The public domain is influenced by this discourse and it is mainly the media that disseminates it, hence the crucial role the media plays in the struggle for liberation.
by Ilan Pappé
The Palestinian struggle for liberation takes many forms and is based on diverse modes of resistance. This struggle is usually—and understandably—described as the collective effort of a nation that was colonized in the late 19th century and is still under occupation and colonization today. Since the struggle continues, it is useless to make any reasonable judgment on its success or failure. What is reasonable and most important to do at this point in time, in our mind, is to record and recognize the individual struggles that form this collective effort. They are sometimes forgotten or overlooked, but they are crucial for understanding why those who are part of the liberation struggle and those who support it have not given up hope for its eventual success in the future.
When we decided to record these individual stories of struggle for freedom and liberation, we first hoped to have a full picture of the personal contribution and experience of each contributor. However, we were fortunate enough to receive much more than this. Each individual account has a biographical section that opens a window into a recent or more distant Palestinian past, whether in the homeland or in exile. This is very much about what was lost as a result of the ongoing Nakba, as well as what was regained by sheer resilience, steadfastness and commitment.
Take for instance our opening chapter by Hamdan Taha that assesses the role of Palestinian archaeologists and archaeology in the struggle for liberation. It begins with a glimpse into the life of a 12-year-old village boy on the day of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank in 1967. In a moving passage in the chapter, Hamdan tells us how this boy, and later teenager, became one of Palestine’s leading archaeologists; it was his first encounter with the new, oppressive reality imposed by the occupation. It set him off on an incredible career as one of Palestine’s leading archaeologists. Even today, Hamdan has to struggle daily against an archaeological narrative of denial and erasure. This sinister campaign is not only done through distorting ancient historiography but also by the production of a misleading discourse and the invention of a deceptive vocabulary.
Just how distortion of language can misrepresent past and present realities in Palestine is an essential part of Ibrahim G. Aoudé’s life story, whose professional commitment brings to the fore the role of discourse and language in the liberation struggle. His professional life has been devoted to countering a Zionist vocabulary that has promoted and sustained the fraudulent denial of the Palestinian existence from the very start. His particular mode of cultural resistance is performed day in and day out and finally, in this century as he tells us, has produced tangible and encouraging results.
The public domain is influenced by this discourse and it is mainly the media that disseminates it, hence the crucial role the media plays in the struggle for liberation. Our contributors who work in the media domain tell a life story that will encourage young Palestinians to follow suit and become influential journalists and media persons in the future.
While a strong educational background provided at home and at school is a typical route to media success, in the Palestinian case, one often has to be self-taught and learn through sheer personal determination, as Qassem Ali Kafarneh’s life story illustrates. Qassem shares with us how he started out on the road to become one of Palestine’s leading journalists:
The next part of my journey turned out to be a formative and fundamental ingredient to my engaging meaningfully with journalism as a powerful tool in the struggle for liberation. It was a journey digging to the roots of my people; collecting their experiences of life; debating on political visions; disagreeing on ideology, religion, cultural constructs.
It was both formal and informal education that prepared him for his role as a leading journalist in the future. One such informal site was the Israeli prison:
The crucible blending and catalyzing our nationalism, uniting us as a people, erasing gender, socio-economic, religious and ideological barriers, and all of this provided on a silver platter by our Israeli oppressor: PRISON.
Samaa Abu Sharar also played a crucial role in the media struggle, and ponders the choices Palestinians make in the course of their struggle for liberation:
We are often told that “our life choices are those of our making”; in the case of most Palestinians, I believe it is a luxury that we often dare not indulge in.
And yet, as Samaa’s chapter shows, such a destined role, not chosen but accepted, can lead to pioneering work in building media outlets and bastions of professional journalism which generate people’s recognition of the Palestinian plight and, in particular, shed constant light on Palestinian refugees’ right of return. This is a significant achievement given the attempts to deny access to Palestinian realities by a huge Israeli propaganda machine oiled with Western help and support.
Palestinians’ sense of belonging and recognizing their identity as such, displaced due to historical circumstances, is occurring everywhere around the globe. Anuar Majluf Issa tells the story of the Club Deportivo Palestino, one of the best football clubs on the continent, where young people who “have it all” now have still not forgotten their roots, identity and nation through its most difficult times. Their support will make sure that abnormal realties of occupation and colonization would not deny the joy and crucial importance of sport in Palestinian life and future.
Indeed, being a Palestinian out of Palestine for most of one’s life does not diminish a bit one’s commitment and contribution to the liberation struggle. Ghada Karmi recalls an incident when she was invited to tell her life story at a special event where people were asked to do so, but was then censored by the organizers who feared a Palestinian life story might be “provocative” or “offensive.” This occurred in London, not under a callous dictatorial regime. Ghada devoted, and still devotes, her life to ensure Britain does not forget Palestine and its own role in its catastrophic history. At times it was a lonely struggle, later it was carried out in tandem with others and all of it part of the struggle of the PLO since its inception and until the 1980s, and then within other networks of support to the liberation effort on the ground in the homeland.
Randa Abdel-Fattah demonstrates that this struggle abroad is a daily, at times consuming, part of one’s life and identity by shedding light on Palestinian resistance in Sydney, Australia. Generation after generation of people experience a reality that alternates between being tied to Palestine while being elsewhere. As Randa beautifully puts it:
On the one hand, a claim by a Palestinian here to bear witness to what is happening in Palestine there. On the other, a claim by a Palestinian child here to control the here, to keep what is happening in Palestine there.
Samah Sabawi too begins a poetic journey into history and identity from the Redlands Coast of Queensland, Australia, while visiting her aging father. This is where the history of the Australian settler colonialism and its genocide of the indigenous population meets the story of the Zionist settler colonialism and its ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. The geographical and historical background are all the time consciously present in the life of a Palestinian woman who writes about, and experiences daily, the nexus between exile and trauma and in the middle ponders on post-memory. This self-reflection helps Samah challenge the erasure and denial and pass that determination to the next generation:
We cannot move on while our loved ones are under falling bombs, under siege and under occupation. So we do not. And we pass this on to our children.
Palestinians draw courage, inspiration and orientation from different sources. One of the most important one is religion, whether they are Christians or Muslims. The theology of liberation is both Christian and Islamic. The life story of Father Manuel Musallam is a powerful antidote to any colonialist and apartheid regime’s colonialist attempt at “divide and rule” tactics by driving a wedge between Muslims and Christians in Palestine. Father Musallam writes:
I will resist from a religious standpoint, stemming from the theology of my church, and my strong conviction in this theology.
Sami Al-Arian discusses Islam within a wider context of exploring the different parameters in which the liberation struggle can move forward, without flinching in the face of difficult realities and current imbalances of power. The role of political Islam in the liberation struggle has been recognized by many. This chapter situates the struggle within the story of the lifelong commitment of an intellectual, who has paid highly for his devotion by suffering a long term in American prisons, including in solitary confinement. His intellectual reach is extraordinary, from a deep knowledge of Western philosophy to a profound knowledge of the Islamic visions and perceptions. Sami is not only looking at the past, he is viewing the future and believes in grand visions, without which there is no hope for a proper liberation—a vision that is situated in Islam as much as it is in general human values of freedom and justice.
Religion also inspired Hanadi Halawani’s personal struggle to protect Jerusalem in general and the Al-Aqsa Mosque that is its striking centerpiece. This young Jerusalemite Palestinian woman has been the moving spirit and inspiration behind the Palestinian determination to defend Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa Mosque. She recounts the amazing and courageous efforts of Palestinian women in particular to defend this site sacred to Islam and highlights how children and young Palestinians are enrolled in such a struggle at a place where the massive Israeli presence should have prevented any form of resistance, and yet it exists. Hanadi’s struggle takes place in the classroom, on the streets of Al-Quds and wherever she is, now that she is banished from her beloved Al-Aqsa.
Faith in one’s religion or nation, alongside incredible human courage, is what keeps the Palestinian political prisoners resilient and determined not to cave in when faced with callous incarceration and denial of justice. Khalida Jarar, still in prison when this book was being prepared, was denied the right of participating in the funeral of her beloved daughter—may she rest in peace—to whom we dedicate this entire collection.
Jarrar’s description of her trials and tribulations shed light on the power of conviction that keeps Palestine’s political prisoners steadfast in their commitment to the liberation struggle. Such a route inevitably demands sacrifices and can end in martyrdom, imprisonment or loss of one’s home and career. The courage and resilience of those who have experienced the most brutal aspects of oppression is illuminated in this extraordinary piece that was conceived within the four walls of an Israeli prison, amidst torture and endless brutality. Here we find no self-pity, no hate, just an incredible display of commitment, resilience and hope. Jarrar writes:
While it is important that you must comprehend the suffering endured by prisoners, such as the numerous acts of physical torture, psychological torment and prolonged isolation, you must also realize the power of the human will, when men and women decide to fight back, to reclaim their natural rights and to embrace their humanity.
Popular resistance demands not only commitment and courage but also organization. Jamal Jumaa explains the essential role of networking, to which he contributes to this day, providing us with an overview of the popular struggle from a level above it. Institutions, organizations, and networking were at the heart of the more successful years of the PLO’s struggle. They were deemed lost for a while as a result of the events of 1982 and the Oslo Accord but, as Jamal demonstrates, are still there and have the potential to reignite and regenerate more coordinated and organized successful uprisings in the future.
Organized or individual struggle on the ground in Occupied Palestine leads, as we have seen, to prison. It takes someone who has been in prison to devote his life to defending other prisoners as their lawyer. This is the life story of Gaza’s most famous human right advocate, Raji Sourani. His work is done both in Israeli and international courts. The former is almost an impossible arena in which to turn for justice and the other, as Raji tells us, in recent years has been politicized and become a more difficult venue for prosecuting the crimes against Palestinians. But he insists that these difficulties would not deter him from continuing his work, in particular in the international area, pointing out the special attribute of international law:
So international law is a way of demonstrating that we are equal. All we are asking for is the equal application of the law that we are treated the same as everyone else, that we enjoy the same rights as everyone else. That we are held accountable just like everyone else.
To be treated as equal is also a constant challenge for those who have devoted their life to education as a means of struggling for liberation. This became a particular mode of cultural struggle in the refugee camps, as can be learned from the next chapter written by Ghada Ageel. Life in refugee camps quite often resembled life in prison and refugees, as much as political prisoners, can tell us stories not just of their suffering but mainly of their struggle against the oppression. In the refugee camps, education was a key element in maintaining one’s humanity and ability to continue the resistance. Ghada is of the third generation of refugees from the Gaza Strip and her journey into choosing education as a mode of resistance helped others to see what the West refuses to recognize—the deeply racist nature of the Zionist project and its implication for the Palestinians. Against this racism, Ghada used the field of education as a springboard to make her unique contribution for the liberation struggle.
There is more than one way of educating people about the Palestinians history and heritage, and one such way is the unique Palestinian History Tapestry Project. Jehan Alfarra and Jan Chalmers show how this incredible project keeps alive an old artisanry while reflecting through its beautiful embroidery historical scenes of the Palestinian oppression and the struggle against it. This project is mobile and displayed both in exhibitions and on the internet. These fine products are prepared by devoted artisans in the Gaza Strip, and Palestinians from across the occupied territories, and in refugee camps in Lebanon and Jordan, bringing together women who share a perception of their work as an act of liberation.
Next, Terry Boullata gives us an overview of the role of heritage in the liberation struggle in its cultural mode. Defending that heritage, as Terry shows us, is not always a conscious act of liberation, it occurs because:
I would argue that, for the greater majority of Palestinians outside the homeland, myself included, being Palestinian is not so much a decision but rather a reflection of who we are.
The way Terry chose to struggle against the cultural erasure in the West and the Zionist campaign of cultural suppression adds another layer to the liberation struggle and its record of individual victories, which might be small in the big scheme of things, but will prove, one day, to be an accumulative transformative and powerful factor in the liberation of Palestine.
In this respect, singers, and their songs, like poets and their poetry, play a crucial role. Reem Talhami. Reem is a ’48 Arab and a renowned singer, who recounts the long, impressive history and reservoir of Palestinian liberation songs (which hopefully one day will be archived and accessible to all). These songs have helped to articulate, in the most beautiful and passionate way, one of the major predicaments of the ’48 Arabs: their alienation in their own homeland. The songs Reem chooses and performs paint in stark colors this alienation. As Reem puts it, “with songs, we wage wars without shedding a single drop of blood”.
The cinema and the movies are a relatively modern form of art connected to the individual and collective struggles for liberation. Here, Farah Nabulsi assesses the role of cinema in oppressing and resisting the liberation struggle, while her work exemplifies how it can be used for liberation as well. Born in London, her personal and professional engagement with the world of cinema was never divorced from her Palestinian identity and did not diminish her outrage at the injustice done to the Palestinian people. While realizing that “art alone, of course, cannot free Palestine,” she nonetheless emphasizes that “I believe that without it, Palestine will never be free!”
Sometimes art or any other interest or profession is not enough to help one survive in such a struggle. Being a victim of Israeli brutality and being immersed in the long experience of the struggle takes a mental toll. Samah Jabr’s contribution, which comes next, helps unveil these hardships and how to confront them. As is fitting for a psychiatrist, her account starts from the very moment she was born and continues through her rise to become one of Palestine’s leading psychiatrists. Aware that collective and individual trauma has only more recently been recognized as a mental health area of concern, Samah has assigned for herself as her future contribution to the struggle the twin missions of raising the recognition of the importance of mental health treatment in the overall liberation struggle on the one hand, and the need to critically examine Western notions such as PTSD and their relevance to both to oppression and the struggle against it in the Palestinian context, on the other.
Just as Samah’s path was a mixture of commitment that did not compromise her professionalism, the role of science in the liberation struggle emerges very strongly in Mazin Qumsiyeh’s chapter. Science is a human capital that is not always accumulated via the classroom or the laboratory for those who are occupied or colonized. Zionism attempts to destroy this ecological wisdom, as after all its project has led to an ecological disaster. Mazin’s path in life and contribution to the liberation struggle is exercised in multiple contributions for popular resistance; here, he highlights the role of human knowledge of nature and science played in this popular resistance. This is a very timely contribution for our times for, as Mazin writes, in Palestine: “a harmony between humans and nature persisted for millennia” and now we struggle to maintain it due to the disharmony sowed by Zionism since its arrival in Palestine.
In the last section of this book, we meet personal stories of liberation struggle that are pursued vis-à-vis the international community, through diplomacy, engagement with the global civil society and with the state of Israel and its Jewish society.
It begins with the moving account of Hasan Abu Nimah, a Palestinian who became a senior Jordanian diplomat while being fully aware, at every juncture of his life, of his Palestinian identity and commitment to the struggle. His life story reflects that of the Palestinian people from the day he was born and through his rich life, until today. He reminds us not to focus just on the Palestinian moments of nadir but recall also the crumbling of Israeli sinister plans and projects, providing a hopeful reappraisal of the past with a view to the future where liberation is a doable and successful possibility. He writes:
I am convinced that the violent partition of Palestine that I witnessed as a child will end, and the country will be made whole again, with people free to live and move wherever they wish. There is no room for an apartheid regime in Palestine.
In the following chapter, Johnny Mansour follows the development of Israeli studies on the Palestinian side, explaining how the liberation struggle needed to avoid stereotyping and superficiality as it sought to understand the destructive nature of Zionism and the nature of the Israeli Jewish society. A project that was begun by the late Issam Sirtawi has now reached a high professional level with the establishment of an institute for Israeli Studies in Ramallah, Madar. Johnny followed the early stages of the development of this institution and his deep knowledge of both the Israeli and Palestinian history and societies, and he continues to serve faithfully the ongoing project of Madar and similar projects in his and my hometown Haifa, such as Mada al-Karmil.
Haneen Zoabi; a founding member of the Tajamoa party and representative of this party in the Israeli parliament, describes a different struggle. Haneen’s political career evolved around the attempt of the ’48 Arabs to transit from politics of recognition to politics of liberation. Her involvement in the Freedom Flotilla in 2010 exposed for her the hypocrisy of the Liberal Zionist Left and forced her somber recognition of the limitations of being active for liberation under an apartheid state that has wide support among its Jewish society. Haneen’s contribution is important for anyone who still has illusions of changing the Israeli society from within:
In conclusion, Israeli citizenship was not granted to Palestinians as a means of introducing them into Israeli society; rather, it was the manifestation and exercise of Israel’s victory over us. Palestinians engaging in Israeli politics must preserve the clarity of the inherent contradiction between justice and colonial citizenship.
Nonetheless, the ’48 Arabs do not lose hope in building a new decolonized space with at least some of the settler Jewish community, as happened in post-Apartheid South Africa. When progressive anti-Zionist Jews who currently live in Israel are involved in such an act of genuine solidarity, inevitably they are concerned also with the vision of a liberated Palestine and their place in it. Awad Abdelfattah, in his chapter, tells the struggle for a democratic state over all of historical Palestine that would emerge once the ill-fated two states solution is buried deep down in the dustbin of history. Such a vision of liberation is based on both the very sacred principles of the Palestinian liberation movement from its outset, and on a mode of decolonization that entails a joint democratic vision, not only for the Palestinians but also for the Jews who are willing to live in a liberated Palestine.
Solidarity cannot remain a soundbite. It has to be translated into action in the face of the abnormal realities of settler colonial Israel and the occupied Palestine. Both Laila Al-Marayati and Nora Lester Murad make the point, in separate chapters, that an effective liberation will have to have a clear view of how to recruit financial resources for the struggle and how to employ them in the best way possible. Each one of these two activists founded an organization that catered to the special circumstances in which such work is being done. Laila woke up to the need to do it differently when she became aware that:
Barriers were created, seemingly overnight, to anyone around the world who wanted to provide humanitarian support to Palestine, from Europe to the Gulf.
As a result, she established with friends KinderUSA (Kids in Need of Development, Education and Relief). She advises that charity work for Palestinians in the US is never straightforward, as the pro-Israeli lobby keeps demonizing it as in support of terrorism. No matter: it nonetheless connects people, and whatever they can give, directly with places such as the besieged Gaza, the occupied West Bank and the refugee camps, eschewing possibly questionable intermediaries.
Nora Lester Murad also founded her own organization, the Dalia Organization, through which she deals daily with questions of how to institutionalize and professionalize aid to the struggle, without forgetting the crucial role by grassroots individuals and organizations in it. This is an inspiring template that will be referred to in years to come.
My own article tries to tap into this solidarity and expand it by chronicling the rise and actions of the international solidary movement. The potency of this movement lies in its ability to empower speaking the truth, so that even people who were nurtured as Zionists, in Israel or abroad, were able to cross the Rubicon and join the movement in solidarity with the liberation struggle. This is a growing phenomenon, and it will play a crucial role in the future in bringing freedom to Palestine.
Armed struggle, different modes of cultural struggles, of knowledge production, recruitment of resources and support of mental and physical ailments caused by occupation, imprisonment, and colonization—all form the struggle for liberation. The various individual stories in this volume do not cover all the aspects of this struggle, nor can they represent all the groups, locations and generations that kept the liberation struggle alive. But even as a sample it is a testimony to the human capital that Palestine was blessed with before the Nakba and has managed, despite the ongoing catastrophe, to regenerate and expand. One day, this human treasure will be employed for the benefit of everyone who lives between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean, and for all those who were expelled from there over the years.
Post a Comment