Al Jazeera Journalism Review

Ashley1
Radio Alhara resident DJ Andrew Collingwood plays as part of the Sonic Liberation Front broadcast [Photo courtesy of Radio Alhara]

Palestine underground: A new face for local radio

THE LONG READ: How Palestine’s Radio Alhara is taking a grassroots approach to shaping a new landscape for protest, culture and local journalism online.

 

Hunched down in front of a DJ console, Yousef Anastas assiduously manages the decks, preparing the mix and adjusting the atmospherics of the ambient track he is playing. It is haunting and trance-like: the drone-like synthesiser he has programmed melds into the repeated strumming of an oud – a Middle Eastern stringed instrument – with increasing intensity. It feels as if it is urgently attempting to break free within the mix. It seems like an apt sonic metaphor for life in the 33-year-old’s native Palestine.

Yousef is performing this set together with several other Middle East-based DJs for Sonic Liberation Front, a months-long broadcast intended as a collective artistic show of support for Palestinian liberation.

Although they perform without a physical audience, the stream is being listened to by hundreds of people at once, being aired on Radio Alhara, the Palestine-based online radio station set up by Yousef, his brother Elias, and a group of international friends, which has quietly risen to become one of the most formidable online radio presences – and with it, one of the biggest voices for Palestinian liberation – in the world.

During the pandemic, the group found themselves overwhelmed by the offerings of cultural institutions worldwide, which were focused on opening up their archives to the public. Seeking a grassroots, crowdsourced alternative, the Radio Alhara co-founders decided to build their own version of a community archive by commissioning hour-long broadcasts produced by fellow members of the cultural community.

People who tuned in to Radio Alhara were seeing parallels between the injustices in Palestine and other forms of oppression worldwide, including in their own corners of the world

 

They approached Yamakan, a Beirut-based initiative formed to help people within the Middle East and North Africa region set up their own radio stations. Established by the founders of Radio al Hai, a Lebanese online radio station set up earlier in the pandemic, the initiative is styled on the pirate radio stations that operate without official licenses from broadcasting authorities.

The initiative proved to be a match for the group behind Radio Alhara, who were concerned with maintaining the station’s creative independence, as well as its ability to foster a cultural community that wasn’t beholden to corporate interests or the need for donors. Like pirate radio, Yamakan’s stations, including Radio Alhara, are community enterprises characterised by high voluntary participation, operation at little to no cost and without fear of regulatory censorship. “It has been very interesting to think of [Radio Alhara as] a new form of cultural centre,” said Elias.

Local community – on an international level

Inspired by the community that has formed around stations like Radio al Hai, the co-founders settled on the name “Hara”, which means “neighbourhood” in Arabic. “The neighbourhood is a space defined by the people who live [within it], and they make it become more detailed,” explained Elias. “It’s a space governed by its inhabitants and its users.”

The result of this vibrant neighbourhood – which Yazan refers to as a collective of “cultural producers” – is that shows about niche music harmoniously occupy the same schedule as conversations with academics, chefs, and activists alike.

That this community has gathered around Palestine, a state whose colonisation by Israel weighs daily on the five million people who live under increasing restrictions in both Gaza and the West Bank, makes it unsurprising that many of the station’s broadcasts contain an anti-imperialist flavour.

On a Sunday in June, an hour of jazz from the 1960s selected by Berlin-based record label manager Dimitra Zina is followed by a discussion between researchers Nora Akawi and Khyam Allami on challenging the Western biases inherent in music production software. The following Friday, shows flitted from an hour of Barcelonan minimal techno to a reading of works by the Tuareg novelist, Ibrahim Al-Koni.

Ashley2
Sound artist Bakisa performing his contribution to Sonic Liberation Front as part of AAU Anastas’s pavilion at the Venice Biennale [Photo Courtesy of Radio Alhara]

‘A new form of cultural centre’

Radio Alhara wasn’t always meant to be so overtly political. Set up during the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic in March 2020, the station was initially formed as a way for the station co-founders – five creatives active within the Palestinian cultural sphere – to broadcast daily radio shows online according to their mood on a particular day of isolation. “At the beginning, it was just kind of a joke platform where all of us exchange music, and invite friends to share [music] libraries,” recounted Elias over a video call.

The co-founders of Radio Alhara met both on the dance floor and through their various professions. The close-knit cultural and music community of Palestine was where Elias and Yousef – who are both architects and run an architectural practice together – met 40-year-old Yazan Khalil, who formerly ran the Khalil Sakakini Center, an arts and cultural institution in Ramallah. In Amman, graphic designers Saeed Abu Jaber, 36, and Mothanna Hussein, 34, met sound designer Ibrahim Owais, 38, through Owais’s regular appearances at the parties they organised. It was the exhibiting of chairs designed by Elias and Yousef at Saeed and Mothanna’s design studio that launched the co-founders’ friendship and eventual formation of the station.

In New Orleans in the 1910s, jazz was the language of resistance for African Americans. In the same tradition, the music of Palestine, through Radio Alhara, declares itself a space for resistance against political oppression

 

The social space of music and dancing has historically been a site of sociopolitical resistance. In New Orleans in the 1910s, for instance, jazz was the language of resistance for African Americans, who used music to collectively build a culture and movement in spite of attempts to suppress it. In the same tradition, the music and cultural community of Palestine, through Radio Alhara, declares itself a space for resistance against political oppression and tyranny, where they are free despite the increasing restrictions they face simply for being Palestinians. Symbolically, that same jazz, music from the likes of Dizzy Gillespie and Louis Armstrong, is heard regularly on the station.

Radio Alhara’s rapid growth as a cultural beacon of Palestine mirrors the dramatic ascent of the state’s music scene on a global stage. In 2018, the techno DJ, Sama’ Abdulhadi, performed a set on streaming platform Boiler Room to critical acclaim, one that has been viewed over 8.5 million times. The rooftops of Palestinian office blocks where parties such as Abdulhadi’s are often held may have been empty during the pandemic, but these online endeavours have kept the spirit alive.

‘Tomorrow, when the apricots bloom’

Just months into initial operations at Radio Alhara last July, the station found itself turning its focus entirely to Palestinian liberation with a week-long marathon broadcast they called, “Fil Mishmish” – Arabic that roughly translates to “tomorrow, when the apricots bloom” – a sonic protest against proposed plans by Israel to annex parts of the West Bank last July. The phrase, which is used to mean “wishful thinking”, or something that may never happen, has its roots in the apricot-picking season, which falls on only two weeks of the year. It expresses the frustration that freedom is hard-fought and far from being achieved.

“We were thinking, what kind of response can we bring to the Israeli plan which was totally unilateral and illegal?” said Elias. The co-founders took the station off air for a day to organise a response and to illustrate the gravity of the situation to their listeners worldwide. They started by inviting listeners to come together to submit their voices of resistance in an online, sound-based protest. Initially planned as a 24-hour broadcast, they received such a huge outpouring of solidarity that they ended up broadcasting all the material they received across five full days.

People who broadcast and tuned in to Radio Alhara alike, the co-founders noticed, were seeing parallels between the injustices they saw happening in Palestine and other forms of oppression worldwide, including in their own corners of the world.

One day at the end of June, Radio Alhara broadcast a series of programmes by South African DJs and artists in an international show of solidarity, with the guiding principle being that they, like Palestinians, have experienced the effects of apartheid and continue their resistance against it. “From the youth of 1976 [of the Soweto Student Uprising] with nothing but stones to defend themselves, to those in the West Bank, we send love,” they said in their show’s introduction, expressing the notion that pursuits of freedom are historically linked.

Ashley3
Poster for the Fil Mishmish festival broadcast on Radio Alhara in July 2020 [Photo Courtesy of Radio Alhara]

Such solidarity is at the core of Radio Alhara’s Sonic Liberation Front, a series of daily broadcasts following on from Fil Mishmish that have been continuing since May this year. This latest orchestrated sonic protest was sparked by Israel’s escalation of violence against Palestinians that has seen the sacred Al-Aqsa Mosque stormed by Israeli troops during the holy month of Ramadan, the forced evictions of Palestinian residents in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood of East Jerusalem, and an 11-day aerial bombardment of Gaza, which left more than 230 Palestinians dead and destroyed the offices of media organisations there, including those of Al Jazeera.

Against this backdrop, Sonic Liberation Front becomes emblematic of not a short-term struggle that briefly captured international attention, but rather, one that is perennial. “Our life is not affected by a conflict, it is affected by the aggression of a settler colonial state,” said Elias. “The most recent events happened in Sheikh Jarrah in Jerusalem and in Gaza. But these have always been recent to us. In fact, they have never ceased to be and in that sense they affect our daily lives.”

The plight of Palestine – highlighted in no small part by grassroots movements such as Radio Alhara’s – has gained attention worldwide this year. In May, marches in London in support of Palestine were estimated to have attracted 180,000 people across several weekends. In the same month, the Republic of Ireland became the first Western nation to unilaterally condemn Israel’s de facto annexation of Palestinian land.

‘Media content about Palestine is very compromised’

Worldwide, online radio is a relatively new phenomenon. A handful of streaming stations have sprung up in the last decade, with the pandemic prompting a new burst of at-home broadcasting studios. For many stations, social media, particularly Instagram, has been a key platform for regular engagement with the rest of the global musician, DJ and listener community.

Radio Alhara itself has risen to become one of this community’s biggest online presences with over 40,000 followers on the social media site, to whom they broadcast everything from historical photographs, to daily show schedules and artwork created by station co-founders, Amman-based graphic designers Mothanna and Saeed.

As truth is obscured about the situation in Palestine, and misrepresentations of violence proliferate, Radio Alhara has emerged with its use of culture, music and art to form an alternative media network

 

Yet this close relationship with social media is conflicting for the co-founders of Radio Alhara, who lament the restrictive censorship of platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, whose moderation algorithms have been reported to remove pro-Palestinian content.

“Content [about Palestine] is very compromised not just in mainstream media, but also in lots of social media and algorithms attempt to deeply censor Palestinian content,” said Yazan.

Among the radio team, and more widely in Palestine, there has been significant frustration about the censorship on social media sites of footage showing evidence of the oppression of Palestinians. In May, Palestinians widely reported that posts, particularly from activists raising awareness of protests happening in the state, with hashtags such as #AlAqsa, had been routinely deleted by the sites.

In a report titled, The Attacks on Palestinian Digital Rights, Palestinian digital rights group 7amleh accused social media companies of working with Israeli authorities to censor posts documenting illegal Israeli aggression towards Palestinians, while at the same time allowing hate speech directed towards Palestinians and Arabs to remain online.

“There is close cooperation between social media companies and the Israeli government, which abuse this and try to silence the voices speaking out against the Israeli occupation,” Nadim Nashif, the director of 7amleh, told Al Jazeera in May.

Ashley5
Poster for Radio Alhara’s Palestinian-Colombian Solidarity Stream on May 22, 2021 [Courtesy of Radio Alhara]

As truth is obscured about the situation in Palestine, and misrepresentations of violence proliferate, Radio Alhara has emerged with its use of culture, music, art, and their confluence to form an alternative media network. “What we’re doing is creating a platform that people engage with, but [that] is outside of the mainstream media and algorithm’s censorship,” said Yousef.

The power of online radio

To raise awareness of their broadcasts and, through those, awareness of what is happening in Palestine, the station relies on a network of radio stations worldwide that Elias describes as a form of “structural solidarity”. Radio Alhara’s sister stations, which include independent online stations from almost every continent, take turns to simultaneously broadcast the station’s daily programming to help them reach a wider global audience, maximising listenership through a domino effect. “You have content beginning to reach people who wouldn’t otherwise have been able to discover it,” said Saeed.

The station’s visibility has also been helped by the artistic support and presence of pro-Palestinian DJs and musicians. The Chilean-American musician and composer, Nicolas Jaar, contributed to Sonic Liberation Front by performing unreleased compositions while reciting a live monologue about how inequality of water access has been a key means of segregation in Palestine and Israel. Jaar’s popularity as a musician, Elias notes, drew fans who might not have been clued up on the situation in Palestine to his broadcast, “so using the vector of culture and music to target various and diverse audiences [with the message of resistance] works,” he says.

As Radio Alhara grows in popularity, its sense of defiance reverberates throughout the world

 

Radio Alhara’s hybridisation of culture, music and art has also converged in the physical world, through the Anastas brothers’ architectural practice, AAU Anastas. Featured in the Venice Architecture Biennale this year, their installation, All Purpose, questioned the imperialistic notion that the practice of stonemasonry is one of European origin. On its opening night, the artists and Radio Alhara residents, Lawrence Abu Hamdan and Moe Choucair – who performs under the name Bakisa – performed soundscapes blending field recordings from the streets of Gaza and Jerusalem with an opera piece. The two sounds are filtered through various digital effects until they were unrecognisable – a reflection of the continuous battering of Gaza and the West Bank by Israeli aggression.

As Radio Alhara grows in popularity, its sense of defiance reverberates throughout the world. On a Friday night in July – the first since all COVID restrictions were relaxed in the UK – Radio Alhara held a club night in the East London music venue and bar, the Servant Jazz Quarters, which was also broadcast live as part of Sonic Liberation Front.

It was the first of many planned in-person gatherings of Radio Alhara’s residents and listeners around the world. Radio Alhara resident DJs deftly mixed a free range of music from jazz to funk to French disco for an enthusiastic crowd. The “Hara” ethos of the station was on display: the ability of the station’s residents to play anything they wish, in a neighbourhood that fervently encourages such freedom. These parties are poignant metaphors for a dream that the same kinds of freedoms will one day be attained for Palestine.

 

This article first appeared on Al Jazeera

 

 

 

 

More Articles

Suffering in silence - the Kashmiri journalists facing a mental health crisis

THE LONG READ: Al Jazeera Journalism Review has interviewed more than 20 journalists in India-controlled Kashmir who are facing exhausting, insurmountable obstacles to doing their jobs safely every single day

Adil Akhoon
Adil Amin Akhoon, Khalid Bashir Gura Published on: 29 May, 2023
How to analyse satellite imagery

When you have a story, but still need to tie up loose ends to answer where or when a particular event occurred, satellite imagery can point you in the right direction

Sara
Sara Creta Published on: 25 May, 2023
OSINT: Tracking ships, planes and weapons

Tracking ships and planes is an increasingly valuable technique in open-source investigations carried out by journalists. In part 4 of our special series, we examine how it works

Sara
Sara Creta Published on: 18 May, 2023
How social media bans have crippled journalism in India’s Punjab

The Indian government has ordered social media platforms to block hundreds of accounts of journalists and activists

Meer Faisal
Meer Faisal Published on: 16 May, 2023
Tear gas and internet blackouts - reporting on protests in Pakistan

REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK: Following the arrest of former Prime Minister Imran Khan, violence has erupted across Pakistan. For journalists, it is like reporting from the centre of a storm

Anam Hussain
Anam Hussain Published on: 14 May, 2023
Remembering Shireen; my colleague and a 'role model for professionalism'

On the eve of the first anniversary of the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh, Al Jazeera's Senior Correspondent in Palestine, her colleague commemorates the compassion, integrity and professionalism which made her the extraordinary journalist and human being that she was

Walid
Walid Omary Published on: 10 May, 2023
Planning and carrying out an open-source investigation

Part three of our special series of articles on using OSINT in journalism. This time, follow our four steps to completing an open-source investigation

Sara
Sara Creta Published on: 9 May, 2023
What is an open-source investigation?

In the second part of our special series on using open-source intelligence in journalism, we look at what constitutes and open-source investigation

Sara
Sara Creta Published on: 4 May, 2023
How misinformation in the media wreaked havoc on an Indian village

When journalists - and social media ‘influencers’ claiming to be journalists - aimed for sensationalism and did not check their facts about the outbreak of the HIV virus in an Indian village, the results were devastating

Saurabh Sharma
Saurabh Sharma Published on: 1 May, 2023
Using open-source intelligence in journalism

Where once journalists relied on sources for information - also known as ‘human intelligence’ (HUMINT) - they now increasingly rely on ‘open-source’ intelligence (OSINT) gathered from the internet, satellite imagery, corporate databases and much, much more

Phil
Phil Rees Published on: 12 Apr, 2023
Why is life so dangerous for Pakistani journalists?

Pakistani journalists face huge danger in the course of carrying out their work. Why is so little being done to address this?

Anam Hussain
Anam Hussain Published on: 6 Apr, 2023
Investigating the assassination of my own father

As a journalist, reporting on the murder of my father meant answering questions about my own position as an objective observer

Diana Lopez
Diana Lopez Zuleta Published on: 3 Apr, 2023
‘I have disturbing dreams’ - the reporters suffering mental trauma on the job

Remaining objective while bearing witness to atrocities and suffering abuse from authorities is taking its toll on the mental health of journalists in India

Saurabh Sharma
Saurabh Sharma Published on: 20 Mar, 2023
Understanding data journalism

Data journalism is about much more than just sorting through facts and figures. In the first part of our series, we look at what constitutes data-based storytelling

Mohammed Haddad
Mohammed Haddad Published on: 16 Mar, 2023
Why are journalists being prevented from reporting on the earthquakes? 

Media workers have played a vital role in ensuring help arrives for earthquake victims in Turkey, but many claim they are being prevented from doing their jobs

Aidan
Aidan White Published on: 5 Mar, 2023
Field notes from an earthquake - reporting on human misery

REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK: Where do you draw the line when covering human suffering? When does reporting on a devastating earthquake cross over from objective journalism to tasteless voyeurism?

Ilya
Ilya U Topper Published on: 20 Feb, 2023
‘I reported the truth - and was taken to jail’ - the journalists in prison in India

Indian journalist Siddique Kappan has been released after more than two years in prison just for doing his job. We talked to him and others who have been arrested or imprisoned

Saurabh Sharma
Saurabh Sharma Published on: 15 Feb, 2023
‘Leading the voiceless’ - how low-caste Indian journalists are crowdfunding their own newsrooms

Dalit representation in Indian media organisations is very low. Some journalists from the lowest Hindu caste are finding innovative ways to start up their own news platforms

Saurabh Sharma
Saurabh Sharma Published on: 13 Feb, 2023
Investigative journalism: Handling data and gathering evidence

Data is only one part of the investigative story. In Part 5 of our series on investigative journalism, we look at different methods of gathering evidence

Malak Khalil Published on: 9 Feb, 2023
Investigative journalism: Going undercover 

Covert operations for a journalistic investigation should be undertaken as a last resort only. In Part 4 of our series on investigative journalism, we explore the best ways to go undercover

Malak Khalil Published on: 2 Feb, 2023
‘They called us agents of imperialism’ - remembering the bombing of Zimbabwe’s Daily News

Twenty-two years after the bombing of a newspaper printing plant in January 2001, the perpetrators are still at large - and a state-sanctioned assault on a free press continues

Derick M
Derick Matsengarwodzi Published on: 30 Jan, 2023
Investigative journalism: How to develop and manage your sources

Your sources are the backbone of any investigation. In Part 3 of our series on investigative journalism, we look at how to find, foster and manage them

Malak Khalil Published on: 26 Jan, 2023
Investigative journalism: Hypothesis-based investigations

What is a hypothesis-based investigation, how do you come up with one and how do you investigate and prove it? Part 2 of our series on investigative journalism

Malak Khalil Published on: 19 Jan, 2023
Investigative journalism: What should you investigate?

In the first of our series on investigative journalism, we look at how journalists decide what to investigate

Malak Khalil Published on: 12 Jan, 2023