While Palestinians mourn the murder of 11,078 Palestinians, mostly women and children, killed by Israeli attacks which began on Oct. 7, journalists and creators from the region have decided to use their platforms to disseminate counter-narrative accounts of what has been happening since the occupying territory’s 15-years of blockade on Gaza.
More than ever, counter-narratives are urgently needed to push back against the media bias and propaganda, while claiming back the humanity of the oppressed. Looking back into the realm of storytelling, Bulgarian-French historian and literary visionary Tzvetan Todorov believes stories possess a dynamic quality that can shift from one equilibrium to another. While this equilibrium represents the dominant narrative, often adopted as an unquestionable truth, the tapestry of storytelling can be pervaded by voices that challenge and dismantle the dominant narrative. These voices contribute to the creation of counter-narratives that offer resistance, either overtly or covertly, to what is taken for granted and lay bare the tenets of the overarching story.
Sowt, the leading digital audio media company in the Middle East and North Africa, tapped into the current events to produce more episodes on Palestine, its history, and its people, thus, giving a voice to the marginalized. As challenging as you can imagine, the production team behind the podcast “Stories from Palestine” meticulously set up a production process to respond to the urgent needs of producing anti-colonial knowledge and deploying history as a weapon of resistance.
Ahmad Emam Zakaria, the producer of “Stories from Palestine,” told MILLE that each podcast episode is “a personal challenge and a personal responsibility we took upon ourselves to spread the voice of Palestinians and build a knowledge hub where everyone can get informed and acquire mind-broadening insights about what has been going on before and after the 7th of October.”
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Usually hard to find in other forms of content, the socially-conscious podcast strives to dig deeper into the history of the Gaza strip, and look into the complex dimensions of the political, social, and spatial realities. Through objective storytelling, the team gathers information, runs it through a series of fact checks, and compiles it into a smooth audio storyline. As Zakaria framed it, “We wanted to shift the discussion to its basic roots by covering the obvious or the axiomatic. Beyond romanticizing the people of Gaza and praising their resilience, people need to gain solid understanding of what is going on there. This is our way to carry on the discussion and push it further.”
The goal behind this project is not merely to document the lives of the Gazans and the dynamics of powers there, but to serve as a historical account of what is happening in the 365 km2 space and to serve as an anti-colonial knowledge source. Zakaria explains, ”The more information and knowledge we spread and compile the more power we give to Palestinians to defend their land and history.”
Entitled “What do we know about Gaza,” the first episode delves into the history of the Palestinian city and its geography from the Nakba onwards. It gives a baseline for the upcoming episode with its linguistic analysis, outlining of historical events, and geographical autopsy. The upcoming episodes build on this to deconstruct the huge amount of information everyone should know about the Gaza crossings, the settlements and camps, the political movements existing there before 2006, and more.
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Despite the challenges the production team faced in producing each episode due to its urgency and team being located in the Occupied Palestine where unimaginable mental strains are present and prevailing during these hard times, the podcast made its way onto their fourth episode that depicts the “normal” life in the besieged Gaza in the last two decades.
Besides producing new exclusive episodes on a weekly basis, Sowt curated a comprehensive podcast page in a way where listeners can find other archival episodes already published about Palestine and know more about the current politics, art, resistance, and the daily lives of Palestinians under occupation.
To find out more about Stories from Palestine : https://www.sowt.com/ar/podcast/qss-mn-flstyn
