www.iras­room.org) Email iras­room@gmail.com 


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