A journalist who can't stop speaking truth to power

This is the story of an Ivy League-trained journalist who always speaks truth to power on every matter, even Palestine, no matter the consequence.

I remember the anticipation with which I used to approach the morning newspaper. I would be eager to discover what transpired the day prior. I loved reading the news. I would read my morning paper from cover to cover, not every story, of course, but stories that aroused my curiosity, and since I had varied interests, it meant reading most of the stories. I felt informed, well-read, and even cultured for doing so. There would be no gathering where I couldn’t contribute something to the conversation, thanks mainly to my unceasing morning habit. My friends and family would seek my opinion on stuff since I was a teenager. They knew I knew things.

My parents — both university professors — were a big help in my education. I had started reading voluminous texts at a fairly young age, and my parents would teach me and help me understand stuff that I found difficult to comprehend.

This desire to know things and my love for the newspaper pushed me into a career in journalism. I always wanted to write like some reporters and columnists I read in the paper. I was bright. I made it to the school I wanted: Columbia Journalism School, the top-rated journalism school in the world. When I first saw my acceptance letter, my heart was so full and beating so fast that it felt as if it would pop out of my ribs. It was everything I had wished for until that point in my life.

With starry eyes and a lot of hope, I began preparing for classes at the only Ivy League institution that offered a journalism degree. I would be walking the hallowed halls that are also home to the Pulitzer Prize — the most prestigious journalism award in the world. I hoped to win one someday. I couldn’t hold my excitement as I began my journey in journalism. I couldn’t wait to speak truth to power.

The years at the school were exhausting but very rewarding. Some of the best minds in journalism taught us. Journalists who had won Pulitzers, some of them multiple times. Journalists who had worked at some of the most-respected news organisations in the country, from the New York Times to CNN to MSNBC to Fox. Brave journalists from across the pond also taught us. Reporters and editors who had worked at the BBC, the German Press Agency, Le Monde, and El Pais taught us. Our professors who had worked in Europe taught us about the peculiarities of the European democracies and how they differed from how we did things in the United States.

They shared their experience in covering horrific wars, natural disasters, criminal gangs, corporate crimes, corrupt politicians, and historical events. They taught us how to do our jobs well, how to research prospective assignments, how to navigate treacherous conditions, how to cultivate sources, how to ask the right questions, how to pin down an evasive interviewee, how to speak truth to power. Some of the best minds who taught us had also gone on to serve as the White House Press Secretary in many administrations as well as spokespeople in various European governments because of their integrity as journalists. I wanted to ask hard questions as they did. I wanted to cover some of the most challenging issues as they did. I wanted to prove my worth as a journalist like they had done. I wanted to emulate them.

During my time at Columbia, I had 3 internship stints, 2 at cable news outlets and the third at a newspaper. I had the opportunity to get a feel of the way a newsroom worked: the hustle and bustle, the rush to get breaking news out, to hit publish on a story with details still to be fully mapped out (with “more to follow” at the bottom), to produce compelling news packages on a tight deadline, to choose and invite guests for shows, to prepare questions for news debates, to fact-check pieces, to read and re-read stories multiple times to ensure no error crept in. My internships were a massive learning experience and taught me how to navigate the challenges my vocation threw at me.

After 4 fruitful years at Columbia, I graduated with a summa cum laude. I landed a role at the New York Times, the newspaper of record, the dream job of every journalism grad in the country. It is the paper against which every other news organisation measures itself, the paper that has the power to influence American foreign policy, the paper that every person of eminence begins their day with, and also the paper I grew up reading as a morning ritual.

I had my dream job — a job at an organisation that had shaped my personality and had informed me about things I had the faintest idea about, from the climate change affecting the lives of the indigenous people in the Kalahari Desert in Africa to the ravages of the caste system among the Hindus of India and from the positive impact of American largesse in Western Europe at the end of the World War II to the intricacies of the politics in Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, the New York Times was an education.

Now, I had the chance to educate the other readers of the New York Times from my myriad reporting assignments that were to come. I had goosebumps just thinking about the positive impact I would make by speaking truth to power.

My first assignments were domestic. After covering local politics in New York, my first major assignment was the acrimonious 2000 Presidential election. I spent sleepless nights preparing, researching, drafting, and editing copies of enormous importance. My reporting that election cycle began on the campaign trail of the Democratic presidential hopeful Bill Bradley and culminated at the steps of the Supreme Court as George W. Bush was declared President.

Following the events of 9/11, which I covered dutifully and reported extensively about, I was given my first foreign assignment: Afghanistan. I hadn’t been to that part of the world before. But I was well-versed with the region from my studies. Still, I read and read and spoke to foreign correspondents who had previously reported from Afghanistan, Pakistan, the wider Central Asia, and the Middle East. I picked their brains to understand the intricacies of politics in the region. They shared all that they could. I felt well-informed when I boarded my flight to Kabul sometime in late December 2001. Reporting from the trenches during the brutal fighting between NATO troops and the Taliban was a life-changing experience. Having only read about it or seen it on TV until then, I could finally appreciate the heroism of the Western troops from the ground. It was an exhilarating and enriching experience. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t scared at times.

Having proven my credentials as a war reporter, I went from one country to another, flitting across multiple continents for challenging assignments. I reported on the Abu Ghraib prison abuse, I reported from Guantanamo Bay, I was in St. Petersburg when Putin took power in 2012, I was in Tripoli when Gaddafi fell, I was there in Damascus when Assad poisoned his own people, I reported from Gaza in 2014 during Israel’s Operation Protective Edge, I reported on the Flint water crisis (I was also there when Obama took a sip of the contaminated water in Flint, Michigan to reassure residents that the water was safe for drinking), I reported on the hotly-contested 2016 and 2020 Presidential elections, I reported extensively on Covid-19, I covered the war in Ukraine, and the destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline.

My unbiased coverage of such monumental events made me an internationally known journalist. I built such a reputation for fair and incisive reporting that every US President — Republican or Democrat — always took my question whenever I raised my hand at a White House press briefing. My reputation was well-earned. I had put in the hard yards and took pride in reporting fairly and doing my job well.

For every major assignment, I studied and researched extensively. (My years of studies under the tutelage of my educationist parents were a big help.) When I went to cover Gaza in 2014, I had acquainted myself well with the most significant writings and speeches of every Israeli Prime Minister since Ben-Gurion up to Netanyahu. I even studied the early Zionist movements, reading everything Herzl ever wrote. I was well aware of the Protestant Millenarianism movement of the 16th and 17th centuries that advocated for the migration of Jews to the Holy Land as a precursor to the end times. I was nothing if not a thorough researcher for my major journalism assignments.

My first Pulitzer came from my coverage of corruption in the Russian justice system. I was elated. I was finally among the heroes I grew up idolising. I had finally claimed the holy grail of journalism.

But, I reminded myself that the recognition was for the work I had done in the past. I had to keep reporting important stories, keep speaking truth to power.

I went on to work for some of the most prestigious publications in the world. I wrote profiles of many prominent politicians of our time for several leading American magazines, newspapers, and websites. I profiled Angela Merkel, Colin Powell, Bernie Sanders, John McCain, and Donald Rumsfeld, to name just a few. I will always remember the congratulatory message from Hilary Clinton for her profile, which I wrote in Time. It will stay with me forever.

My latest assignment has been covering the ongoing war in Gaza.

Having read major tracts on liberty from the likes of Locke, Hobbes, Paine, Rousseau, and Rawls, having studied the history of the Protestant Millenarianism movement, the history of Zionism, everything that Herzl, Jabotinsky, Ben-Gurion, Meir, Begin, Rabin, Peres, et al. ever wrote or said, having fully equipped myself with the events before and since 1948 in the Holy Land, including several Israeli wars not just on Gaza, but also in the Israeli neighbourhood, and having witnessed the misery inflicted upon Gazans by Israel in the current war that has claimed over 20,000 Palestinian lives and wholesale destruction of civilian infrastructure, including hospitals and schools, I speak truth to power to every pro-Palestinian I interview when I ask them: “Do you condemn Hamas?”

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A father in Gaza