25 January 2009

New Site: Virtual Gaza

Here's a new effort aimed at thwarting the (largely unsuccessful) Israeli attempts to prevent news leakage from Gaza. It's a collaboration between the Alliance for Justice in the Middle East at Harvard University and MIT.

Virtual Gaza is an independent, civic media initiative established by a collective of scholars, media activists and Palestinian residents of Gaza in response to the Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip in December 2008-January 2009.

For years, Israel has been gradually tightening its strangehold on the 1.5 million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip, sealing its borders and cutting off adequate food, fuel, and medical supplies, bringing the economy and infrastructure to the point of collapse.

Israel has also sought to control how Gaza's story is told to the outside - from its sophisticated 'public relations' campaigns to blocking the entry of foreign journalists.


The site will be using Google Earth and other tech tools to help bring Gazan reality to the virtual world.

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