Not the Last Dispatch: Al-Zaidi Story Just Beginning
By RAMZY BAROUD
On December 14, 2008, Iraqi journalist, Muntazer Al-Zaidi threw his shoes at then-US President George W. Bush. On February 20, 2009, Al-Zaidi received a short trial of 90-minutes by the Baghdad Central Criminal Court. On March 12, Al-Zaidi was sentenced to three-years in prison for assaulting a head of state during an official visit. The story seems to near its conclusion with the court’s stern verdict, but in truth, this is where it begins.
Unsurprisingly, it mattered little to the Iraqi court — directed by political checks and balances of a government, whose very existence is an American diktat — the motive behind the journalist’s action, as reflected in his own cry: "This is a farewell kiss from the Iraqi people, you dog! This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq."
Also of little bearing to the court’s decision were the many millions around the world, who regarded Al-Zaidi’s action "heroic" for reasons too obvious to restate.
Most Arab and Muslim media — and other media around the world, save mainstream western media — framed Al-Zaidi’s deed within its proper context, that of a horrific, genocidal war, bloody and humiliating occupation, and the colonial hubris of a superpower that gave itself the right — and "moral" justification — to devastate a sovereign nation for the sake of oil, Israel and the desire for sheer hegemony.
Nonetheless, in most — although, not all — mainstream Western media outlets, Al-Zaidi’s story somehow became the focus of attention for it was, to a certain degree, amusing, and also allowed for the further dissection of Arab culture — throwing shoes, supposedly being the "ultimate" Arab insult. For some, the dramatic act of a journalist’s shoes chucked at a "liberating" president in a farewell visit to a "liberated" country was an indication of Arab ingratitude. Others sought less controversial topics, using the do’s and don’ts in journalism as a unit of analysis, as if shoes thrown at smirking presidents are a recurring topic in the field of journalism.
But aside from both narratives — one that glorifies Al-Zaidi as a hero, and another that creates every possible distraction from the true underpinnings of the man’s action, through offensive commentary, some of which borders on racism — Al-Zaidi is a typical Iraqi, who was merely responding to the subjugation of his own people.
There will be no need for focus groups, workshops, government-financed conferences, and unclassified meets on the history, nature, rise and fall of Arab shoes, for Al-Zaidi’ act cannot possibly be any more straightforward.
Al-Zaidi told the court during the short-lived trial that his act was a spontaneous response to Bush’s praise of the "achievements" made in Iraq after nearly 6 years of US occupation: "While he was talking I was looking at all his achievements in my mind. More than a million killed, the destruction and humiliation of mosques, violations against Iraqi women, attacking Iraqis every day and every hour. A whole people are saddened because of his policy, and he was talking with a smile on his face — and he was joking with the prime minister and saying he was going to have dinner with him after the press conference."
Al-Zaidi was neither a disengaged outsider searching for fame in Iraq’s ruins, nor was he an involved humanitarian seeking to convey the misery of Iraq to a faraway audience. Muntazer Al-Zaidi was the narrator and the story, the journalist and the dispatch, the casualty and the conveyer of victimhood, and in a spontaneous turn of fate, he was the oppressed Iraqi and the fighter against oppression.
But Al-Zaidi was an Iraqi fighter of a different type, the kind that fails to fit the media’s stereotype, that of the sectarian militant, blowing people up, gunning them down, or detonating their homes and houses of worship. This dominant image of the sectarian, factional Iraqi was constructed so well through millions of footage over the years, that one became, even if temporarily, unable to see any other representation of Iraq.
The deliberate foreign meddling of Iraqi affairs and forged depiction of the real reasons behind the country’s violence blinded many to the destructive role of the US war and occupation, and allowed the latter to justify its presence in the country as a requisite for peace and stability.
Al-Zaidi was in no mood to play according to the rules. He is a Shiite Muslim, but an Iraqi first. He sees Iraq as one, undivided country, for one undivided people, seeking national liberation from one, unmistakable enemy: "Believe me, I didn’t see anything around me except Bush. I was blind to anything else. I felt the blood of the innocent people bleeding from beneath his feet and he was smiling in that way. And then he was going to have a dinner, after he destroyed one million martyrs, after he destroyed the country. So I reacted to this feeling by throwing my shoes. I couldn’t stop the reaction inside me. It was spontaneous."
Al-Zaidi narrated the Iraqi story, chapter by chapter, as he himself lived each and every chapter, and now he merely endures another. He was raised in Sadr City, one of Iraq’s poorest suburbs; his family suffered persecution under Iraq’s former regime, and suffered even greater scars under the United States and its own puppet regimes; he was kidnapped by unknown assailants in Baghdad on November 16, 2007 and was beaten unconscious; yet somehow survived and was found blindfolded on some Baghdad neighborhood’s street; he was arrested and his apartment searched in January, 2008, by American soldiers.
Through it all, he continued to tell the story through Iraq’s, Egypt-based, Al-Baghdadia TV. His story was that of widows, orphans, and victims of war. His reports were uncompromisingly human, biased in favor of those without limbs, without homes, and without their families. He made his audience cry with every report, and when it all seemed lost and desperate, he flung his shoes at the man who destroyed his country in a most unexpected dispatch.
Al-Zaidi’s act was most telling, and the Iraqi court’s reaction was most expected. But the fact was that the story was not about a pair of shoes, but a pair of narratives, that of the court and the government it represents — compromising, self-serving, and sectarian — and that of Muntazer Al-Zaidi and the people he represents, occupied and oppressed, true, but daring, and exceptionally proud.
– Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in numerous newspapers and journals worldwide. His latest book is The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People’s Struggle (Pluto Press, London).
0 Comments