One of my favourite films ever made is the 1992 classic Porco Rosso, a Japanese animation directed by Hayao Miyazaki. Set in 1929 Italy, the plot follows the life of a veteran WWI ace pilot, Marco Pagot, who was cursed with a big pig head on a human body. Why and how Pagot becomes this weird pig-creature-thing I won’t say more, but there’s this neat scene at the tail end of the first act.
Marco, meets a friend in the Italian air force, Ferrari, at the cinema. After warning the man-pig that the gestapo has a plot to arrest him, Ferrari adds, “Marco, why don't you come back to the Italian air force? We'll use our influence to work something out for you.”
To which, Porco Rosso responds: “Thanks for the offer, but better a pig than a fascist.”
I can relate.
On Tuesday, 26 August 2025, Tom Barrack, the US special envoy to Syria, lashed out at the Lebanese press during a news conference in Beirut.
“We’re going to have a different set of rules… please be quiet for a moment,” barked Barrack, lord of the manor, from the podium. “The moment this starts becoming chaotic, like animalistic, we’re gone. So, you want to know what’s happening? Act civilised, act kind, act tolerant, because this is the problem with what is happening in the region.”
Humour me, it could be my animalistic brain that needs a beat, a moment’s pause, to fully process those particular words uttered: oh, to be civilised, kind, tolerant.
I have been struggling with versions of this essay for a while now, particularly since during that span of time, Israel has continued to slaughter Palestinian journalists. As I write this, the number of journalists in Gaza killed by Israel since October 2023 is above 240, according to the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate.
More journalists have been killed in Gaza than in both World Wars, the Vietnam War (including the fighting in Cambodia and Laos), the Korean War, the wars in Yugoslavia and the US war in Afghanistan….combined, said an April 2025 report by the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs’ Costs of War project.
Civilised, kind, and tolerant, oh my.
I’ve been a journalist more or less since 2009. After more than 16 years in the sector, I understand there are risks and that it’s largely a thankless job. And even within that given, grim parameters of dangers in the professional, a creepy insidious message lies directed towards Arab journalists (and generally includes Brown and Black journalists), even those privileged few who hold Western passports or work for a ‘mainstream’ Western outlet, myself included.
Starkly, I think that creepy message is: Bad luck, Ali Baba, you’re a ‘legitimate’ target under constant cross-hairs. You should brace yourselves for vaporization at any given time; guilty until proven innocent, and even if there were any mediocre form of justice, it will likely be left to footnotes among glossy human rights reports, published at some later point, gathering dust and entropy.
I’ve seen this scene played out in front of me. Not just in Gaza, but also in Lebanon, Syria, and Sudan, to name a few. And not only within these past two genocidal years, but stretching back throughout the decades of my life, way before having to repeat the talking points, over and over again.
There’s a larger rot at play, and we all know it. As American investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill recently posted on X: “The idea that Western journalists are, by default, unbiased is a sick joke. Many major Western media outlets have served as conveyor belts for Israeli propaganda and the dehumanization of Palestinians.”
Hm… Remember “Je Suis Charlie”? 7 January 2015, two French young men of Algerian descent, declaring themselves members of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, attacked the satirical weekly magazine Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris, killing 12 people, 8 of whom were cartoonists and journalists. Motivations by the killers included anger over inflammatory cartoons mocking the Muslim prophet that had been published by the French magazine.
That event really got the blood and outrage flowing, and out poured masses of people onto the streets of cities throughout the Western world. The fervour was apparently so captivating that more than 50 world leaders felt compelled to rush to Paris and marched on 11 January arm to arm, showing they cared about freedom of speech, expression, press, unity, or whatnot. Behold those faces in the front, clearly the best and most empathic of our kind are they not?
“Akh, how cliché: you killed the victim and attended his funeral,” I chuckle, perhaps exotically, orientally? How strange this life we live presently in which I often find myself forced to debate with members of a certain community who lack the basics of gluteal hygiene over the merits of what is or is not a genocide…oh meine Güte? (Do you see a glimmer of that civilisé and humanité underneath this vulgar, savage subaltern?)
Clearly, the problem isn’t just limited to those pulling the trigger. I can’t help but also notice a lot of these highbrow, modern ‘Western’ journalists, pundits, experts snarl, hoot, yelp, hiss, and some froth rabidly from the mouth, turning pink, red, and all sorts of colours, while justifying killing that journalist.
At best, among this cadre today, there’s silence, as if they were wide-eyed-innocent-doe in front of headlights. There’s maybe a few hopes and prayers that somehow things would figure themselves out without any action actually taken, or their comfort zone being compromised, and at times there’s condemnation and woe directed towards those facing calls for an ‘international independent investigation’.
We can call it hypocrisy, double standards, racism, white supremacy; regardless, none seem tolerant, orderly, kindly or humane to me…but what do I know, cursed as I am with this reptilian Arab mind.
Years upon years, I have been lectured and sold all these ideas of quality and standards, of neutralities and objectivities in the pursuit of truth, and boy oh boy, none do it better than Western outlets; trend-setters, originators, supposed leaders in pushing for positive change and protecting public good.
But there’s something to be said about what happens in reality. The future of journalism of the 21st century is not forged in New York, Dubai, Geneva; it’s being forged by journalists under fire in Gaza, Darfur, Najaf.
Journalists in the West Asian and North African region, among the many others in similar circumstances, operate in often low-resource, challenging conditions, facing massive surprising forces, with less pay, fewer benefits, and even less due respect. Yet, somehow many of them maintain a lot of grace, empathy, kindness, and professionalism, motivated by telling the story and putting people’s woes and concerns first.
They ain’t perfect, but they know very well the values underpinning journalism, how vital it is to portray the truth, especially when it's about life and death, how power operates to shape information, the weight of freedom of expression, and, and, and…
…so, so many others things that I don’t think you, in your zone of comforts, could possibly and intrinsically comprehend, not because of some inferiority or dysfunctionality of ‘culture’, ‘race’, and ‘creed’, but because of the sheer realities of inequalities and darn adaptability and evolution.
There are a few lessons in life that are so basic, even an animal can fathom what’s going on, where this is leading to, and what’s the problem. One learns a lot of things, particularly on the fragility of comfort zones, the contours of humanity, and even the hilarious depth that mundane tasks, like appropriately answering an email, can become as thousands-pounds of bombs are dropped by killer sky-bots not too far from you.
Do I sound dramatic, maybe chaotic? Wallah, better an animal than a génocidaires.
Yazan Al-Saadi is the International Editor for The New Arab. He is an analyst, writer, editor, and researcher with over 10 years of experience in social research alongside communications and reporting. He also recently published his book, Lebanon Is Burning and Other Dispatches (2025), a collection of political comics.
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Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.