Al-Sayed complains society’s unacceptance for supporting normalization with Israel
The president of the Bahraini Journalists Association, Ahdia Ahmed Al-Sayed, complained that the Bahraini community did not accept her and her fellow journalists because of their explicit support for Israel’s normalization agreement.
Ahmed asked American Jewish journalists to “support” Arab media professionals who she said are being bullied and threatened via the Internet for blessing the agreement concluded last September.
Ahmed Al-Sayed’s statements came when she participated in a normalization video conference organized by the American Jewish Press Association (AJPA).
“A good thing”
The Bahrain Journalists Association has about 600 members. The majority of them firmly refuse to support the normalization agreement, which contradicts the tenets of the Bahraini people who strongly support the Palestinian people.
“If you want to support us because we support peace, that would be a good thing,” Ahmed Al-Sayed said during the conference mentioned above.
“The American Jewish Press Association can do a lot, by the way,” she added, according to the Bahraini Leaks.
“If we don’t do that, journalists will never even try to talk openly about it,” she added.
Ahmed Al-Sayed plans to lead the first delegation of journalists from Bahrain to Israel this year.
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And it was subjected to society attack in Bahrain because she supported the normalization agreement, as Bahrainis took to the streets to march strongly condemning this agreement.
Bullying
“Yes, I was bullied and harassed on social media,” she said.
She explained that the attack rhetoric went beyond “what can be said about women” in Bahrain.
She added that the ordeal was exacerbated because her three children and her husband had to “read the hateful words,” as she put it.
She claimed that Bahraini journalists support normalization in general, citing ten articles that appeared in 4 Bahraini newspapers praising normalization after the agreement was signed.
Earlier, during an interview with the official Hebrew radio, she claimed that “the Palestinians have not offered themselves anything for seventy-two years, yet the normalization agreement with Israel does not contradict Palestinian interests.”
The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate strongly condemned these statements, and demanded an apology to the Palestinian people.
And 17 Bahraini political societies and civil society institutions confirmed that normalization with Israel does not represent the people of the Kingdom, and will not bring peace.
Informed sources revealed to the Bahraini Lakes that the Bahraini authorities had, during the past weeks, carried out a wide-ranging campaign of secret arrests of activists and citizens opposed to the normalization agreement.
