Washington Report, April 2006, pages 30-31

On the Ground in Gaza

Armed With a Mouse, Boycott-Savvy Cyber-Activists Make Their Presence Felt

By Mohammed Omer

IN THE furor over the insulting images of the Prophet Muhammad originally printed in a Danish newspaper and reproduced by many Western publications, allegedly to demonstrate free expression and a free press, the Western media have been quick to lump together all Islamic and Arabic protests—whether peaceful or violent, thoughtful or mindless—in places around the world where history and circumstances differ wildly. Whether the scene is occupied Afghanistan, France’s impoverished immigrant housing projects, or the complex society of Pakistan, to the West it is all “the Islamic world.” The most inflammatory placards, the most violent and tragic incidents, are splashed on the front pages and lead the TV news, while more careful, nuanced commentary is buried in the back pages or receives, at most, a sentence at the end of the TV anchor’s report.

In such a climate, it is hardly surprising that nonviolent but highly effective Internet activism barely has been mentioned. There in cyberspace, instead of noisy street demonstrations, burning flags, and stones hurled through embassy windows, the weapon of choice is the keyboard, the mouse and the economic boycott for “the Islamic world’s” new activists.  

The most recent campaign of cyber-activists in Palestine, Egypt and other Arab countries targeted a mysterious anti-Arab, anti-Palestinian video, apparently meant to be a TV commercial, that was widely distributed on the Internet. The Western advertising trade press described it as an example of “viral marketing,” where a TV ad too offensive for mainstream release is leaked to the Internet by parties unknown. The manufacturer of the product involved then has the unhappy task of trying to prove he didn’t create the video.

In this case, the target was the German auto manufacturer Volkswagen, and the ad, according to one commentator, “was apparently designed to offend as many human beings as possible.” The short video shows a Volkswagen Polo pulling up outside a lovely sidewalk café as a young white woman pushing a baby carriage strolls by. Inside the car, there’s a closeup of a stereotypical young Arab, wearing a military-style khaki jacket with a Palestinian keffiyeh around his neck. Cradling something that could be a bomb, he pushes a mechanism as the view cuts to the exterior. A fireball fills the car, which remains intact despite the explosion, and the “commercial” ends with the declaration that the Volkswagen Polo is “small but tough.”

In just a few seconds, the anonymous videomaker branded all Palestinian resistance as terrorism against innocent civilians, and trivialized every aspect of the tragic history of the Israeli occupation of Palestine. It was bad enough when the video appeared on small Web sites and was spread through e-mail, but when the massive Internet portal and search engine Google.com ran it under the headline “German Engineering against Arab Technology,” the immensely powerful Google organization compounded the offense.

Iman Badawi of Cairo was one of the Internet activists who then swung into action. She and other activists already had created a number of Arabic-language Web sites to gather signatures on petitions protesting Denmark’s inflammatory stance. “Of course, the Volkswagen ad was extremely provocative,” she explained. “But when Google decided to feature it under such an offensive headline—as if all technology in the Arab world was limited to bomb-making—we sent an e-mail in English to Google’s advertising department explaining why we were compelled to protest. I said that as Arabs, we always respected their transparency and inclusive policies promoting a diversity of viewpoints. And although I find the video personally offensive, I would not take action against Google if they had not promoted such an intrinsically offensive headline. The e-mail ended with a request they remove the link within 24 hours. We assured them we would also initiate appropriate protests and boycotts against Volkswagen Polo.”

In fact, Volkwagen disavowed any role in the creation or release of the video and declared it would take legal action against those responsible. Google, however, chose to stonewall for three weeks. The Google link remained online, with the headline unchanged, and Badawi got only a noncommittal reply from Google that it would review the situation in terms of its policies.

“Of course, we were also working on boycott campaigns against Danish products,” Badawi noted. “I had asked that they remove the link in 24 hours. After 24 days, when nothing changed, I wrote and thanked them for not responding. I told them we would now e-mail all our thousands of Web site visitors about Google’s intransigence, and urge them to boycott Google and consider pulling any sponsored links.” To demonstrate that this was no empty threat, Badawi attached to the message some of the petitions with tens of thousands of signatures of those pledging to boycott Danish products.

This time, Google’s advertising department responded immediately with an apology and assured her the ad and headline indeed contravened Google’s policies. “We have deleted it completely from our Web site,” Badawi was assured.

For years now, there have been many Arabic-language Web sites discussing current events and issues, but the effective use of economic boycotts in the Arab world is relatively new. Internet activists launched a boycott threat against “Ezi Mozo,” an Egyptian juice manufacturer whose TV ads on many Mideast channels featured closeups of young women dancing provocatively and seductively whispering the product’s name. The Internet activists assured the company’s general director that if such blatantly un-Islamic advertising continued, they would add Ezi Mozo to the list of American and Israeli products already being boycotted. They received an immediate apology and the offensive commercials disappeared.

This new activism is a volunteer, underfunded, but extremely effective use of the power of the Internet. In Gaza City, university student Raja’a Assalia spends his spare time and cash in a small Internet café organizing boycotts. “I work with a number of groups,” he said, “and the Internet is an excellent way to make people aware of many issues. Of course, there’s the ongoing boycott of Israeli products—we’ve been working on that for years—but we’re also targeting certain Arabic products that degrade Arab and Islamic women. For instance there are Arabic-language music videos featuring women who are practically naked. Obviously, we should boycott those record companies until they recover their sanity! We should make it clear many of us won’t support products that offend basic standards of decency. We don’t believe exploiting women is an acceptable sales technique.”

Assalia has multiple windows open on his monitor, reading the latest news from boycott organizers in Saudi Arabia, Syria, Egypt and Yemen, to name a few. No donor or organized group is funding his work, Assalia confirmed. He is simply one of hundreds of volunteers personally known to him in Palestine and abroad who, for the price of an hour in an Internet café, can join the effort. With the advent of free and low-cost blogging software, a few minutes, a few typed words, and a few mouse clicks can launch anyone into the borderless world of Internet activism.

Mohammed Omer reports from the Gaza Strip, where he maintains the Web site <http://www.rafahtoday.org>. He can be reached at < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >.

SIDEBAR

Choreographed Chaos?

The Al Jazeera satellite network broadcast a Saudi Arabian businessman’s plea to fellow merchants to burn or destroy all Danish goods to protest the Copenhagen’s refusal to apologize for cartoons insulting the Prophet Mohammed published late in 2005. The businessman promised to personally compensate the protesting retailers for their lost inventory.

On Monday, Jan. 30, heeding an urgent request from their government, Norwegian nationals left the Gaza Strip under the protection of the Palestinian security forces. Over the previous weekend, the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, the armed wing of the recently defeated Fatah party, distributed a leaflet in Gaza City demanding that all Norwegians, Swedes, and Danes leave Gaza within 48 hours, pending an apology from the governments of Denmark and Norway.

The offending cartoons, caricaturing the Prophet as a terrorist, first appeared in Denmark’s Jyllend Posten and were later republished in a Norwegian magazine. In the wake of the resulting furor throughout the Islamic world, the Danish paper published an “apology” that made matters worse, saying it had not meant to insult anyone. Since all visual portrayals of the Prophet Muhammad are strictly forbidden to Muslims, and the disrespect in the offending cartoons was flagrant, the Danish newspaper’s statement, coupled with their government’s defense of free expression, only inflamed the situation.

A spokesman for Fatah, Abu Qusai, explained his party’s position by saying: “We respect other religions and cultures. It’s a must that they should respect ours as  well.” Asked if its insistence that Danish and Norwegian nationals leave Gaza might have an adverse effect on Palestine, both internally and internationally, he replied, “We don’t want these Danes and Norwegians to be harmed. We understand they personally had no part in the insult to the Prophet. But we do hope they’ll press their governments to apologize to the Islamic world. Actually, we welcome foreigners as our guests, but basic respect for religion is a red line that no one should cross.”

Also demonstrating against the Nordic countries were the Al Yasser Brigades, another militant faction linked to the defeated Fatah party, and the Popular Resistance Committee, another armed militant group, which staged a second demonstration where protesters trampled the Danish flag and burned Danish and Norwegian flags. “The Danish government doesn’t want to apologize to Muslims for what they did to them,” one of the demonstrators said. “We belong to Fatah. We defend our religion. So we ban Danes and Norwegians from entering the Gaza Strip until the Danish government apologizes.”

The militant groups, however, comprise only about 5,000 men among the 1.3 million citizens of Gaza. Ordinary Palestinians expressed quite different views from the fiery rhetoric of the Fatah-linked militants. “When Fatah asks Danes and Norwegians to leave Gaza, that doesn’t mean that all Danes and Norwegians are bad. We understand that. We know the insult to the Prophet was the work of only a few,” said one Gaza resident, Umm Wael Salam, 45.

Hamas’s landslide victory in the Jan. 25 parliamentary elections was not without its ironies. While one might expect the overtly Islamist Hamas members to be the first to take to the streets to demonstrate against an insult to the Prophet, the new ruling party instead distributed a somber, even statesmanlike, press release demanding that the issue could not and should not be resolved by violence against foreigners. Instead, their statement said, the resolution had to be a diplomatic one, via a formal apology.

In reality, it was the militant wings of the defeated secular Fatah party that were creating disorder over the humiliation offered to Islam. Astute observers wondered if the real humiliation of interest to Fatah was not disrespect to the Prophet, but the embarrassment Hamas may suffer in the international community if it cannot control the unruly militants. In the end, however, the demonstrations against Nordic countries, while loud, were brief, with no harm done to any Danish or Norwegian citizens.—M.O.

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