A critique of my profession and a cry for help for my people. My latest poem is in HOAX magazine.

As a Palestinian in diaspora, I’ve lost countless hours of sleep thinking of all the things I wish I could do for my people in the homeland.

As a journalist, I’ve been wholeheartedly embarrassed by my western media peers who have parroted blatant lies and propaganda without even doing the most basic due diligence to fact-check, which has harmed my people even more as these lies have gone on to be spread at the highest levels of government. Ahem, Genocide Joe repeating the now-roundly debunked “40 beheaded babies” lie while wanting to send $14 billion in our tax dollars to IsntReal on top of the $3.8 billion the US sends them annually.

I feel it’s my job as both a Palestinian and a journalist to combat misinformation where possible, so I’ve been sharing resources about media literacy on Instagram, calling out misinformation where I see it, and having conversations with people about basic media literacy 101. At the bare minimum, as yourself the following questions: Who tells the stories? Who benefits from the stories? Who is missing from the stories?

All these things were on my mind when I composed this poem, “the damage has been done.”

It was just published by the literary magazine HOAX. Please give it a read.

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