EU Parliament bans Al Mayadeen’s photos of Gaza genocide at exhibition

April 18, 2024

Source

Hypocritically, images from the war in Ukraine were allowed to be featured in the exhibition, proving the EU’s clear double standards and selective humanity, particularly its stance on the humanitarian crises in Gaza. (Al Mayadeen English)

By Al Mayadeen English

The European Parliament removed 14 photos taken by an Al Mayadeen correspondent in the Gaza Strip from a photo exhibition exposing Israeli crimes, revealing the EU’s crackdown on pro-Palestinian content.

As part of the Western media crackdown on Pro-Palestinian content, the European Parliament Secretariat removed 14 photos taken by Al Mayadeen Media Network, from a photo exhibition organized by a leftist parliamentary group.

Al Mayadeen‘s correspondent, Moussa Assi, explained that the organizers planned the exhibition, set on April 16th in Brussels, intending to feature photos revealing the aftermath of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Al Mayadeen Media Network was extended an invite by the organizers to feature photos showing the impact of war, particularly on Gaza’s children, and showcasing the widespread destruction, the condition of Gaza’s hospitals, and more.

He further added that the Parliament Secretariat argued they didn’t have sufficient time to review the photos before displaying them. However, the organizers of the exhibition confirmed they had submitted the photos within the designated timeframe. They asserted that the decision to remove the photos was politically motivated and influenced by pressure from right-winged parties within the European parliament.

On Tuesday, #AlMayadeen was banned from presenting pictures taken in #Gaza in a photo exhibition in Brussels, #Belgium, despite the photographs being coordinated beforehand, in yet another attack on the freedom of press and those who support the #Palestinian cause for liberation… pic.twitter.com/IqcceTl3HA

— Al Mayadeen English (@MayadeenEnglish) April 18, 2024

The organizers requested that our correspondent, a representative of Al Mayadeen Media Network, give a speech at the exhibition where the prohibited photos will be displayed on a screen in the background. However, the EU parliament desk employees intervened, demanded the photos’ removal, and proceeded to cut off the screen cables provocatively.

Related News

• Iran’s retaliation established rules of engagement: Sayyed al-Houthi
• How ‘Israel’s’ freedom of action against Iran may be jeopardized

What happened further indicates that the European Parliament was adamant on preventing the broadcasting of any content that exposes Israeli crimes in Gaza, Hypocritically, images from the war in Ukraine were allowed to be featured in the exhibition, proving the EU’s clear double standards and selective humanity, particularly its stance on the humanitarian crises in Gaza. 

Clear attempt to conceal the truth

Some members of the leftist parliamentary group emphasized that the decision does not reflect the stance of the party or the sentiment of the European public, which has shown increasing support for the Palestinian cause.

In his speech, Al Mayadeen’s correspondent mentioned that the European Parliament’s decision to remove the photos is a clear attempt to “conceal the truth” of what is happening in the Gaza Strip and the reality of “Israel’s” ongoing genocide in the Strip. 

He referred to the decision as a direct attack on Al Mayadeen, which has been subjected to several attacks concerning the Palestinian cause in occupied Palestine, Lebanon, and other countries on multiple occasions. Our correspondent stressed that Al Mayadeen‘s commitment to always speak the truth has come at a cost, leading to censorship.

Al Mayadeen affirms its commitment to Palestine

Last year, the Israeli war cabinet approved regulations that would allow the occupation government to ban and shut down Al Mayadeen Media Network, which comprises a foreign channel as per the emergency regulations descriptions and broadcasts in “Israel” in three languages: Arabic, English, and Spanish.

The occupation’s war cabinet issued an order to block Al Mayadeen‘s online operations in occupied Palestine as well and seize its broadcasting equipment. 

Read next: Al Mayadeen’s Farah and Rabih, the voices that will not be silenced

Related Videos

Field | Between Gaza and the support fronts… increasing Israeli confusion

Israel admits “Iran struck the Dimona reactor and destroyed an Israeli plane” and moves for the Rafah operation

The secret code.. What is the role of “Israel” in creating discord among Muslims?

Related Stories

• ‘Israel’ deliberately kills Al Mayadeen’s crew in South Lebanon
• Ben Jeddou promises ‘Israel’ new fight in its own language
• Ghassan Ben Jeddou: Al Mayadeen grave threat to Israeli security
• Iron Dome failed to intercept all seven hypersonic missiles: Press TV
• Iran’s ballistic missiles, drones impact Israeli targets (Footage)
• YAF launch drones, ballistic missiles in striking manner: French chief
• IRGC launches ‘unprecedented’ retaliatory attack on ‘Israel’
• Al-Jolani launches massive arrest campaign against demonstrators
• US lobbied states to vote against Palestine’s membership bid: Leaks
• Iranian ballistic attack globally unprecedented: Israeli media
• Smotrich has ‘no trust’ in IOF after Oct.7’s security ‘blank check’

---

War on Gaza

Britain’s Colonial Past and Brexit. The Real Link Which Remainers Can’t Deal With

Martin Jay is an award-winning British journalist based in Morocco where he is a correspondent for The Daily Mail (UK) who previously reported on the Arab Spring there for CNN, as well as Euronews. From 2012 to 2019 he was based in Beirut where he worked for a number of international media titles including BBC, Al Jazeera, RT, DW, as well as reporting on a freelance basis for the UK’s Daily Mail, The Sunday Times plus TRT World. His career has led him to work in almost 50 countries in Africa, The Middle East and Europe for a host of major media titles. He has lived and worked in Morocco, Belgium, Kenya and Lebanon.

Martin Jay

January 6, 2021

The Brexit deal snatched at the last minute by Boris Johnson is not the amazing coup, trumped by his media officials or the conservative press. But it is a good deal for the UK and a pretty good escape plan for the EU which was faced with a new battle in 2021: to deal with the political turmoil of Britain ‘going alone’. Given that the EU already has enough political tumult with Poland and Hungary blocking a 2 trillion dollar rescue package for countries hit hard by Covid, the last thing the EU needed was a new crisis of its own making.

Yet the deal is still controversial both in the UK and in Brussels as in many ways the real test will be in the coming years, whether EU giants like Germany and France chose to allow the UK to grow – thus becoming a bigger and bigger customer to the EU 27 – or for it to become a pariah which the EU punishes through its arbitration system, agreed in the fine print of the final draft. Some sceptics will argue that when Britain starts to grow in certain sectors, it will have its wings clipped by an overzealous EU which will cry foul play every time one EU member state complains that it can’t compete with British goods or services. This is the real heart of the deal: whether this part of the agreement will be exercised fairly.

But does the EU really do “fair”? One look at how it treats Iran within a human rights prism while not condemning Saudi Arabia’s appalling war in Yemen should tell you much. Or how it supports the repressive regimes of many North African countries who acknowledge its fake hegemony while signing up to training courses for its police forces in how to effectively spread fake news through social media platforms and carry out better “surveillance”. Or just the number of human rights scandals on home soil which dog the EU, as more and more debating chambers in the European Parliament are named after journalists murdered while uncovering graft – while the perpetrators remain free.

The EU doesn’t really do well when we examine it in this light. Fairness and equality are not really its traits. In fact, the quip from Vladimir Putin that the EU “can’t even create a single market in its energy sector” when complaining about market access in Germany is very true. The “level playing field” is very much just a buzz phrase in Brussels to distract the embedded journalist to not look too hard at how ineffective the EU is at playing on it. A sort of reverse theory of logic which dictates the more you talk about something the less likely you are to do anything about it. And there are too many examples of this doctrine. SMEs is another. “Small and medium-sized business” which we are told in tomes of EU reports provide the solution to unemployment as studies show that they are the ones who employ workers quickly. And yet, the EU does almost everything it can to destroy them in reality through allowing the European parliament to be an orgy scene of multinational companies – invariably non-EU ones – who use the lobbying system to ensure than new EU directives push them out of the market altogether.

There’s a lot of smoke and mirrors in Brussels and for remainers in the UK, who are still angry over Brexit now going though, much of their grief is really based on ideals built on the foundations supporting a pantheon of ignorance and mythology.

The EU doesn’t do fairness. It doesn’t even do democracy and in fact doesn’t even faintly pretend to. Yet it remains quiet when its millions of supporters harp on about how democratic it is, chiefly sighting the most useless and futile institution ever created: the European parliament. “Look, the EU is democratic. It has its own parliament!” people often say without taking stock of how the European parliament is probably the only assembly in the world which has no power whatsoever to propose draft legislation and is more or less run by powerful lobbying firms. For the EU itself, it is a farcical, last minute idea bolted on to allude to the idea of being democratic. But most portly MEPs who blow hundreds of millions of dollars each year travelling to Strasbourg every three weeks – burning a hole in the ozone layer the size of London – will tell you after two glasses of Chilean house red that they are nothing more than EU civil servants rubber stamping the important stuff that the adults do down the road in the European Commission. And that’s on a good day.

Yet fairness and its opaque interpretations is a big part of what Brexit is really all about. Certainly, the feral remainers in the UK who still dream of the deal being scuppered. Many are left-wing and believe naively that to belong to the EU assures Britain stays multicultural and will never fall victim to a rise of the far right – a desperate, yet equally hilarious notion, given that the EU itself is a white supremacist organisation essentially ran by white, middle aged men, many of whom are European freemasons whose delusion views about taking more power in Brussels is actually feeding the far right movement in Europe. The more the political crisis the EU finds itself in, the higher the number of far right seats in the European Parliament. It’s no longer a mystery or an enigma. Many top EU officials now admit that the EU has a real identity problem and are dumbfounded to see that its power grab is part of the solution.

But it’s also about how British people see themselves and how they cope with achievement. Winners and losers, if you like. Many remainers believe that any excursion to win in any given field should be discouraged and that being an EU member state was a perfect way of instilling this assiduous virtue which comes from the same loins as “it’s not the winning that matters, but the taking part”.

For 11 years I worked in Brussels as a journalist pouring over the texts of financial services directives, many hundreds of pages. A theme always became clear though in all of them which was that the City of London needed to “harmonize” its rules more in line with new rules which France and Germany wanted to introduce. The effect of this each and every time was to take away the business from London. And this is really the crux of Brexit. The EU has been trying to diminish the UK’s lead in many sectors through a disingenuous ruse which led Britain to believe that its membership was a genuinely fair and decent one. In reality it was entirely indecent and in the end enough people woke up and realised that EU membership really wasn’t worth much, given that it meant Britain handing over much of its gains from being a leader.

And what in God’s name is so wrong with leading? Remainers who pen clever op-eds now in the left-wing press are the real conservatives obsessed with Britain’s colonial past when they make the erroneous link with Britain’s pink history. It is just plain wrong to assume that British leadership at anything is colonial. Those same journalists fail to see that Britain’s colonial past was a failed venture and ended up almost bankrupting the country. Many, by contrast, who voted for Brexit see the UK embracing new relationships all over the world and signing trade deals with countries like Turkey, free now of the “colonialism” of old white men in Brussels who probably dance naked around trees once a year and have funny handshakes. Brexit is very much about an anticolonialism and yet many remainers are still joined at the hip with their khaki pasts. They are, by definition, conservative and racist as they equate anything to do with coming first with Britain’s war with the Mau Mau in the 1950s. They want Britain to be an “also ran” and dependent on Brussels for help tied to a colonial and abusive master who can’t look forward, is out of touch with reality and is racist to the core. If anything, Brexit is an end to colonialism and the embrace of a new set of economic ideals which places Britain as equal partners in trade with countries like India. If India can put aside its colonial past and wrongs by Britain, then why can’t remainers? The real link between Britain’s imperial past and Brexit is that the European Commission is still stuck with this model of governance itself, complete with the Brylcreem, the Sten and the khaki shorts. Remainers are not anti-imperialists at all. They are just anti-British imperialists who much prefer to be enslaved by Jean-Christophe, Luc or Hans in Brussels.