Saturday, January 31, 2009

Susan Abulhawa Interviewed by VPRO Dutch Radio



Bureau Buitenland VPRO
Nieuws en achtergronden van de buitenlandredactie van Villa VPRO
Het litteken van David: roman over een Palestijnse familie

Susan Abulhawa’s ouders vluchtten uit Palestina toen Israel tijdens de zesdaagse oorlog van 1967 Egypte aanviel. Het Israelische leger bezette de Golanhoogte en de westelijke Jordaanoever. Een bezetting die tot op heden voortduurt. Na omzwervingen door het bezette Oost-Jeruzalem, Koeweit en JordaniĆ« kwam de schrijfster in de Verenigde Staten terecht.

Omdat de Amerikaanse berichtgeving over het Palestijns-Israelisch conflict volgens Abulhawa te pro-Israelisch is, begon ze op internet essays en columns te publiceren. Dr. Hanan Ashrawi - stichter van het Palestijnse Initatief tot bevordering van Dialoog en Democratie, Palestijns parlementslid en voormalig vertrouweling van Yasser Arafat - las een paar essays van haar en moedigde Susan Abulhawa aan een roman over de Palestijnse geschiedenis te schrijven. “We hebben grote behoefte aan zulke vertellers” mailde Ashrawi haar.

Resultaat is ‘ Het litteken van David ‘ over twee broers, waarvan de een - gekidnapt - bij een Joods gezin opgroeit en de ander als Palestijn. De hoofdpersoon, en verteller van de familiegeschiedenis, is hun jongere zus Amaal. Het boek kreeg in 2007 de Best Book Award USA Book News. En afgelopen jaar verscheen het in vertaling bij uitgeverij De Geus.

Jacqueline Maris interviewt Susan Abulhawa over de situatie in Gaza, de toekomst van het Palestijnse volk en het belang van haar roman.

Bureau Buitenland (Villa VPRO) van maandag 12 januari 2009 van 15:30 tot 16:00 uur op radio.

Audio (vanaf een uur na uitzending): http://weblogs.vpro.nl/buitenland/2009/01/10/het-litteken-van-david-roman-over-een-palestijnse-familie/ (parts of this interview are in English)

Palestinians Will Never Forget by Susan Abulhawa

Susan Abulhawa's first essay of 2009 was published by several sources around the world, including Dissident Voice and Palestine Chronicle. Here it appears in ...


Palestinians Will Never Forget
By susan abulhawa

How can anyone watching Gaza burn escape the bitter realization that history repeats itself? Many have compared Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to Apartheid South Africa. But not in their cruelest hour did the Apartheid regime wreak such wanton murder and destruction. Let us stop mincing words. What is happening to Palestinians now whispers of Warsaw and Lodz.

Schools, universities, mosques, police stations, homes, water treatment plants, factories, and anything that supports civil society, including the only mental health clinic in Gaza, have been blown to rubble from planes that rain death from clear skies without any resistance, because Palestinians have no opposing air force. Nor do they have an army or navy. No mechanized armor or heavy weaponry. Thanks to Israel, they haven’t even had continuous electricity or fuel for the past two years. Or food and medicine. Israel’s siege and blockade of Gaza has prevented the movement of people and goods in and out of Gaza, including the import of the most basic goods necessary for survival.

A recent study by the Red Cross showed that 46 percent of Gazan children suffer from anemia. Malnutrition affects 75 percent of Gaza’s population, half of whom are under the age of 17. There has been widespread deafness among children due to Israel’s intentional and frequent sonic booms from low overflights. An alarming number have stunted growth and serious mental disorders due lack of food. The only way they have been able to survive thus far has been due to the tunnels that smuggle food and goods from Egypt.
Half of Gazan children under 12 have lost their “will to live.” Can anyone fathom the kind of oppression that leads small children en mass to lose their will to live?

This is what Israel has done to Gaza over the past two years. They ghettoized Gaza and turned it into an open air prison – a concentration camp of civilians with no way to earn a living, no way to defend themselves and no place to run from the slaughter bombarding them from air, land, and sea.

But Gazans dared to try to resist with pathetic homemade rockets that, until Israel’s barbaric attack, generally landed in open desert. The rockets were mostly symbolic of resistance, very much like the fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. But who would have called on a ceasefire there, in 1943, for “both parties” to “cease the violence”? Who would have blamed the Ghetto fighters for their ultimate fate? Who would say they had no right to resist? No right to fight back?

Just as Nazis gave Jews only the right to die silently, Israel starves and besieges Palestinians, giving them only that same right. Just as the Warsaw Ghetto was blown to rubble, Gaza is left to burn in an inferno, its hospitals bursting with the puss of death and unspeakable wounds. The entire population of Gaza is terrorized and traumatized. No one is spared the insecurity and fear. Imagine, please, that you are a Gazan.

What have Palestinians done to deserve such a fate? To be endlessly hunted like animals? To have their homes demolished, their ancient history and heritage cast into forgotten space? To languish in refugee camps and slums, while Jews from all corners of the earth flock to fill their confiscated homes and farms? To be tortured, imprisoned, and denied in every conceivable way?
What have we done that leaders will not speak against this massive and cold aggression against our people? With what logic do you call Palestinians terrorists when their streets flow with the blood of their own children? When they have been stripped naked of possessions, dignity and hope?

Why? Because they elected Hamas? Hamas has held power for less than two years. Yet, Palestinians have suffered this kind of slaughter for 61 years. Whether now in Gaza, in 2002 in Jenin, in 1947 and 1948 in Deir Yasin, Balad el-Sha, Yehida, Tantura, and the list goes on. Or 1982 in Sabra and Shatila.

Palestinians are killed as if insects not because of Hamas or Yasser Arafat before them. Not because of Qassasm rockets or hand thrown rocks. Palestinians burn and bleed because they are the non-Jewish natives of that land. There is no other reason. Just like Jews were killed for being Jewish. Palestinians are killed for being the Muslims and Christians who hold historic, legal and even genetic title to that land.

But unlike Jews of Europe, Palestinians are killed slowly over decades. Unlike Israel, Nazi Germany did not establish such an effective global propaganda machine that would demonize its victims and blame them for their own ghastly fate. But most importantly, like the fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto, Palestinians do not march like mice to their death. In six decades of enduring unspeakable oppression, their will has not been broken. Now is no exception.

Israel, and the United States with its unconditional support, will only succeed in radicalizing a whole new generation of its victims. Of revving world hatred and resentment against this unholy duo.

Palestinians will not forget this, as they have not forgotten the past 60 years. But what will you remember a week or a year or a decade from now, when a Gazan, who stood before the long rows of corpses and vowed vengeance, creates your 9-11? When one of those few million children without a will to live straps on a belt that rips through your daily routine? Will you remember what we did to them?

Los Angeles conference calls for grassroots fightback


Los Angeles conference calls for grassroots fightback (Workers World - Jan 28, 2009) A special highlight of the conference was a presentation by Susan Abulhawa, author of “The Scar of David”
A special highlight of the conference was a presentation by Susan Abulhawa, author of “The Scar of David,” a novel that the Palestine Chronicle characterized as “a must read for those who wish to not only understand the catastrophe of the Palestinians with their minds but also with their hearts.” Abulhawa’s account of Israeli atrocities in Gaza with the full backing of the U.S. was followed by another presentation on the crimes of the apartheid settler state by Mazen Almoukdad representing Al-Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition.
Click here to see the entire article - http://www.workers.org/2009/us/los_angeles_0205/

Friday, January 30, 2009

1,000 Eyes on Gaza - Susan Abulhawa Interviewed by Brazil's O Estado (click on image to read article)

Susan Abulhawa interviewed by Brazil's O Globo


O Globo is Brazil's largest newspaper. This areicle appeared on the back cover on the release of the Portuguese edition of The Scar of David (the fifth language in translation).