'Sometimes it feels criminal to be a Palestinian in Czech Republic'

Yara Abu Aataya, a Prague-based content designer, is renowned in her field for her achievements as a versatile content creator and glass designer.

But, today, she is not celebrated but censored in Czech media, her interviews deleted from news pages, omitted from television broadcasts and journalists who have engaged with her have lost their jobs.

All because she has condemned the Israeli aggression in Gaza in her public media appearances.

“Sometimes I feel like my Palestinian identity makes me a criminal in the eyes of many in Czech Republic. I never thought that someone would get sacked from their job just because an interview,” the artist born in Gaza told Anadolu. “There is an anti-Palestinian agenda in the Czech press and it is not even subtle.”

Local news website, Novinky.cz, published an interview with Abu Aataya on 10 December. But, within two hours of its online publication, the piece, titled “Czech-Palestinian artist Yara Abu Aataya: People selectively choose who to give compassion” was abruptly retracted.

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The outlet went a step further, sacking the story’s reporter, Magdalena Matouskova, over its pro-Palestinian message.

“They told me that the interview was pro-Palestinian and that they didn’t want me to write for them anymore. They explained that the text did not coincide with the uniformity of the news,” Matouskova revealed in an interview with Czech media outlet, Voxpot.

Palestine censored

The grounds for Matouskova’s dismissal were confirmed later in a statement by the news editor:

“The article should not have been published at all. It was an unprofessional job on the part of the editors, who did not respond to the obvious nonsense that the interviewee claimed, and also on the part of the editor, who corrected it with explanatory notes, which I do not consider sufficient.”

Far from an isolated incident, this episode is part of what appears to be a vigorous pro-Israel editorial policy in Czech public and private media that has barred Palestinian voices, according to Yasar Abu Ghosh, a Prague-based academic.

“There is an explicit policy that discourages taking into account perspectives from Gaza authorities,” Abu Ghosh, a faculty member of Department of Anthropology at the Charles University, told Anadolu.

Meanwhile, official information and claims from the Israeli side enjoys the trust as coming from an “institution of a democratic state”, he added.

Abu Aataya, the content designer, did not only face censorship on private news media but  also on public broadcaster, CT24.

An interview she gave, which even included a phone call with her relative in Gaza in the midst of the war, did not air and she was completely cut off with no prior notice.

“I was asked at the beginning of the interview if I could call someone from Gaza, I told them they did not have electricity and that their batteries were low, but I would try. That it was 50/50 if they would pick up.”

“My aunt picked up and told me for about five minutes what was going on in Gaza. It was all on speakerphone. I thought it would be good. Maybe this way, the Czech audience will sympathise with us. At the time of broadcast of the show, my whole Prague family watched it tensely only to find out my aunt and I were cut out. Completely.”

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When Abu Aataya asked why, CT24 responded after 49 days.

“The situation in the Middle East is very turbulent, and for this reason, the concept of the report was changed throughout the week,” it said, adding that the editors of the program, called “168 Hours”, “finalised the report very close to the time of broadcast.”

The Palestine-born artist considered this an extension of the “one-sided reporting of the conflicts in Middle East.”

‘Pro-Israeli boomers’ dominating Czech media

Ghosh expressed his surprise that the mainstream Czech media chose its political stance to be in tune with the official Israeli perspective, and not to see the ongoing institutionalised censorship against Palestinian voices as “not a critical situation at all”.

“The mainstream Czech media calls Palestinian casualties ‘deaths’, while Israelis are declared ‘killed’. This pretty much illuminates the asymmetry. But, this is not even an issue in the discourse. There are indeed journalists that are critical of silencing Palestinian voices but they are associated with niche media outlets with limited outreach,” he elaborated.

Farid Sabri, a senior journalist based in Denmark with expertise in the European media’s coverage on South Asia and the Middle East, said that as Czech outlets tend to follow the official pro-Israel position, they have silenced not only Palestinian but also independent voices critical of Israel.

Recently, the Czech Republic’s Prime Minister, Petr Fiala, declared his country to be “the voice of Israel in Europe”. Fiala even advocated for relocating the Czech Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Prague was one of 14 countries that voted against a UN General Assembly resolution calling for a ceasefire after Israel’s onslaught on the Gaza Strip began, claiming the lives of at least 24,448 Palestinians — mostly women and children — while 85 per cent of the population of Gaza is already internally displaced amid acute shortages of food, clean water and medicine.

It came after a cross-border attack by Palestinian Resistance group, Hamas, on 7 October, which Tel Aviv says killed around 1,200 people.

However, since then, it has been revealed by Haaretz that helicopters and tanks of the Israeli army had, in fact, killed many of the 1,139 soldiers and civilians claimed by Israel to have been killed by the Palestinian Resistance.

Ghosh said a group of senior pro-Israel journalists have monopolised Palestine coverage in Czech media, calling them the “Boomer clan.”

“This clan of senior journalists oscillates from one outlet to another. They only exchange seats; there is no influx of new blood in the decision-making rooms,” he maintained.

For Abu Aataya, the past few months have been mentally taxing. The media has silenced her, colleagues have left her workplace in order to avoid being professionally associated with her and peers have seen fit to keep their support for her “silent”.

She said the only word to describe what she is feeling is “qahar,” an Arabic word that is an amalgamation of anger, wrath, disappointment and frustration.

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The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.