From the Urgency of Climate Change to the Urgency of Free Information

Is night falling on the Middle East? While Egypt played host a few days ago at Sharm el-Sheikh – with great fanfare – to the world’s leaders, for an international conference on climate change where nothing serious was at stake, thousands of Egyptian activists and journalists are still rotting in the sinister gaols of Marshall Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi’s regime. On hunger strike for six months now, Alaa Abdel Fatah has also begun a thirst strike, likely to cost him his life.

Not so far from there, Benyamin Netanyahu, unsinkable leader of the Israeli right, is preparing to govern the country in alliance with a far right which is not only fanatically religious and colonialist, but also racist, misogynist and homophobic and whose followers shout “death to Arabs” in their electoral rallies. Some of these take part in the pogroms against Palestinians in East Jerusalem and on the occupied West Bank.

The vanished hopes of 2011 for Egyptians, the oppression in Palestine, Israel’s arrogance, the Western strategy towards Iran, the trans-Mediterranean migration, the total absence of any genuine efforts against climate change in the Maghreb and the Middle East: subjects on which Orient XXI keeps a close watch with its network of nearly a thousand correspondents of both sexes, journalists and academic specialists.

Ever since it was launched nearly ten years ago, often in partnership with its colleagues at Medias indépendants sur le monde arabe – 7iber in Jordan, Assafir al-Arabi and Mashallah News in Lebanon, Mada Masr in Egypt, Maghreb émergent in Algeria, Nawaat in Tunisia, Al-Jumhuriya founded by Syrians in exile, and last but not least BabelMed – Orient XXI has been taking stock of the environmental challenges which are particularly acute in an area largely dry and arid, not to say desertic. In the Arab world, global warming is likely to render whole territories physiologically unsuited to human life.

Yet, however urgent they may be, these issues are still of little interest to the media of the region. To deal with them at all requires meticulous research for trustworthy information and on-the-spot investigations which are often quite tricky, especially when they come up against powerful local interests.

Investigate to know, analyse to understand, publish to inform: these three pillars of journalism are the very foundations of Orient XXI and its identity. But they cost more and more, for the obstacles encountered are more frequent every day: authoritarian regimes are allergic to freedom of information, police surveillance use increasingly sophisticated tools and on all sides, there are “communicators” concocting fables to delude journalists. Nor must we forget that the dangers can be life-threatening. Our colleague Shirin Abu Aklehd’s murder on 11 May 2022 in Jenin by a sniper in the Israeli occupation army constitutes a tragic reminder. Israel claims to be a democracy but has no qualms about doing away with embarrassing journalists, just as Egypt or Saudi Arabia do.

At Orient XXI, we react to the realities of the Palestinian situation with the means at our disposal, those of journalism. In the spring of 2022, we went to the northern West Bank to collect the testimony of Palestinian farmers harassed by colonists. Just recently we met in Tel Aviv with the journalists of Haaretz, the liberal daily which, over the years, has become the only newspaper in Israel to report on the Palestinian tragedy.

But such investigations require time, money, and perseverance. The investigations we published this autumn on the United Arab Emirates’ strategies of influence in France or the sale of French armaments to the foreign belligerents in the Yemeni war required weeks of work checking and cross-checking information previously kept from the public.

In order to be available for everyone, Orient XXI has chosen to be free of charge and to publish several language versions: Arabic first, then English, Persian, Spanish and, as of late, Italian. We need you, your contributions, and your support to pursue and expand our efforts. To provide exclusive, original, and independent information, we are launching a campaign to raise 45,000 euros.

Peanuts compared with the resources of the billionaires who own most of the French press, from Vincent Bolloré to Patrick Drahi, from Xavier Niel to Bernard Arnault. But it will mean a lot for us to go on investigating, defying the omerta.