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Out of Control: Palestinian News Satire and Government Power in the Age of Social Media

Matt Sienkiewicz

Gettysburg College

This article analyzes the Palestinian sketch comedy show Watan Ala Watar, placing the groundbreaking program in the context of theories of satire, government control, and popular resis- tance. Detailing the show’s tumultuous relationship with the Palestinian Authority, the article argues that despite publicly supporting Watan Ala Watar so as to create the impression of a liberal media regime, the government ultimately could not accept the existence of uncensored political comedy. However, the article shows that through the use of new media, the program has continued to have an impact despite the government’s refusal to put it on air.

SATIRE TV: LIBERATOR OR PROTECTOR OF THE STATUS QUO?

Describing the potential for comedy in places of conflict, scholar Majken Jul Sorenson (2008) observes that “political humor needs some incongruity and absurdity in order to thrive—if things are as the politicians say they are, then there is almost nothing on which to build satire, parody, and irony” (p. 174). In the Palestinian territories, incongruity and absurdity are in abundance. Few politicians, Arab or Israeli, are thought capable of even knowing how things really are, let alone communicating such complexities. Every city has two names (one Hebrew, one Arabic) and a contested history. Roads are opened and closed at the discretion of an Israeli occupation that needs not explain its actions. Perhaps most incongruous of all, the collective hopes of the Palestinian people are bound up in a “peace process” that, for the past few decades, has pro- duced neither peace nor shown signs of actually being in process. It is for these reasons that the Palestinian political satire program Watan Ala Watar, first produced for 2009’s Ramadan season, has never lacked for content. There have always been ample targets for such a show, but only recently have political and industrial circumstances opened the Palestinian territories to such satire. In this article, I outline the historical changes that have made Watan Ala Watar possible and consider the meaning of both the show’s immediate success and its ultimate demise.

Over the past decade, both scholars and pundits have engaged in a discourse regarding the liberating powers of televised political satire (Baym, 2010; Day, 2011; Jones, 2010). A common trend, particularly within American debates on the topic, has been the positioning of television news satires such as The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report as antidotes to

Correspondence should be addressed to Matt Sienkiewicz, Film Studies/Interdisciplinary Studies, Gettysburg College, 300 N. Washington Street, Gettysburg, PA 17325, USA. E-mail: [email protected]

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increasingly superficial and undemocratic movements in both governments and the media. Able to take aim simultaneously at politicians and the people who report on them, such programs hold a unique vantage point from which to expose the extent to which citizens are removed from the powerful institutions that shape their daily lives.

Writing for the New York Times online, Amber Day (2010) summarizes this perspective by noting that Stewart and Colbert “tap into a very real desire among the public to see a different kind of political discussion taking place: one not scripted and stage-managed by spin-doctors.” By making fun of both the form and content of the news, satirical programs are thought to create a space in which hegemonic powers can be questioned and modes of apparent common sense can be challenged. In the introduction to their volume Satire TV , Gray, Jones, and Thompson (2009) take this notion further, claiming that satiric, current events-oriented comedy is essentially con- nected to the desire for political freedom. Citing the genre’s appeal across cultures and time, they argue that political satire remains “historically persistent” as a result of “societal and individual needs for such forms of expression” (p. 15).

However, a specter haunts this celebration. Mainstream media, no matter how biting its politi- cal satire, is always produced under the auspices of institutions engrained in the power structures being critiqued. Viacom, a media giant that spent $560,000 lobbying the government in 1998, produces both The Daily Show and Colbert Report (Murphy, 2008, p. 2). That Was The Week That Was may have skewered British politicians, but it did so on behalf of the government that made its existence possible. Scholar, author, and public intellectual Umberto Eco (1984) put forth a powerful articulation of this concern in his critique of the supposedly freeing nature of the carnival. Whereas theorists such as Bakhtin (1984) celebrate the ways that carnival skits and play acting cause “the hierarchy of the cosmos [to be] reversed” (p. 364), Eco sees a conservative superstructure at work. He argues that “carnival can only exist as an authorized transgression,” restricted in time and scope. He directly indicts contemporary television satire by adding that “if the ancient, religious carnival was limited in time, the modern mass-carnival is limited in space: it is reserved for certain places, certain streets, or framed by the television screen” (1984, p. 6). He notes that “comedy and carnival are not instances of real transgressions: on the contrary, they represent paramount examples of law reinforcement. They remind us of the existence of the rule” (p. 6). To paraphrase Emma Goldman’s cynicism about voting, the follower of Eco might argue that if satire changed anything, they’d make it illegal.1

By analyzing the Palestinian program Watan Ala Watar in this article, I consider a situation in which a government has struggled conspicuously to keep control over political comedy, ulti- mately learning that in the world of contemporary media and social networking, news satire is not nearly as “contained” as Eco once presumed it to be. The Palestinian territories are perhaps the single place on Earth in which notions of control, freedom, civility, and sovereignty are most contested. Subject to both an unrelenting Israeli military occupation and the often repressive proto-national Palestinian Authority (PA), Palestinians, perhaps more than anyone, are in need of the liberating powers of satire. In 2009, they received such an opportunity with the premier of Watan Ala Watar (“Country Hanging by a Thread”)2, a political and news satire program that

1Goldman’s original statement, “If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal,” is undocumented and attributed to others as well.

2English translations of the show’s title vary heavily, with Country on a String being the most prevalent. However, I believe “hanging by a thread” better conveys the original meaning.

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marked a new direction for the PA-controlled broadcasting outlet Palestine TV. Viewers previ- ously accustomed to long-winded speeches by government ministers and news reports in which the leading political party, Fatah, always came out ahead, suddenly saw actors mocking long- exalted institutions and individuals. For example, shortly after Palestine TV covered the sixth Fatah party convention, which took 20 years after the fifth, Watan Ala Watar broadcasted the “seventh convention, live” from the year 2059 (Ezzedine, 2009). In a place in which every day of political stagnancy is associated with lost opportunities for national sovereignty, it is noteworthy that such an attack was disseminated with a government logo embedded on the screen.

This article chronicles the circumstances by which Watan Ala Watar arose, recounts the local and national reactions to the show, and considers the government’s complex relationship with the program and its producers. What began as a loving embrace between government and critic ulti- mately became a battle over control. In writing this history, I argue that the Palestinian Authority originally embraced Watan Ala Watar in order to advance its reputation as a liberal democracy via association with the wider celebrations of political satire. Additionally, I show that when the government attempted to censor the show, fearful of the political impact it might have in the midst of the 2011 “Arab Spring” revolutions, it found that globalization and social media had elevated the program to a place beyond its control.

PALESTINIAN SATIRE, GOVERNMENT CONTROL, AND THE BIRTH OF WATAN ALA WATAR

To discuss the liberating nature of satire in the Palestinian Territories,3 it is necessary to clarify the complex and evolving targets towards which such biting humor is aimed. It may be surprising that while Watan Ala Watar occasionally takes aim at the Israeli occupation, the majority of its episodes are geared towards internal Palestinian critique. Head writer and star Imad Farajin describes this as a sign of progress and evidence of free speech in an age during which Israel plays no direct role in media originating in areas under PA control (Rafiq, 2010). However, as one might expect, Palestinian satire has a long and vibrant tradition, the majority of which takes aim at the occupying forces that have controlled Palestinian life for centuries.

Perhaps the earliest systematic description of Palestinian satire comes from a 1968 report by the Iraqi Ministry of Culture entitled “Poetry of Resistance in Occupied Palestine” (Hijjawi, 2009). The report, completed just a year after the West Bank and Gaza Strip were united under Israeli military occupation, describes a fundamental break in Palestinian poetry away from “the traditional poetic forms” and toward “modern techniques” more appropriate for expressing the needs of resistance (p. 7). Cited among these is satire. The report describes this new aspect of Palestinian art as a tool by which to regain control. Through poetic satire:

The enemy and the henchmen are ridiculed and the acts of suppression are expressed with bitter irony. This trend expresses a lively and an unconquerable spirit which considers all happenings as an

3I use this term to describe the West Bank and Gaza Strip, both under Israeli military control but having been given over to limited Palestinian Authority after the Oslo Accords of 1993. Watan Ala Watar has been produced exclusively in the West Bank, as Gaza has been under the political control of the opposition Hamas party since 2007 and therefore cut off from the West Bank in most ways.

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ephemeral and transitional condition which sooner or later must and will be changed and put back to normality.

Palestinians of course had need for comedic satire prior to the era of occupation. Slyomovics (1991, p. 22) argues that “to praise or vilify a ruler has traditionally been the role of the Arab sto- ryteller,” suggesting that satire’s entry into Palestinian arts draws on ancient roots. Nonetheless, the Iraqi report powerfully establishes the tradition of using satire as an element of resistance that stretches back at least to the onset of Israeli occupation and continues to this day through Watan Ala Watar.

Palestinian scholar Sharif Kanaana (1990) has provided the most sustained analysis of Palestinian political humor. His work focuses primarily on the period surrounding the first intifada (uprising against Israeli occupation) and thus describes the time period before Palestinians were allowed any form of electronic broadcasting. Kanaana argues that during this time, a distinct category of “intifada humor” coalesced in the form of jokes that would circulate throughout the Palestinian territories (p. 231). During this crucial moment, Kanaana suggests, joke-making shifted away from self-deprecating humor and towards an empowering comedy based on mocking occupiers and asserting Palestinian agency. This brand of humor served the traditional role of the Carnivalesque, inverting power structures and asserting that “there is a deeper reality behind the surface” that undermines notions of Israeli superiority (p. 234). Watan Ala Watar aims to create a similar funhouse mirror effect. But, provocatively, it does so by invert- ing the gaze of its humor, aiming it largely at internal Palestinian concerns. Show producer Sami al-Jabber, in an article in the Christian Science Monitor, argues that this shift results from a reduc- tion of political tensions in the West Bank since the end of the second intifada in 2001. “[The] withdrawal of Israeli forces from West Bank,” he notes, led to a “kind of a normal situation. This gives us a chance to say things” about internal problems (Mitnick, 2009).

However, well before the situation Jabber describes, Palestinians first needed to gain the right to produce any media whatsoever. In 1993, the signing of the Oslo Accords gave the newly formed Palestinian Authority control, for the first time, over part of the broadcast spectrum. In 1995 the PA signed into law the Palestinian Press Law, a document liberal in letter but more complex in practice. As Jamal (2000) argues, a combination of vague language and political intimidation encouraged most media outlets to engage in self-censorship (p. 500). According to local broadcasters, as recently as 2005 the PA was forcibly censoring television output, occa- sionally calling small local stations and demanding they immediately stop what they were airing (Ghaneim, personal communication, April 6, 2010). This, combined with the government’s total control of the only national broadcasting outline, Palestine TV, made a program such as Watan Ala Watar unthinkable until recently.

This is not to say, however, that Palestinian satire was absent in the early years of the Palestinian Authority. Operating outside of the Palestinian territories, Elia Sulieman, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, cultivated a unique brand of political comedy that perhaps helped pave the way for Watan Ala Watar’s style. Sulieman developed a subtle, artistic style of political comedy based on disjointed sketches that mirror what Slyomovics (1991) describes as Palestinian art’s tendency to mirror the “fragmented, open-ended” Palestinian topography that results from the presence of Israeli occupation (p. 20).

In a famous scene from the film Divine Intervention, Sulieman destroys an Israeli tank with the flick of a peach pit. Praising this brief mini-narrative, Dabashi (2006) argues that “rarely in

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the history of cinema has a cinematic will to resist and subvert power so joyously dismantled the entire machinery of a state apparatus” (p. 135). Although Watan Ala Watar does not have the same artistic ambitions as the Cannes Jury Prize-winning Sulieman, the show does occasionally invoke a similar brand of stark, simple comic imagery. For example, one episode features a report on a travel agency that gives “tours” of Jerusalem that merely include the opportunity for West Bank residents to look through a telescope slid through a hole in the “separation barrier” dividing cities such as Ramallah and Bethlehem from Arab East Jerusalem. Unable to cross the military checkpoint that divides the land, this is the best the agency can offer. Though perhaps less technically impressive or viscerally cathartic than Sulieman’s exploding tank, the absurd image of Watan’s telescope affixed to the imposing, impersonal gray barrier is similar in spirit.

Though working within this comedic tradition, Watan Ala Watar would never have existed without major recent changes in the politics and media system of the Palestinian territories. For one, the rapid adoption of satellite television throughout the Middle East has fundamentally changed viewer expectations for television content, creating a demand for new kinds of program- ming. A technology reserved for the rich throughout most of the 1990s, by the mid-2000s many Arab countries featured over 90% satellite ownership, with even straggler nations such as Egypt and Morocco approaching 50% (Sakr, 2007, p. 1). This invasion of foreign, Arabic language programming had a profound effect on governments that previously held a tight grip on the air- waves. Early (2002, p. 330) argues that the satellite revolution forced the Syrian government to significantly loosen its restrictions on television content. This included an embrace of polit- ical satire that sparked important public discussions about government and history. According to Early, satellite television and the internet “knelled the death toll of censorship” in the Middle East, as producers were able to circumvent government control by approaching alternative outlets (p. 332).

However, in the Palestinian territories, things were never so simple. Television producers need not only an outlet for broadcast but also the resources to create consistent, high quality content. As Gertz and Khleifi (2008) note, the Palestinian film industry “does not exist in any organized, consistent sense,” an observation that pertains to television as well (p. 33). Through the mid- 2000s, the only reliable producers of Palestinian television were the PA’s Palestine TV and the opposition Hamas party’s Al-Aqsa TV. Neither of these was interested in underwriting a program anywhere near as controversial as Watan Ala Watar. However, throughout the 2000s, two major changes took place alongside the growth of satellite TV and the internet. First, a small but not insignificant alternative broadcaster emerged in 2003 in the form of the Ma’an Network, an insti- tution funded by Western sources, including the US State Department, that brought together local commercial stations with the aim of providing an alternative to government television (Sienkiewicz, 2010, pp. 3–14). Though Ma’an’s presence remained relatively small, the exis- tence of a local producer making Palestinian comedies and dramas certainly provided Palestine TV with motivation to expand its programming repertoire. Ultimately, however, it took a major political event to finally make Watan Ala Watar possible.

Starting with its creation in 1995, Palestine TV had been based in Gaza City. In the aftermath of the brutal 2007 Palestinian Civil War through which Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip, the PA moved its broadcasting headquarters to Ramallah and, in doing, made major personnel shifts at the top of the organization. A policy liberalization followed, with new station head Yasser Abed Rabbo encouraging a changed brand of programming that, for the first time, allowed independent Palestinian producers to create series for Palestine TV. Rabbo consciously wished to

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improve Palestine TV’s international and local image, perhaps with a secondary goal of removing the American ban on funding the station that was instituted in 1998 due to accusations that it “engaged in a campaign to restrict free press and promote violent propaganda [ . . . ] and undermine all the United States seeks to achieve in the Middle East” (Congressional Record, 1998, p. 19323). Watan Ala Watar has become a key part in this campaign, as evidenced by Rabbo’s appearances in international news stories about the show, where he cites it as evidence of Palestine TV’s new strategy of “adding not only more comedy but also more serious open political programs” (Odeh, 2009).

Watan Ala Watar

In a blog post from September 2009, the satellite network Current TV’s website linked to a Time Magazine report on Watan Ala Watar, framing the video with the question “Is this the Palestinian Daily Show?” (Current TV, 2009). American journalists particularly have been fond of the anal- ogy and its insinuation of far-reaching, politically liberal satire. Public Radio International’s Matthew Bell invoked the comparison in both positive and negative senses, noting that the program’s taboo-breaking content parallels American comedy expectations while, “in terms of production value,” the show is “a far cry from Saturday Night Live or The Daily Show” (The World, 2010). This latter point is certainly the case. Adapted originally from a stage production entitled Gaza . . . Ramallah, which satirically took on the notion of tatbiyeh (Palestinian normal- ization with Israel) (Hass, 2008), Watan Ala Watar is a bare bones program that often employs a single camera, long-take aesthetic more reminiscent of 1950s’ American comedy shows than the graphic-heavy fare of The Daily Show or Colbert.

Watan Ala Watar premiered in 2009 during the Ramadan season, a time when Muslim families often sit down to watch television during or after the traditional iftar meal that breaks each day’s fast. As Kraidy and Khalil (2009, p. 100) note, during Ramadan, Arab broadcasters put forth their “very best” programs and expend the “lion’s share of their yearly budget.” Even still, Watan Ala Watar was produced on a shoestring budget cobbled together from government money and a small sponsorship from the local cellular company Jawwal (Massou, personal communication, November 8, 2010). Nonetheless, Watan Ala Watar delivered to Palestine TV what might have been its first ratings triumph. By the show’s second season in 2010, Palestine TV came in sec- ond among the local audience, losing only to regional powerhouse MBC and beating out major international outlets including Al Jazeera. Watan Ala Watar led the way for this unprecedented success, pulling in an estimated 41% of the Palestinian audience (Ma’an News Agency, 2010).

With regards to content, the comparisons to The Daily Show are not unfounded. On occa- sion, the program directly presents itself as news. In one such sketch, the satire simultaneously takes on the foibles of both Palestine TV’s news department and the politicians it reports on. In the episode, star and head writer Imad Farajin plays the host of Palestine TV news. He fails to properly identify himself, instead telling the audience they are watching Al Aqsa TV, the sta- tion of Hamas and an utter anathema to Palestine TV’s management. The news producer acts unprofessionally as well, yelling off screen and arguing with the host. Equipment breaks and the host stumbles through his lines. Whereas programs such as The Colbert Report take aim at contemporary media by lampooning its use of technology or graphics as a substitute for real information, Watan Ala Watar here takes an opposite tact, exaggerating Palestine TV’s lack of

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resources in order to put into doubt the quality of its news output. At this point the sketch turns to the content of Palestinian politics, as the host sarcastically notes that a major political figure whose career might be put in jeopardy if a new vote were to occur is “in no hurry” to orga- nize the next election. When things get particularly bad, the scene cuts, apropos of nothing, to a nationalistic music video often used as filler for Palestine TV throughout the day. The moment simultaneously mocks Palestine TV’s conventions and the means by which the outlet, controlled by the Palestinian Authority, might be prone to glossing over or avoiding difficult questions.

In another episode produced in the mode of “fake news,” US President Barack Obama, played by Khaled Massou, enters Ramallah. In the sketch, Obama shakes hands with Palestine TV chief and PA minister Yasser Abed Rabbo and remarks, rather hilariously, that he was late because he was unaware there would be Israeli checkpoints to go through. The sketch thus poignantly mocks America’s ignorance of life in the Palestinian territories. A similar production approach is employed in the scene described above, in which Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas holds the seventh Fatah conference 500 years too late. Though produced with an austere bud- get, the episode nonetheless attempts to mimic Palestine TV’s coverage of political conferences, engaging a dual level of humor that attacks both politicians and media institutions at once.

The majority of Watan Ala Watar’s sketches, however, involve the lampooning of Palestinian figures or culture at large. They employ a wide range of visual strategies, from the news parodies described above to scenes staged in a simple, theatrical fashion. Topics such as religion and sexuality, generally treated in only the most serious of manners, are unprecedentedly played with and mocked. The show also crosses a cultural redline in directly attacking individuals, the source of much censorship in the earlier stages of Palestinian television. Local broadcasters report that in the early 2000s they could criticize institutions with relative impunity but were often shut down as soon as they mentioned names (Ghaneim, personal communication, April 6, 2010). Watan Ala Watar goes much further, including a famous episode in which Hamas leader Ishmael Haniyeh flirts with a Lebanese pop singer, making lewd sexual remarks that directly attack his pious image. On the other side of the political aisle, the show also mocked former Fatah intelligence chief Tawfiq Tirawi, who, in response, defended the show’s right to exist but took great exception to “criticizing people by name” (Rafiq, 2010).

APPLAUSE AND COMPLAINTS

Internationally, the original response to Watan Ala Watar was surprised admiration. Outlets rang- ing from America’s National Public Radio to Time Magazine to The Guardian and Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported on the program in glowing terms. A common theme in this Western discourse was the notion that the show provided unique opportunities for Palestinians, both in terms of freedom of speech and the chance to laugh despite presumably unhappy conditions. A Time.com video report declared that Watan Ala Watar showed that political satire had the abil- ity to make people laugh “even in Palestine” (Time.com, 2010, emphasis in original). The report goes on to note that Palestine is “a place where there is usually little room to criticize.” AFP took this notion a step further, ending its report with a quote from Yasser Abed Rabbo boldly claiming that after years of censorship, Watan Ala Watar provided evidence of a “high level of media freedom” that modeled the Palestinian desire for political freedom (Ezzedine, 2009). This quote would ultimately come to represent a moment of extreme government hypocrisy when the

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show was shut down. A final trend found throughout Western reviews of the program was the level of government approval the show enjoyed. Major PA figures made themselves available for comment on the program, almost invariably displaying a good-natured appreciation for the show even when it satirized their own party. Rabbo appeared in many of the reports and often spoke on behalf of president Mahmoud Abbas to AFP in praise of the program. This lead YNet, a major Israeli news website, to reprint the AFP story with a photo of Abbas captioned simply with “Abbas. Glowing Review” (YNet, 2009). This discourse echoes in pan-Arabic reporting on the show as well, a point particularly emphasized in an Al Jazeera (Arabic) report in which longtime PA minister Saeb Erekat praises the program’s ability to hold people like himself accountable (aljazeerachannel, 2009). As will be shown further in the discussion of the government’s domes- tic response to the program, it is quite clear that the Palestinian Authority aimed to enhance its reputation through embrace of the program.

Within the Palestinian media, response to the program was decidedly more mixed. The show’s popularity was universally acknowledged, as was its unique place in the history of Palestinian media. The Palestine News Network issued a report after the first airing of the program declaring that Watan Ala Watar had sparked unprecedented debate by crossing “red-lines” and remarked that the producers were “flooded with calls” from people wanting to make suggestions and talk more about the program (Shayeb, 2009). However, the show also raised a variety of com- mentators’ ire. In particular, members of the Hamas movement were adamantly opposed to the program, with the party’s media ministry declaring the show “Israeli propaganda” due to its crit- icism of Palestinian culture (Rafiq, 2010). They were not alone in demanding its cancellation. The Al Watan Voice newspaper attacked the program, saying that by its second season in 2010, it had become illogical, inartistic, and had resorted to “abusing Palestinian society” (Abu Allan, 2010). Even some members of Fatah, the political party responsible for the show’s broadcast on Palestine TV, voiced displeasure, as former minister of parliament Adli Sadeq (2009) wrote an editorial decrying the program’s crass nature and describing its content as “ridiculously idiotic.”

Palestinian governmental sources, however, went to considerable lengths to associate with the show despite its harsh criticism of Fatah leaders. In an interview with the Ma’an News Agency, Yasser Abed Rabbo claimed that President Mahmoud Abbas had postponed a meeting in Jordan in order to catch the episode about the extremely delayed seventh Fatah conference (Ma’an News Agency, 2009, June 9). Prime Minister Salaam Fayyad held a special reception for the show’s cast, praising the program’s efforts to involve more people in political debate (Ma’an News Agency, 2009, September 15). Perhaps most strikingly, the PA’s minister of Women’s Affairs provided Watan Ala Watar with an official government commendation, leading to a widely dis- seminated photo in which the cast stands, smiling, next to President Mahmoud Abbas (Ma’an News Agency, 2010, October 4). This image, along with the awards, commendations, and exag- gerated praise, marked a concerted effort by the government to claim the program as its own, thus giving the impression that elites not only were in on the joke but also were giving the people a great gift by supporting Watan Ala Watar.

GOVERNMENTAL CONTROL AND ONLINE CHAOS

The love affair ended rather abruptly, however. On February 27, 2011, in the midst of the many revolutions that constituted the “Arab Spring,” Imad Farajin posted a new picture to Watan Ala

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Watar’s Facebook account, bringing it to the attention of the more than 30,000 users who “like” the show’s page. The photo featured Farajin and co-star Manal Awwad, the former dressed as a cartoonish version of Libyan dictator Muhammar Gaddafi, complete with Kit-Kat wrappers and crushed Coca-Cola cans standing in for the self-awarded medals that decorate the Colonel’s real-life uniform. Over the course of the next week he added more photos, building anticipation for the show. On March 2, he changed the “status” on his personal page to “Gaddafi episode, this Thursday, 8 pm, Palestine TV.” The show, however, did not air. The next day, Farajin apolo- gized to his fans, posting this note: “Sorry, Palestine TV prevented the broadcast of the Gaddafi episode, Imad Farajin.” The Watan Ala Watar page filled with comments, including accusations of political repression, demands that Farajin find a new station to broadcast the show, and a sense of anger typified by one user’s charge that “the people demand the end of Palestine TV’s (cur- rent) management” (Zidane, 2011). Farajin then disappeared from Facebook for a few days, an unusual period of online silence that prompted speculation among his fans, including one who made a post questioning whether he may have been imprisoned for defying government orders.

Farajin was not under arrest, but he was in the midst of a contentious public relations battle with his government and broadcasting partner. On March 5, Dar Al Hayat, a major pan-Arabic newspaper, printed a story on the situation in which Farajin revealed that Palestine TV had refused to air the sketch and previously had rejected a script involving a satiric representation of deposed Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak. Farajin accused Palestine TV of putting politics before the interests of its people and rejected the official explanation that the sketch had been banned due to concerns over the treatment of Palestinians living in Libya. He announced the end of the show, saying that he, Khaled Massou, and Manal Awad would go on a live comedy tour until he could find an alternative broadcasting outlet that would ensure he would never face similar censorship (Zidane, 2011).

Having, he thought, officially broken away from Palestine TV, Farajin posted the controversial episode on YouTube, making it available across the globe. It is a strange sketch, featuring a “Palestinian Gaddafi” who gives a Gaddafi-style speech altered primarily by replacing Libyan references with Palestinian ones. Gaddafi is presented as insane, a notion common to satire across the world at the time, particularly on The Daily Show (McGlynn, 2011). Although the perpetually vulnerable position of the Palestinian people and government must be taken into account, it is unclear how the sketch might be dangerous, except insofar as it pushed the line up to which Palestine TV was sanctioning the mockery of leaders. In any case, the episode, like all of Watan Ala Watar’s efforts, was immediately popular among the Palestinian population. Within weeks, various repostings of the episode accrued more than 100,000 views. The story then began to grow and reproduce itself, as internet traffic motivated outlets such as MBC, Al Jazeera, The Wall Street Journal, and Agence Presse-France to write about the censorship. Social and mainstream media coalesced, driving ever increasing attention to the story and, presumably, destroying much of the good will the Palestinian Authority had originally accrued by supporting Watan Ala Watar. Palestine TV changed its position. It agreed to air the episode and Farajin returned to the show, having gained a considerable amount of positive exposure from the controversy. Palestine TV agreed never to censor another episode.

This promise, however, lasted only a scant few weeks. Sixteen days into the 2011 Ramadan season, Palestinian Authority Attorney General Ahmad Mughani demanded that Palestine TV cease airing the program for good. The ruling was based on a little-used piece of Jordanian leg- islation dating back to before Israel’s occupation of the West Bank that provides the government

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“the right to take proper legal action under the article that talks about slander against the author- ity” (Abukhatar, 2011). According to Farajin (personal communication, December 6, 2010), there was never any specific accusation levied at Watan Ala Watar; the program was simply pulled from the schedule without so much as a phone call to the creators.

Importantly, the 2011 season of the show was not different in any significant fashion from its previous iterations. According to Farajin, it was not his show but Arab politics that had funda- mentally shifted. He attests that Watan Ala Watar was an unintended victim of the success of the Arab Spring revolts of 2011. Speaking to the Abu Dhabi based The National, Farajin argued that the popular uprisings in Syria and Egypt had turned the government fearful, making previ- ously acceptable jokes off limits (Naylor, 2011). Once more, Farajin took to the web, rousing widespread support for his cause and garnering the attention of a variety of major international news outlets. This time, however, Watan Ala Watar’s enemies also took to the virtual battlefield, hacking into the show’s Facebook page and deleting 40,000 followers (Warner, 2011).

And yet, despite these efforts, the program still circulates widely on YouTube and other video- sharing sites, a constant reminder of the ways in which the Palestinian Authority believes it must restrict freedom in order to remain in power. It is unclear if Farajin will be able to resurrect the show in any form that would allow for new episodes. However, having made a name for himself both online and off, his satiric approach to the Palestinian condition has been firmly entrenched into the cultural lives of thousands of Palestinians.

UNBOUNDED SATIRE IN THE DIGITAL AGE

At first blush, the unfortunate demise of Watan Ala Watar may seem to reinforce the skeptical position regarding satire as an agent of social upheaval taken by Umberto Eco, Herbert Marcuse (1972), and others. In discussing the political efficacy of comedy, Eco (1984) uses ironic scare quotes when writing the phrase “comic ‘freedom’” (p. 1). In doing so, he implies that even the most apparently subversive comedy takes place within the prevalent hegemonic order. Thus, he contends that such moments of satire are allowed only insofar as they maintain the preexisting order by releasing public tension and desire for change. These moments of comic inversion, during which elites are made to be fools and the common man gets to laugh at his social superior, are always clearly demarcated, so as to reinforce the notion that, when it ends, things must return to normal. When the carnival is over, the fact that the peasants had comically switched roles with the royalty has served only to entrench the roles to which everyone will be returning.

In the case of Watan Ala Watar, the Palestinian Authority did everything in its power not only to encourage a limited space in which long-established standards of media decorum could be bro- ken but also to make sure that the world knew it was doing so. Associating itself with the rapidly growing trend of international news satire, the PA worked to benefit from the people’s need to see the absurd world in which they live poked and prodded in the public sphere. It attempted to frame the series in a variety of ways, handing out awards and praise at every turn. By hav- ing the writers of a program famous for inverting the system pose at the end of each season for gleeful photos with the men who control this system, the PA stated boldly that such inversions were temporary and all in good fun. In many ways, the PA’s strategy here mirrored the system of “managed critique” that Goldman (1982) identifies in American commercial television. In the case of programs that present outside viewpoints on reality, such as Mork and Mindy, Goldman

116 SIENKIEWICZ

contends that, through careful narrative crafting, “the momentary introduction of doubt concern- ing the status quo” is used to reaffirm “established forms of conventional morality tempered by the reformist wisdom of an idealist ideology of liberal humanism” (p. 368). With its ceremonies and press statements, the PA attempted to bind Watan Ala Watar in a meta-narrative in which the show’s specific critiques were secondary to the fact that the program was allowed to critique at all.

And yet, during the heart of the Arab Spring, when attention was more focused than ever on the freedoms that Arab governments do and do not allow their citizens, the PA decided that even this was too much. First, they balked at the show making fun of Muhammar Gaddafi, perhaps in fear of losing Arab support at a time when the outcome of the Libyan revolution remained much in doubt. Then, after Gaddafi and other Arab elites had fallen, the PA decided they could not be in the business of endorsing the breakdown of established political order, even when the transgression occurred in the realm of comedy. As Woods (2000) argues, the collapse of one taboo has a tendency to produce a slippery slope in which other similar taboos are soon broken. No longer confident in their ability to bind Watan Ala Watar in the manner Eco describes, the PA chose to cut it off completely for fear of setting off a chain reaction that could lead to upheaval.

The PA has found, however, that the contemporary mediasphere works very much against the boundedness that Eco sees as necessary for comedy to maintain its essentially conservative nature. Watan Ala Watar would not stay neatly framed by the screen when it did air and, more importantly, it could not be controlled even when it did not. Social networking, combined with the growing tendency of people to share videos and news stories across internet platforms, introduced a fundamentally new situation that comedy pessimists such as Eco could never have anticipated. It took government support for Watan Ala Watar to come into being, but once it did it was simply a matter of time before the show shook loose of its bounds, using YouTube and Facebook as a means of spreading (an admittedly minor) revolution against Palestine TV.

It is possible to understand the show ultimately as having been effectively reigned in, as it appears unlikely that Farajin will have the ability to finance another season without governmental help. However, Watan Ala Watar must be understood as a fundamental success in two important ways. On the one hand, the program will live on online, remaining an inspiration for people in Palestine and beyond who might choose to use comedy in an effort to change their political lives. The widespread coverage of the show’s cancellation in fact ensured an audience far more global than it ever could have achieved otherwise. Along similar lines, the program’s web presence has made Farajin a figure of popular dissent far different from any previously seen in Palestinian politics. Perhaps more importantly, however, Watan Ala Watar’s turbulent life cycle becomes an almost perfect piece of anti-government satire in and of itself. The speed at which the Palestinian government went from fawning over the program to killing it is its own form of dark comedy, something that Farajin himself would be proud to have written. At its best, satire exposes the hypocrisy and double standards employed to maintain the social status quo. If nothing else, the rise and fall of Watan Ala Watar has forcefully served this very purpose.

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