susan abulhawa

Figures of Defiance: Refugees in Palestinian literature

2011-10-30T18:04:00.003-04:00

Assmaa Naguib
Wed, 21/09/2011

In Jabra Ibrahim Jabra’s largely escapist novel “The Ship,” written a few years after the Arab defeat of 1967, an infuriated refugee exclaims: “We spoke the truth till our throats grew hoarse, and we ended up as refugees in tents.”

On Friday, as Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas formally requests full United Nations membership for a Palestinian state, refugees, more than 40 years after Jabra’s exclamation, watch the unfolding events with careful anticipation. Many Palestinian writers have since joined Jabra in drawing attention to the plight of Palestinian refugees, who have been repeatedly failed by the international community, neighboring Arab states and Palestinian quasi-state actors.

Susan Abulhawa’s 2010 novel “Mornings in Jenin,” written in English and published in the US, imagines Palestinian refugees in the few days after the 1948 Nakba - the displacement following Israeli occupation - gradually coming to the realization that “they were slowly being erased from the world, from its history and from its future.”

To counter this realization in the early pages of the novel, Abulhawa, who was born to Palestinian refugee parents, provides an exhaustive literary work that covers every single incident of the Palestinian Israeli conflict in detail: starting from 1948, through the Naksa of 1967 when Israel took control of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the battle of Karamah in 1970, the Dayr Yasin massacre, the Sabra and Shatila massacres in 1982, the Palestinian intifada in 1987, and the massacre at Jenin refugee camp in 2002, among many other incidents. However, what is most striking about this passionate text is how the narrative is silent about the years from 1993-2001 following the Oslo Accords in condemnation of the failed peace process, which not only made the refugee question one of the final status issues, but squandered Palestinian rights under the guise of diplomacy. Abulhawa’s novel thus completely sidelines the diplomatic circus and instead highlights the steadfastness of the displaced families and their attempts at survival for over half a century.

When Abbas’s voice resounds in the corridors of the UN building, if Palestinian refugees listen cynically to the sound of the approach of another diplomatic initiative, or seem reluctant to believe that the international system would take their side, however different the circumstances are this time around, the world should understand. Abulhawa is by no means alone in her contempt for the world’s prolonged impotence in dealing with the Palestinian refugee problem; and the negative memory of Oslo is not behind us yet.

It definitely was not diplomacy that these literary creations sought to emphasize, but Palestinians' episodes of struggle and the resolve to forge stronger resistance. Written only one year after the start of the Oslo Peace Process, Ibrahim Nasrallah’s novel “Birds of Caution” powerfully carved the struggle of the Palestinian refugees in literary form from the point of view of a nameless Palestinian child. When the child observed soon after 1948 that the refugee camp where he lived in Jordan was changing - simple tents were replaced with cement buildings, narrow alleyways gradually filled with more and more children, the fences and walls grew even higher - Nasrallah was mirroring the perpetuation of the refugee crisis.

Like the famous Handalah, who at the age of 10 turned his back to the world in defiance of its handling of the refugee problem, Nasrallah’s brainchild, who attains his martyrdom at the end of the novel, also became a figure of defiance and condemnation. Both figures are artistic creations of Palestinian refugees: the late Naji al-Ali who lived in Shatila camp in Lebanon and Nasrallah who was born in al-Wihdat refugee camp in Jordan.

Like Nasrallah and Abulhawa, countless Palestinian writers have brought the same struggle to light; many of them living in the Arab world and an increasing number now finding a voice abroad like Randa Jarrar, Abulhawa and others. These writers offer much more than romantic reminiscing for the lost home and the safety of a homeland. The voices of their different generations in both fictional and autobiographical accounts by Ghassan Kanafani, Jarrar, Suad Amiry, Ghada Karmi, the late Edward Said and Mahmoud Darwish and others attest to the power of literature to transcend the world’s consistent attempt to silence these voices within an already oppressed group. One would not be surprised to know that Kanafani’s famous account of Umm Sa’ad, the hopeful refugee whose symbolic act of planting a tree in a refugee camp in Lebanon after the 1967 defeat, still inspires activism and rebellion decades after Kanafani’s 1972 assassination.

Having watched over the past few months, the various diplomatic attempts to pursue or hinder the UN initiative, it is the struggle of the Palestinian people all over the world that we should support regardless of all diplomatic (mis-)calculations.

Back to Basic: abandoning negotiations and calls for one or two states

2011-10-30T17:21:00.002-04:00

Back to Basic: abandoning negotiations and calls for one or two states

(The following is a condensed version of Susan Abulhawa's speech at the Al-Awda Center grand opening)

Summary: Susan Abulhawa presents an argument to abandon all negotiations with Israel and to abandon calls for the One State and Two State solutions; and in fact, to abandon academic debates on a political construct in favor of embracing the basic calls of Palestinian civil society for essential human rights. This strategy includes the need for a consensus and unified call originating from Palestinians in the Occupied Territories and agreed upon with the various Palestinian communities that make up the Palestinian Nation, including: Palestinians of the West Bank, Jerusalem, Gaza, refugee camps outside of Palestine, the worldwide Diaspora and Palestinians of 1948. She argues that the greatest and unstoppable power available to Palestinians lies in their roots, the moral authority of their struggle for freedom. Harnessing that power, to which Israel has no real defenses, is the most practical path forward and it is rests on the need for 1) a unified call for freedom and the full range of human rights and dignities 2) a point of synergy among the multitude of internal and external movements which include direct action and solidarity activities inside Palestine and around the world and 3) sustained mobilization from the bottom up, hopefully with the assistance of the Palestinian Authority, but at least without interference from them.

To try to comprehend the PA’s UN bid for statehood and to figure out what the ramifications are on many fronts, it behooves us to take a look at history because, this is, after all, not the first time that a Palestinian state was formally declared. I know there are legal differences between the declaration of state in the 1980s and the current application for recognition, but for all intents and purposes, they are both attempts to achieve statehood by seeking international recognition, which, I feel, is the wrong approach for our struggle at this moment in history and, in my opinion is also probably a cynically calculated move that has little to do with actually achieving statehood.

The First Intifada & Declaration of Statehood

In 1988, the PLO formally declared the State of Palestine, and the designation "Palestine" for the PLO was adopted by UN in acknowledgement of that declaration, even though we had no formal status at the UN as a state. At that time, as with the present, we had overwhelming popular support in the General Assembly. Also at that time, as in the present, the US did everything it could to prevent any kind of recognition or international legitimacy for Palestine.

The more important and striking similarity between the declaration of statehood in 1988 and in the present UN bid is the presence of a persistent nonviolent movement with growing international solidarity.

In 1987, the first Intifada began as a popular, spontaneous, and grassroots uprising that moved the Palestinian struggle away from guerilla warfare. It changed the way the world saw Palestinians and began to reveal the brutality of the occupation. The first intifada was nonviolent, marked by mass civil disobedience, boycotts, refusal to pay taxes, disruption of power and sewage going to illegal colonies and more of the like. Throwing rocks against tanks and armored Israeli vehicles was symbolic and few in the international community bought Israel’s claims that these rocks constituted serious violent threats.

As a result, the first intifada began to capture the imaginations and inspire civil societies everywhere, despite Israel’s best PR and hasbara campaigns. Popular international solidarity was growing and there was a burgeoning awareness of who we are and what we had suffered for decades under occupation. And for the first time, there was open public criticism of Israel in places that would not have dared to do so before. Simply, the moral authority of our cause could not be ignored.

Even though Israel was committing unspeakable war crimes to suppress the intifada, the movement only intensified and caused power to shift to the Palestinian street, for the first time. That shift was also changing world opinion, which was a major threat to Israel because it hit at their greatest weak point: their image, and I’ll touch on that more shortly.

But the first intifada didn’t just threaten Israel, it was also a threat to the Palestinian leadership, which was outside of Palestine at the time. The persistence of the first intifada spawned local leaderships that were not directly affiliated with the PLO, and although the PLO had nothing to do with the first intifada, they quickly positioned themselves at the forefront and began to take control as much as possible from the outside. The PLO’s efforts to control extinguished the intifada’s fire and culminated in the Madrid Conference followed by the Oslo Accords.

In essence, here’s what happened: after decades of suffering at the hands of a brutal military occupation whose only purpose was to displace or subjugate Palestinians under their control, we had the first bottom up movement that was full of solidarity, full of hope. And, more importantly, it was full of promise. It promised to grow and spread. It promised a path of successful nonviolent resistance with growing international attention at the levels of civil society, mainstream media, and government leaderships. This promise was seized by the Palestinian leadership. They took ownership of the movement when it started to gain momentum on the ground and abroad, they grabbed the reigns of it, and then they steered us into what turned out to be more slaughter and more wholesale theft of our lands and properties, all under the auspices of a negotiated settlement called the “Peace Process”.

Today we find ourselves in a situation bearing many of the same hallmarks and a reaction by the Palestinian leadership that looks too much like their reaction then.

The Second Intifada & UN Bid for Statehood

Although the second intifada’s early days saw violent Palestinian reactions to Israel’s sustained terrorism, it has morphed into a nonviolent struggle that is taking roots not only in Palestine, but throughout the world. The change in the 2nd Intifada’s character has spurred many to declare it over, but this is not an accurate statement. The second intifada is alive and well and growing.

Perhaps the earliest manifestations of the active nonviolent resistance came from the activites of the International Solidarity Movement. Construction of the Apartheid Wall spawned more local heroes who began leading unrelenting and regular demonstrations. The call from Palestinian Civil Society for international Boycott Divestment and Sanctions against Israel was launched was launched in 2005, pushing the movement in new directions and far outside of Palestine, whereby solidarity groups all over the world joined and have been implementing creative nonviolent resistance actions.

The results have been impressive and nonviolent resistance is once again taking hold in the occupied territories and around the world. It’s happening on an even greater scale internationally, thanks to the current communication technology that was not available in the 1980s. Among the many victories of BDS abroad, several major corporations have had their hands forced by activists. Thanks in large part to BDS affiliate, CodePink, AHAVAs flagship store in London was forced to close. Veolia, the French multinational corporation lost billions of euros worth of municipality contracts for its involvement in building infrastructure to illegal Israeli settlements and it is now facing financial meltdown. Most recently, Agrexco, a major Israeli exporter of produce, that come primarily from illegal Israeli farms on stolen Palestinian land, has been forced to liquidate its assets after being unable to pay its creditors thanks to the efforts of BDS.

These are just a few examples of the results of cooperation between civil society everywhere who have heeded the calls of BDS. This popular movement is taking a life of its own and is accompanied by similar movements, like the International Solidarity Movement that I mentioned before, the Free Gaza Movement, the flotillas, and the Russell Tribunals, to name a few. Important international figures across the world have signed on and taken action against Israel’s apartheid. These are prominent individuals in their fields – literary figures, musicians, clergy, military personnel, activists, journalists, and more – who have taken very public stands against Israeli Apartheid.

This is huge! It’s importance and impact should not be underestimated.

It hits right at what I said was one of Israel’s weakest points. Israel pours billions of dollars into creating and maintaining the image of civilized and enlightened country, and they panic when the world starts to see the reality of their ongoing campaign of ethnic cleansing; And they panic even more when they’re called out on it.

That’s why they’ve been so freaked out lately passing one fascist law after another to try to police what people say, what they publicly remember [anti-Naqba law], or what they choose to buy or not buy [anti-boycott law]. They’re freaked out by internationals bearing witness to their war crimes; so they’ve passed a series of laws to prevent non-Palestinians from going into the West Bank and Gaza. Then there’s the racist loyalty oath – the list goes on. They are absurd, fascist laws that only show how scared Israel has become of our growing solidarity movement, BDS, and nonviolent actions inside Palestine.

This ground swell should not be minimized!

Then came Arab Spring!

It caused a seismic shift in power away from the ruling elite toward the people and toward popular action and democracy throughout the Arab World. Arab Spring inspired and galvanized our movement even more. Arab Spring is now going global, as it’s not a stretch to make a connection between the demonstrations in Tahrir Square and the ongoing Occupy Wall Street in New York.

Against this backdrop of people power, the Palestinian Authority, unilaterally [and I don’t mean ‘unilaterally’ in that it excluded Israel; but ‘unilaterally’ in that it excluded Palestinians] decided to make a bid for statehood at the UN. At no time did Mahmoud Abbass address the people he supposedly represents. Even at the UN, when he made the bid for statehood, he was still speaking to everyone except us. That, to me, is a bad sign that history could be repeating itself here. It looks too much like the past, particularly when we see images of Palestinians giving Abu Mazen a heroes welcome home; it reminds me of the fanfare of the PA’s arrival in the West Bank after Oslo, which is clear to everyone in retrospect to have been nothing more than a ruse to quiet popular nonviolent action in order to give Israel the time it needs to continue its colonial endeavors in the occupied territories.

I would also add that the timing of this UN bid is questionable, as it comes when the PA is severely weakened by the damning revelations of the Palestine Papers leaked on Al Jazeera. Why, after 20 years of negotiations, does the PA make this move? I’m sure it didn’t just dawn on them that Israel was only ever just trying to buy itself time to create facts on the ground. They’re not stupid and they understood Israel’s colonial expansion and goal to take everything they could. The truth is that the PA was scared. Their power was threatened by Arab Spring and by the fadeeha el kobra (the great scandal) of the Palestine Papers. So, this move may well have been just a cynical calculation to restore the power of the PA. I hate to think the worst – that it was actually orchestrated with Israel and the US for the same purpose and what we’re witnessing is theatre.

Caution to the PA/PLO

So, I’m worried about this UN bid. However, I also think, that if certain conditions are met and the same mistakes of the past are not repeated, it can still be salvaged as a good thing. For that to happen, the PA (or PLO, it’s hard to know who is who anymore) must ensure that the following happens:

1. They must go forward full force with what they started, without compromise.

I hear that at least one Security Council member is trying to get the PA to alter the text of the UN bid, in exchange for voting in favor of statehood, so that it excludes the ability to take any retroactive grievances to the International Court of Justice.

If this happens, it would be a disaster for us because it would be a back-handed way for the PA to abdicate the Right of Return (which they have no right to do) under the cover of statehood.

We cannot let them do that and I think, Zahi, it’s time for another petition with 600,000 signatures to deliver to Abbass like the one Al-Awda delivered to Arafat when he was considering the same thing.

The second part of going full force forward is to take the bid to the General Assembly once the SC sends it back with the promised US veto. I’m very happy to see that the PA has been pushing for Palestine membership in various UN bodies, including, most recently, UNESCO.

2. Don’t stand in the way of popular movements. Already the PA is sending police to bust up peaceful anti-occupation protests, in essence, working for the occupier. This has to stop. The PA cannot be allowed to seize the power on the ground and tamp out the spread of nonviolent resistance.

3. Become a force that creates synergy among our various efforts to achieve our rights; make the UN bid into something that adds to the ongoing efforts instead of something that stifles them. For example, the UN bid can open up legal avenues for a whole new arena for our struggle, but don’t let that come at the expense of tamping a growing nonviolent resistance movement.

4. They should become a force of unity; not only between Gaza and the West Bank, but also among Palestinians of 1948; Palestinians still in refugee camps in other nations; and Palestinians in the Diaspora, whether in Arab nations, the Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia and other parts of the world.

5. Finally, they should not assume that they will maintain power without popular blessing, which will not remain if this UN bid stifles our efforts or gives away an iota of our Right to Return.

This is a warning to the PA that accepting statehood at the expense of retroactive grievances (i.e. everything we’re fighting for, including the Right of Return) will have terrible consequences for us all.

Time to abandon calls for Two-State Solution AND the One-State Solution

That said, I want to emphasize why I think we are living in the most opportune time we’ve had in the history of this conflict.

The kind of bottom up power we’re witnessing is fertile ground for us. This is the arena in which we are more powerful. This is the field where we win because Israel has no real defenses against us in this arena. Our greatest power lies in the moral command of our cause – we are the indigenous people fighting for freedom, struggling to live dignified lives in our own homeland. We didn’t come from Poland or Russia, or France, or Germany, or any other place. We are the natives of the Holy Land in ever sense of the word “native” – historically, ethnically, culturally, legally, and even genetically, we are the natives. If you take samples of our DNA, the results will show genetic markers specific to that region of the world. Our strength is in our roots.

It is no accident that Israel is so often so busy uprooting our olive trees or unearthing our cemeteries to cover them over with new structures. Because the truth is that there is no forensic evidence linking most Israelis to the land. So, they have been busy either destroying traces of our existence or trying to claim it as theirs. But that is really an impossible task, now matter how much they’ve already destroyed. Palestine is passed down from one generation’s hearts and memories to another. Ben Gurion could not have been more wrong when he predicted that “The old will die and the young will forget”.

But we are where we are now and they are here with us, whether we or they like it or not.

And the bid for statehood has been made, regardless of how we feel about it.

So what is the path forward?

Before we answer that, we have to decide what is the end game. What is the result we want to achieve. Unfortunately, and after 65 years of this struggle, we still do not have a truly unified call.

People often ask me which proposal do I support, the one state or the two state. It seems those are the only two proposals in people’s mind. That it has to be one or the other and we end up struggling for one or the other. We waste precious time and energy debating the merits of one over the other. Which is better, we ask: The Two State Solution - ostensibly based on the 1967 borders; or the One State Solution - which would presumably include all of Palestine for all her inhabitants.

The fundamental problem with both of these proposals is that they are concentrating on the political construct and of statehood. And I think that is the wrong approach.

If we drill down to what we really want, what we all want and all can agree on: it is to live dignified lives in our own homeland, with full human and civil rights accorded to everyone there equally regardless of religion.

I know this sounds a lot like the One State proposal; but it differs in that it is simply a call for basic rights. It is not a call for a particular political construct because frankly, it doesn’t matter what the political construct looks like, as long as all our basic human rights are upheld, and that includes our natural right to return and live in our own homeland.

This, in my opinion, is what we should be working toward. Calling for our natural rights as human beings and as an indigenous people is what unifies us all. To be accorded human rights is our rightful inheritance. It is the rightful destiny of human beings not to be subjugated, expelled or oppressed. The call from Palestinian Civil Society, which originated inside the occupied territories, is the best starting place framework. In any event, we are in great need of a consensus for a unified and uncompromising call founded on the goal of human dignity. This can form the frame of reference for whatever actions we take.

So, I would say, do NOT think in terms of a political construct; but to think in terms of human rights. In terms of human dignity and human worth that is not measured by religion. This is a goal that will unify us and will strengthen our collective efforts that pour into the same movement for freedom.

Palestinian Resistance: Failures of the past and why it’s time to abandon negotiations

For the most part, Palestinian resistance has been allowed to develop on two major fronts, and mostly exclusive fronts.

1. Armed resistance.

Although we have the right to resist foreign occupation by any means available to us, including armed resistance, I think this is not an effective strategy for us.

For starters, rocks, moltov cocktails, or even homemade rockets, don’t stand a chance against armoured tanks, warplanes and some of the most sophisticated death machines known to man. This is simply not an arena where we can gain any ground because here we are weak in this regard. We do not have a military or any necessary hardware to change this fact.

More importantly, armed resistance ultimately erodes the singul most important power we have. As I already mentioned, it is the moral superiority of the cause of justice and human rights, against their cause, which is the desire for power and an ethnoreligious pure society.

2. The second main path that the Palestinian leadership has taken us has been negotiations. This too is and always was a fundamentally flawed and moral unsound approach, because it assumes a very denigrating assumption:

That our basic rights as human beings, our rights as the indigenous people of the Holy Land, and our freedom, are things to be negotiated for; as if our rights, enshrined in all tenets of international law, and our freedom are mere bargaining chips to be traded for clean water or bread.

And yet, the PA has continued along in what every one of us knows is a sham. This peace process was never designed to lead to a life of dignity for Palestinians. It was never meant to lead to a viable Palestinian state. Netanyahu’s speech made that clear. Israel’s actions for the past twenty years have made that clear. Why else would they continue, on a daily basis, to expropriate Palestinian land and turn it over for the exclusive use of Jews being invited from all over the world to come and take what is not theirs? Why else would they continue their policy of home demolitions unabated? The Peace Process was always a ruse to buy Israel more time to take more and more and more and ultimately wipe us off the map.

You only need to look at how the map has changed over time to see the truth in that statement.

The current map proves that. How could this not be apparent to the PA? In fact, even as he submitted the bid for statehood, Mahmoud Abbas made the mind boggling statement that there was no substitute for negotiations.

He is, in fact, very wrong. In fact, there is no other instance in history where an occupied and oppressed people has been expected to actually negotiate with their oppressors for freedom and for basic human rights.

When Nelson Mandela was in prison and change began to sweep over South Africa, some of his comrades were being released from prison. Nelson Mandela too was offered a deal for his freedom. P. W. Botha offered him freedom if he would renounce violence. Mandela refused the offer, and his now famous letter, he explained that "Only free men can negotiate."

He was the only one of his comrades to remain in prison by the end of the 1980s. His uncompromising insistence on implementing the full range of human rights and freedoms to Blacks equal to Whites inspired us all and eventually culminated in bringing Apartheid to it’s knees.

Likewise, Rosa Parks did not negotiate with the white driver or white passengers to take her rightful place among the rest of humanity on that bus. She stayed put with all the force she could muster. Her insistence on being recognized as fully human, fully worthy, inspired the Civil Rights Movement.

Martin Luther King and Malcom X didn’t enter into negotiations to beg the government to let Black folk use a few more water fountains, or to be allowed to buy a house in just a few white neighborhoods.

Yet that is precisely the indignity we are accepting upon ourselves by engaging in these negotiations. By continuing to negotiate for basic rights, we are accepting the premise that we cannot be fully worthy human beings unless Israel says so.

This is Our Time

With Arab Spring, with BDS, ISM, Free Gaza, and the massively growing international solidarity, this is our time!

It’s our time to say that only free people can negotiate. It’s our time to take our seat on the bus and refuse to get up for anyone. It’s our time to boycott. To divest. To proudly link arms with every human being willing to stand with us, no matter who they are – be they Jewish, Christian, Muslim, gay or straight, Black or White or any color in between. And to remember the solidarity shown to us, as our beloved Edward Said once said.

If we continue on the path of nonviolent resistance that we started in the occupied territories and throughout the world, and with the solidarity of justice-seeking people everywhere, I believe with all my being, that we will eventually be in a position to say to the Israelis in no uncertain terms, and with a force they will have no choice but to listen to, that they are welcome to stay as our equals, but not as our masters.

You may think that that day is unrealistic. You might say that because we’ve been conditioned to see our weakness. To see how outgunned we are. How outmaneuvered we’ve been. Or how little clout we have in the halls of power compared with the intense influence that Israel wields on the most powerful countries. But focusing on these things obscures how powerful we really are.

I read an article recently by someone I very much admire and whose words I often like to read; but this particular article was one that I disagreed with because it reinforces this sense of powerlessness, which is quite harmful. The article was written when everyone was speculating whether the PA would follow through with the UN bid and the premise of the article was that no matter what happens, Israel will win, whether Abbas follows through or not.

I not only disagree with the premise, but I think that this kind of defeatist outlooks really hurts us. Yes, I know it’s true that Israel can make any US President jump when they say jump; but I don’t think Israel is feeling much like a winner right now.

How triumphant do you think Israel feels with the world turning against them? Peoples of the world are seeing them for the apartheid state that they are and their growing isolation surely doesn’t feel very triumphant to them. It surely doesn’t feel triumphant to them to essentially lose their two major allies in the region, Egypt and Turkey, within the span of one year.

And by believing that we are powerless, we’ve allowed every Israeli to think they can dictate our destiny to us. Just take for example Benny Morris, who said on Cross Talk a few weeks ago, quote:

“I wish the Palestinians would return to the negotiating table to which they had been invited repeatedly, and do so seriously in good faith and negotiate in good faith. If they don’t want to do that, the Palestinians will continue to suffer.”

Translation: “Do as Israel wants or you will continue to be bombed, killed, deprived, oppressed, and systematically robbed.” In fact, that is happening even when we do negotiate as Israel wants; but the point is that you can see from this statement the level of arrogance that pervades every sector of Israeli society.

We Are Powerful & History is on Our Side

While it is true that we don’t have the military capabilities nor do we have anywhere near Israel’s clout among the ruling elite of powerful nations, we are not powerless.

In fact, we are unrivaled in our power on the ground level internationally. Our struggle for freedom is the longest running and best known around the world. Harnessing that advantage is the path we must continue to take.

Taking our case, not to the UN or the US State Department or to the UK or France; but to the populations of the world is where our energy should be focused.

- It’s to the universities that have been signing onto the academic boycotts;
- To consumers who do not want to buy blood products;
- To the churches and synagogues and other religious institutions that understand the ungodliness of ethnic cleansing and who are making sure that their trusts are not invested in Israel’s war crimes
- To the municipalities and the labor unions who are divesting their pensions from Israel in order to affirm their belief in universal human dignity regardless of ones religion
- To the artists and musicians and writers and filmmakers who do not want their names or creations associated with Israel’s Apartheid
- To our fellow US citizens who do not want their tax dollars spent in support of ethno-religious entitlement and exclusivity, especially when our school districts are teetering on bankruptcy and the unemployment is knocking on the door of 10%.

We cannot lose on this path. You don’t need to take my word for it. History is replete with examples that prove what I’m saying. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel.

And we don’t need to continue down a path of denigrating and racist negotiations. We are a native people who deserve to live in their native homeland with full human rights. It’s that simple.

And so to the new sound bite that Israel issued (which is being parroted by the Obama administration, Congress, and nearly all mainstream media commentators): “there are no shortcuts to peace”, I would like to offer these truths:

“Palestinian freedom is non-negotiable”
and “Human Rights are non-negotiable”.

Our message will resonate – maybe not with the ruling elite, but certainly with civil society and ordinary people who adhere to principles of justice and fair play. Because,

Our demands are self-evident truths that we should pursue without apology, without negotiations, without compromise, and without fear.

That’s how every freedom movement achieved its goal before us, and that is how we will achieve ours. THAT is our most effective path forward, not negotiations.

Miral, A Palestinian Disappointment

2011-04-10T20:07:00.001-04:00

Susan Abulhawa reviews the film "Miral" in the Palestine Chronicle

I didn’t get a sneak preview nor was I among the VIPs who attended the premier of Miral at the UN General Assembly. I had to wait for its release in a nearby theatre, which luckily turned out to be only an hour away in Philadelphia. That means I had read and heard plenty of reviews of the film before I actually watched it. They were mixed and varied reactions, but I think I was able to leave them outside the theatre before I entered so I could decide for myself. There was one thing, however, that I couldn’t leave at the door: my Palestinian-ness. So, I went in wanting to like the film. I was holding my breath hoping to see a compelling Palestinian narrative, told by a Palestinian woman who lived at Dar el Tifl, the orphanage where I too had spent years of my adolescence in the early 80s.

Miral is the story of four Palestinian women of different generations and circumstances: Hind el Husseini, an unmarried heiress from a prominent Jerusalem family who founded Dar el Tifl and devoted her life to empowering young Palestinian girls; Nadia, a 1948 Palestinian (Palestinians with Israeli citizenship) who leaves home to escape persistent rape by her stepfather but was never able to outrun her own demons; Fatima, Nadia’s cellmate in an Israeli prison; and finally, Miral, Nadia’s daughter who goes to live at Dar el Tifl after her mother, Nadia commits suicide.

I knew that Israel and its various American lobbying wings had protested the showing of this film at the UN, claiming it to be anti-Israel. That gave me even more hope that I was about to watch the first honest portrayal of life as a Palestinian growing up under Israeli military occupation. By the time the film was over, however, the only reason I could fathom for such protestations was that Miral is perhaps the first semi-mainstream film to show Palestinians as something more akin to human rather than monsters to be reviled or pathetic and destitute refugees to be pitied. Indeed, Miral succeeds in showing a human face to Palestinians. Pittance and basic as that might be – to be recognized as fully human, even if only in a film – it is perhaps a feat after six decades of little more than the damaging and painful stereotypes.

My reaction to the film was mostly cerebral because it failed to pull me in emotionally. If I were to depict the film graphically, I’d draw a more or less flat line. There was one exception and it is this scene: Miss Hind is standing alone by the gates of the orphanage and then the film cuts to her funeral. The abrupt transition knotted my throat with the realization that I never got a chance to say good bye to that incredible woman who took me in when there was no other safe place in the world for me. I never got a chance to thank her, or tell her how profoundly she touched my life. So I cried in the theatre for the loss of el Sit Hind, as we called her. Although my waterworks have more to do with my own memories and regrets, credit must also be given to Hiam Abbas, whose portrayal of Miss Hind was authentic and brilliant. In fact, it was Hiam’s acting that made Hind Husseini’s story shine above the stories of the other three women.

There were a few “insider” bits in the film that only those who knew Miss Hind would have noticed. When a baby left by the mosque door is brought to her, she takes it and remarks that the name “Hedaya” might be suitable. Hedaya means “gifts” in Arabic and it happens that that baby was a real little girl whom Miss Hind later adopted. Hedaya was a headmistress of sorts when I lived at Dar el Tifl. She was a student when my mother lived there many years before me and the rivalry between the two of them meant that Hedaya didn’t like me much. I smiled and silently thanked Rula Jebreal for writing her into the script. In a way, it seemed a gift from Rula to Hedaya, who looked after us, even if she wasn’t always very nice.

In addition to Hiam Abbas’ excellent portrayal of Miss Hind, Alexander Siddig, who played the role of Miral’s father, was also believable and well-done. On the other hand, why Frieda Pinto was chosen to play Miral eludes me entirely. Every time she opened her mouth, all I heard was a Hindi accent. Her acting, too, fell far short of the role. For example, what could have been poignant or emotional points in the film – when she thanks “Mama Hind” or when she learns that the father she has known her whole life was not biologically related to her – ultimately felt insincere and contrived. The role of Fatima was even more badly done that at times it seemed she was merely reading from a teleprompter. I can’t blame the actor solely. The script was awkward and Fatima’s story seemed incomplete. The character tells us that she decided to plant a bomb in a crowded theatre to ‘make them suffer like they make us suffer.’ Yet all we see of her suffering is that she lost her job as a nurse after helping wounded Jordanian soldiers escape back to Jordan. As a Palestinian, of course, I know the suffering she’s talking about, but someone just watching the film will have no idea. Herein are the two biggest problems with this film, both of which have to do with the political aspect. On one hand, there was too much politics; and on the other, there was too little of it.

By too much, I mean that the political story overshadowed the human one such that it often felt like the characters were created to serve as mere vehicles to deliver a political message. While the use of art to illuminate a political reality is an honorable literary and artistic tradition, I feel that the artist’s or writer’s foremost loyalty should be to his or her characters, not the political, social, or historic backdrop. A writer’s mandate is to tell the story of their characters with honesty, humanity, and authenticity; in doing so, the backdrop and back stories emerge. Unfortunately, Miral gave center stage to the political situation, from which characters emerged as a supporting cast. That said, I do understand how easy it is to fall into that trap as a writer. When the political reality has defined your whole life, created wounds and kept them bleeding for as long as you can remember, that is the part you want the world to know about. You want to scream about a system of oppression that sees you as less than human. It’s hard not to and I can understand this shortcoming of the film. But it’s the reason the film does not succeed as a work of art.

This brings me to the worst and most unpalatable, even unforgivable, aspect of this film. I’ve saved the bad for last; it’s the ‘too little’ part. Someone with no background on the realities of this wretched conflict will walk away from Miral with the sense that it’s a dispute between two essentially equal sides who simply don’t see eye to eye. There was no real hint of the gross imbalance of power or the racially motivated destruction of life that inches deeper and deeper every day into what little remains of Palestine to Palestinians. No hint of the apartheid system employed as a means of slow ethnic cleansing. Even when it came to the bloody orphans of Deir Yassin, we are told that “soldiers” killed their parents. Anyone with knowledge of history or the social circumstances of the time would have known that the residents of that village would have likely been screaming warnings to others to run because “the Jews are here”. The word “soldier” then referred to the British and I can’t help but believe that the use of that word was meant to tiptoe around the fact that terrorist Jewish gangs butchered civilians in home after home in that village. At one point we see the British flag lowered and the Israeli flag raised, perpetuating the idea that Palestine was never there. These are just some examples of a fundamental dishonesty that underpins Miral.

Moviegoers watching what little is shown of this reality will likely judge Israeli actions as justified, however distasteful. In other words, the minimally negative light in which Israel is shown is contextualized. Not so for Palestinians. Take for example Schnabel’s treatment of what could have happened to Israelis in a movie theatre when Fatima leaves a bomb under the seat [it never goes off, btw]. We see their innocent faces, one by one. They’re just like us, ordinary people just going to see a film. We see an unsuspecting couple making out, kissing in their seats. It’s not an emotional scene at all. But it does set the stage to give soldiers justification later on to beat Miral. The actions of the Israeli soldiers thus have context. On the other hand, Fatima seemingly decided to blow up a theatre full of people because she lost her job.

Another striking failure of this film is the scene of a home demolition. Schnabel shows us a random family being told to leave their home and then we see the walls of that home crumble as an unseen soldier demolishes it. Racially motivated demolition of Palestinian homes is a constant and lately accelerated reality for Palestinians. There are plenty of real footage of these evictions and subsequent destruction of homes that could have been rendered in the film. The reality of this monumentally traumatic racist policy is that children are often seen scrambling to save what little they can of their books and toys. Israeli soldiers rip people from their homes kicking and screaming. Neighbors come out to help and are met with brutal suppression by soldiers. Women cry, they raise their prayers to the heavens for mercy. The despair of the families contorts their faces into expressions that shatter a human heart with outrage and sadness. There was none of this in that in Schnabel’s interpretation. His treatment of what could have been an immensely emotional scene was nearly comatose. We see the stoic patriarch of the family clearly upset and the viewer possibly feels pity for him. There are no scattered personal belongings. The home seems empty when it’s destroyed. There are no traumatized children and next to nothing of the true human reaction to the intentional destruction of one’s home, one’s only refuge.

Footage of the first Intifada looked like street rioters faced with good police doing their job to restore order. There was nothing of Israel’s “break their bones” policy, or of their specific targeting of children, who were left with nothing to do but roam the streets when Israel enforced a “no school” ignorization policy for Palestinian children. This context – of the sheer brutality and racism of Israeli policies toward Palestinians – was largely missing. I’m not saying that a Palestinian film must incorporate all of these elements. But if you’re going to include it, do it with honestly, not obfuscation. To the extent that any of the realities on the ground were shown, it seemed almost like a preemptive framing of Israel’s ethnic cleansing, which is increasingly being recognized around the world. Ultimately, Miral is a Zionist’s cinematic rendering of a Palestinian story, replete with leftist Zionist messages. And this reviewer is frankly tired of other people telling our story for us, especially of Zionists framing who we are and what our motivations might be. I haven’t read the book or the screenplay to know how much of the film was Rula and how much was Schnabel. But I do know that there are Palestinian films that far exceed Miral in artistic expression, honesty, and authenticity. Salt of the Sea, by Annemarie Jacir, comes immediately to mind.

Finally, watching Miral was an important lesson for me personally because I am now looking at a contract that will potentially turn Mornings in Jenin into a film. I feel more strongly now that I must have a greater role in writing the screenplay.

All we have now is our story, our heritage and history, our humanity, and the truth of how we are being wiped off the map as a people. It is not appropriate to compromise our truth so the West might inch closer to seeing us as fully human. I feel this is what happened with Miral. It compromises our collective narrative to appease and it lacks the essential human dimension we expect to compel and provoke emotion. The excellent acting of Abbas and Siddig, the new ‘human face’ of Palestinians, and the inspiring life if Hind el Husseini just aren’t enough to redeem Miral.

A Voice for Her People: Susan Abulhawa's Writing Life Interview

2011-04-10T20:04:00.004-04:00

by Matt Rees

Susan Abulhawa is a unique voice in contemporary fiction. She’s a Palestinian, born in Kuwait to a refugee family. She spent some years in an orphanage in East Jerusalem, her ancestral city, before university education in the US and she now lives near Philadelphia. She’s the founder of a wonderful charity, Playgrounds for Palestine, which aims to bring merry-go-rounds, slides and see-saws to the children of the West Bank and Gaza, as well as to refugee camps in Syria and Lebanon. As you’ll see from this interview, Susan’s writing life revolves around a leap she made at which many would balk. So that she could write her wonderful novel Mornings in Jenin, she mortgaged her house, went to a war zone, and returned with a passionate drive to write. What she wrote is a wrenching portrayal of a Palestinian family from 1948 – the foundation of Israel, which Palestinians call the “nakba,” the catastrophe – on through the civil war in Beirut and the second intifada. Mornings in Jenin is a bestseller whose poetic prose carries the resonance of the best Arabic fiction (writing which, due to the relative paucity of translation into English, we rarely get to enjoy; Susan wrote her novel in English). This many-faceted book has at its heart the most profound and tragic love-story imaginable. As a depiction of a violent history and of the bonds between lovers and siblings, Abulhawa’s novel gives a human voice to a people so often cast as a stereotype. How does she do it? Here’s what she has to say:

How long did it take you to get published?

It felt like forever. There was an 8 years span from the time I started writing Mornings in Jenin until it was finally published in 2010.

Would you recommend any books on writing?

I’ve never read a book on writing. I’m told that I should and I probably will one of these days. When I was writing Mornings in Jenin, I did get one as a gift. But I didn’t get beyond the first chapter. I don’t think my hesitation had anything to do with the book’s merits though. I just put it down when it talked about developing an outline or sketch of the story. I knew that I would never do that – write an outline or think ahead. So I just didn’t invest any more time in something that was going to lead me in a direction that my brain would not appreciate. I’m not a planner by nature. I follow my heart, usually into disasters and heartaches. But sometimes it takes me into miracles. Regardless, I’m just not very good at following instructions. The book I got was more or less that, or at least that’s how I perceived it and that’s why I put it down. That said, I just read Tony Parson’s answer to this exact question and he mentioned writing at least 1000 words a day. Apparently he got that advice from a book and I’m taking it from him. It’s a good bit of advice and has served me well for the past few days since I read it.

I’m sure Tony will be glad to hear it. What’s a typical writing day?

I would get up at 5am, make coffee, and sit at my keyboard and write straight through until it was time to wake my daughter up for school at 8am [she was in elementary at the time; now she’s up at 6 so that timing doesn’t work as well]. Then I’d start again from 9:30 until noon. The rest of the day I spent helping out at my daughter’s school, running or yoga, and a million other things single moms do.

That was then, when I had mortgaged my house for its full value so I could afford not to work and concentrate on writing. Now I’m paying off that mortgage and have to work a full time job as a medical writer, putting those biology degrees to some use. So I write when I can. Usually in the wee hours of the morning, in rare moments of blissful quiet and solitude, on trains, or when I’m depressed and therefore don’t care if everything else piles up.

How would you describe what “Mornings in Jenin” is about? And of course tell us why’s it so great?

It’s a story of love, and how that love is shaped by violence and persistent oppression – Love between a farmer and his land; between siblings; between a man and a woman; a mother and her children; a father and his children; love between friends. I think it’s up to readers to decide if it’s great or not. I’ll say that I put my heart into it. That ultimately my intentions in writing this story distilled to a single purpose – to be true to the characters by telling their stories with honestly, authenticity, and humanity.

“Mornings in Jenin” was written in English, but the style is much more poetic than a typical American novel. Were you aiming to capture something of the style of Arabic prose?

I wasn’t aiming for that at all, but I do think that it seeped in because Arabic poetry was my first exposure to literature. Arabic was the first language I learned to read and write and my early writings were Arabic poetry. I came to the US at the age of 13 and from then on, my education and social environment was all conducted in English. Now, my command of English is more sophisticated than my command of Arabic; but it seems my “literary foundation” is Arabic poetry; and that came through my English writing.

What’s your favorite sentence in all literature, and why?

There are so many sentences that I read and re-read just to savor and contemplate their beauty, both in English and in Arabic. I don’t have a single favorite. But when I read this question, the first thing that came to mind was a passage from One Hundred Years of Solitude. So I looked it up to quote it accurately, and here it is: “…and that is how in the ripeness of autumn she began to believe once more in the youthful superstition that poverty was the servitude of love….Madly in love after so many years of sterile complicity, they enjoyed the miracle of loving each other as much at the table as in bed, and they grew to be so happy that even when they were two worn-out old people they kept on blooming like little children and played together like dogs.”

What’s the best descriptive image in all literature?

Again, while there are many perfect and beautiful descriptions, what comes immediately to mind is a line from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. He describes the austerity of Puritan society as “accomplishing so much precisely because they imagined and hoped so little.” In that same novel, when Hester Prynne is standing on the scaffold, Hawthorne writes that “the world was only the darker for this woman’s beauty, and the more lost for the infant that she had borne.”

There are profound truths in each of these sentences. You can follow them straight into the human soul.

How much research was involved in your book and how did you carry it out?

40 years of life. A lot of books, oral histories, documentaries. A lot of watching people, observing, contemplating. And of course, the internet.

Where’d you get the idea for your main characters? Is there an autobiographical element to Amal’s life?

Although Amal is a very different person than I am, I suppose there are some parallels between Amal’s life and mine. She attends Dar el Tifl orphanage in Jerusalem and that chapter is essentially autobiographical. I put Amal in my life for the three years when I lived there. Amal also ends up in the United States, alone with a daughter. That is another aspect where our lives are similar. Otherwise, she is not me.

You’re also an activist. What makes you want to write a novel, rather than devoting the time purely to activism? Does creative writing make you a better activist?

I’ve been called an activist and may have even accepted that label at times, but I’m not entirely comfortable with it because it’s a word that resonates with others in vastly different ways. I’m a person who opposes injustice when I see it. I write about it, expose it, and work against it however I can. I’m also a person who looks for beauty. I write about it, expose it, and work to promote it. I think we’re on this planet to lift each other up and leave gentleness in our place when we leave. That’s how I would describe my “activism”. Both that, and my first novel are made from love. Both are true expression of who I am. I don’t know if one aspect feeds the other, nor do I think it matters. What matters to me is that I continue to learn, grow, and give to others through both ‘activism’ and literary endeavors.

What’s the best idea for marketing a book you can do yourself?

I’m really not very good at marketing at all. I suppose some book sales have come from my activism, specifically from people who knew of me through a children’s NGO that I founded years ago, called Playgrounds for Palestine.

Most of the book sales have been generated by word of mouth, I think. I do make it a point to write back to any reader who takes the time to write to me. I’m also happy to add them as Facebook friends when they request it. So, I suppose being more accessible to readers is a plus. Sometimes readers learn of my book when I write an opinion piece online or op-ed in a newspaper on current affairs. Other than that, I’ve not done much myself to market Mornings in Jenin. That might explain why I still have to keep a day job. 

What’s your experience with being translated?

Mornings in Jenin is now in 26 languages. Arabic is due to be released in October of 2011. That’s the only one I can personally verify. Overall, I have a lot of respect for translators – the good ones who really make an effort to render the intended meaning of a text and not just the literal translation, which as you know can be very different. I heard a funny thing about the Dutch translation. When Amal is in the orphanage, the girls warm their hands on a steel pipe that vents steam from the kitchen. It was their only source of heat and the girls would scramble just to put their hands on it. The scene was: dozens of girls reaching over each other to get a moment’s worth of heat. The translation was literal; so the “hot pipe” that girls clamored to touch ended up having a very phallic connotation that had nothing to do with the meaning of that passage in the book.

Did you write other books or published fiction before “Mornings in Jenin” was published?

No. I had contributed to anthologies and a scientific textbook. Other writings were single publications of literary nonfiction, political commentary, and scientific or medical papers. Mornings in Jenin is my first novel. It actually marks the first time I even thought of myself as a writer.

What’s the strangest thing that happened to you on a book tour?

A local orthodox Jewish community in New York protested and harassed the bookstore into canceling my book signing. When they did, other members of the community held a counter protest and lobbied the bookstore to honor their invitation to me. So the store “compromised” and asked me to come, but only for a signing, not a reading. I was downgraded.

What’s your weirdest idea for a book you’ll never get to publish?

A book on the relationship between Muslim people and dogs. I come from a Muslim family and I love dogs. These two identities can be irreconcilable because the dominant belief among Muslims is that angels do not enter a home where dogs dwell. While there are scriptures and Hadith to back this up, there is also evidence that Muslims have it all wrong…or at least they don’t have the whole story, according to history. That said, the risk of being misunderstood is quite high compared to the low chance of actually changing attitudes toward dogs – those loyal, self-sacrificing, love machines.

رواية " صباح في جنين" , لسوزان ابو الهوى

2011-02-16T08:56:00.000-05:00

باللغة السويدية للروائية الفلسطينية- الأمريكية سوزان أبو الهوى

اراب نيهيتر-ستوكهولم

15-2-2011

للمرة الأولى تطل على القارئ السويدي رواية مفعمة بالأحاسيس الإنسانية والسياسة لما مر به الشعب الفلسطيني منذ تشريده من بلاده عام 1948 وحتى اليوم، مرورا بحرب 1967, ومعركة الكرامة وحرب أكتوبر والإنتفاضة الأولى والثانية. قصة " صباح في جنين" الرواية الأولى للكاتبة الفلسطينية – الأمريكية سوزان أبو الهوى تحكي قصة عائلة، من قرية عين حوض، تمتد لأربعة أجيال تذكرنا بقليل أو كثير برواية الشهيد غسان كنفاني "عائد إلى حيفا"، والمسلسل التلفزيوني " التغريبة الفلسطينية" للدكتور وليد سيف.

تبدأ الحكاية بعائلة يحيى أبو الهيجا، صاحبة كروم الزيتون في قرية عين حوض منذ عام 1940 التي تعيش بأمان وسلام وهناء , إلى أن أتت حرب 1948 فتحطم السلام وعلى المدى الطويل، وهُجّر أهل القرية وقرى ومدن كثيرة، ولجأ يحيى وأبنائه، حسن ودرويش إلى مخيم جنين. خلال تلك الحرب وتحت زخات الرصاص والقتل قام جندي إسرائيلي بسرقة الحفيد إسماعيل من حضن أمه داليا زوجة حسن، وهكذا تخسر داليا وطنها وابنها الرضيع.

أخذ موشي أفرام الطفل ليقدمه هدية غالية لزوجته التي فقدت والديها واعتدي عليها من قبل جنود النازية ونجت منهم، بعد أن فقدت القدرة على الانجاب.

أراد موشي تعويض ضعف زوجته بطفل فلسطيني تتبناه، وبذلك ينشأ إسماعيل، تحت إسم دافيد آفرام، الذي يخدم فيما بعد كجندي إسرائيلي في جنين منكلا بعائلته الأصلية, فيضرب ويعذب أخيه المقاوم يوسف عند أحد الحواجز. يوسف الذي قدر بأن معذبه هو أخيه إسماعيل الذي أصيب وهو رضيع بجرح ترك ندبة على وجهه الذي يشبه وجه يوسف.

ترزق داليا بفتاة تسميها آمال، الشخصية التي تنقل الأحداث في الأبواب ال 48 من الكتاب المؤلف من 380 صفحة. تصاب أمال في حرب عام 1967 بطلقة في بطنها وهي مختبئة في حفرة في مطبخ المنزل، ويختفي أبوها حسن،ربما استشهد، الأمر الذي يفقد داليا زوجها وعقلها، ومن ثم تصارع المرض لتتوفى في عام 1969.

بينما تتابع آمال حياتها بعيدة عما تبقى من أهلها في مدرسة داخلية، دار الطفل العربي" في القدس، حيث تحصل على بعثة دراسية في أمريكا. و يتزوج يوسف من فاطمة التي أحبها وينتقل مع المقاومة الفلسطينية إلى الأردن وبعدها إلى بيروت ويرزق بطفلة يسميها فلسطين.

يتصل يوسف عام 1981 من بيروت هاتفيا بأخته آمال التي تهرع لتسافر إليه وتقابله في مخيم شاتيلا. وهناك تقع آمال في حب الطبيب ماجد، صديق عائلة يوسف، وتتزوجه وتحمل منه، وتعود إلى أمريكا لمتابعة إجراءات السفر لماجد ويوسف مع عائلته.

أثناء ذلك تغزو إسرائيل لبنان، عام 1982، فيخرج رجال منظمة التحرير الفلسطينية من بيروت بوعود أمريكية لحماية من تبقى من الفلسطينيين هناك. في تلك الحرب تخسر آمال زوجها الذي أحبت بقصف على بيته، وتقتل فاطمة ببقر بطنها وإخراج جنينها, وتذبح ابنتها فلسطين في حضنها. أما يوسف المفجوع فيقوم بتفجير نفسه بالمقر العسكري الأمريكي في بيروت فيقتل ويجرح عشرات الجنود، ويتهم بالإعلام الأمريكي بالإرهاب. ويتم على إثرها ملاحقة آمال في أمريكا مخابراتيا من جراء فعلة أخيها يوسف .

تتابع آمال حياتها مع ابنتها سارة في أمريكا جسديا بينما روحها وقلبها وعقلها و جذورها في وطنها فلسطين، الأمر الذي انتقل إلى الإبنة سارة، التي أرادت العودة للوطن والتعرف عليه وعلى من تبقى من أفراد العائلة. في هذه الأثناء يشارف موشي على الموت ويبوح بالسر لإبنه دافيد " إسماعيل"، الذي يبدأ التفتيش عن عائلته ليصل إلى آمال، طرف الخيط في أمريكا.

تعود آمال وسارة إلى مخيم جنين ويلتقيا بإسماعيل، الذي طلقته زوجته بعد معرفتها بأنه عربي، ولحق بها أحد أبنائها وتركها الآخر ليعيش مع أبيه ،دافيد. يهاجم الجيش الإسرائيلي مخيم جنين عام 2002 ، ويرتكب المجازر هناك، أثنائها كانت آمال وسارة في زيارة إحدى صديقات الطفولة في المخيم. وجه أحد الجنود الإسرائيليين بندقيته إلى سارة ليقتلها فسارعت الأم بحماية ابنتها فتلقت الرصاصة التي أسقطتها على الأرض التي أحبتها. قام اسماعيل بدفن أخته آمال. في ظل تلك الأحداث تظهر شخصية البروفسوراليهودي آري، الذي كان صديق الطفولة للجد حسن.حيث كان حسن قد أنقذ حياته في حرب 1948، ليصطحب أري سارة إلى عين حوض ويدلها على بيت عائلتها هناك , يطرق الباب على العائلة اليهودية التي أتت من بقاع الأرض، مستعمرة لتسكنه، ويتم طردهم من هناك.

يبدو أن هذه الرواية، التي ستترجم إلى 19 لغة، وهي رواية تتصدر الأدب المهجري المقاوم، وحسب تقييم نقاد وأدباء سويديين، ستكون من روايات الأدب العالمي، رغم أنها التجربة الأولى لسوزان أبو الهوى، الباحثة في علم الادوية والكيمياء الحيوية .

يقول فيها الروائي السويدي الكبير هينينج مانكل: لم أقرأ في حياتي رواية جذبتني عن فلسطين كهذه. لقد زودتني بالإدراك وهيجت أحاسيسي وعواطفي، كما يمكن للروايات العظمى أن تفعل.

وكقارئ فلسطيني للرواية فقد رأيت نفسي في عدد من المشاهد التي صورتها لنا أبو الهوى.

وأكثر ماتطابق في الرواية مع سلسلة حياتي هو

أولا: صورة الغلاف التي تظهر سيدة بثوب فلسطيني تحمل على كتفها طفل بعمر سنتين تدير وجهها مغادرة موقع تنتمي إليه. صورة تتطابق مع حمل والدتي لي على كتفيها وكان عمري سنتين، وكانت تحمل في رحمها إبنها الثالث، وجائها المخاض أثناء مسيرها على الطريق من صفد إلى لبنان ليتم نقلها إلى مشفى في حلب لتضع طفلها الثالث.

وثانيا مسيرتي في العمل الفلسطيني في المخيمات وفي الشتات.

وثالثا زيارتي التي قمت بها إلى صفد، عام 1989، حيث وقفت أمام بيتنا ومنعت من الدخول إليه من قبل العائلة اليهودية التي جاءت من أصقاع الأرض واستولت عليه.

ورابعا إصرار الفلسطينيين جيلا بعد جيل على حمل القضية في قلوبهم وعقولهم ونقلها إلى الرأي العام الدولي لمتابعة النضال، وكاتبة الرواية السيدة سوزان المولودة في الكويت عام 1970 خير برهان على الأجيال التي ولدت بعد النكبة بعقود,

لكنها تفهم القضية كما هي بتفاصيلها الإنسانية الدقيقة.

قراءة وتعليق رشيد الحجة

صحافي فلسطيني مقيم في أوبسالا - السويد

We Are All Egypt!

2011-02-06T18:40:00.000-05:00

In the Huffington Post, February 4, 2011

Rightly proud of their history, Egyptians like to announce, especially to other Arabs, that Egypt is the world's mother. The Arabic version is far more tender and poetic "Misr Um el Dounia"! Lighthearted banter will often ensue between Egyptian and non-Egyptian friends when that statement is brought into the conversation.

Today, I think every Arab will concede that, indeed, Misr Um el Dounia!

The culture that is a pillar of history itself is, once again, unfurling a new era and, as one revolutionary protestor said, "the world before January 25th is not the same after January 25th." With such spectacular passion, courage, endurance, and undaunted will, the people of Egypt are ushering in a new world order in the Middle East. Everyone, apparently except Hosni Mubarak, knows that Hosni Mubarak is finished. But his ousting is not merely the end of one Arab tyrant. The awe-inspiring unity of voice and purpose of Egyptians is the realization of an old Arab dream, one for which songs, poems and anthems have been written and sung in every Arab home for generations. It is the dream of liberty, an end to colonialism and its aftertaste that lingers throughout these ancient lands. It is the dream of self-rule and unity among peoples of the Middle East who share a common destiny.

The people have always been fundamentally united. This is evident by the demonstrations in other parts of the Middle East in solidarity with Egyptians. It is evident by past demonstrations throughout Arab streets in opposition to attacks upon Palestinians and Lebanese Arabs. The revolutionaries packed into Tahrir Square are many of the same who have in the past carried placards reading "We are all Palestine." As a Palestinian, I now march the streets with a placard that reads "We are all Egypt."

Incredibly, now we are seeing footage of confessions from the so called "pro-Mubarak" crowd who admit to having been paid to create chaos and violence in what had been an orderly and peaceful assembly of millions of human beings. We already knew that many of those who came on camels and horses wielding whips, knives and swords, were part of Mubarak's central police. It is clear now that others were prisoners who were released with small amounts of money on the condition that they join the forces of disruption.

El Abtal, the revolutionaries, did not budge and their nonviolent demonstrations have resumed with the same awesome unity and order. Even some of those individuals who were paid to rally for Mubarak have changed sides to join their countrymen in Tahrir square. Millions without work or school, of all faiths, of all economic backgrounds, are standing shoulder to shoulder, sharing food, water, praying together, listening to Egyptian songs between calls of the Adan, chanting, and restoring their dignity as a free people.

There's another saying in Arabic that doesn't quite translate into English. But I'll give it a try: The people of Egypt have raised the collective Arab head. "Awlad Misr byirfa3o ras el Arab kolohom!" In other words, Egyptians inspire us all and fill our hearts with pride and love and hope.

Susan Abulhawa is the author of Mornings in Jenin and founder of Playgrounds for Palestine.

Mubarak: Destroying Egypt to Stay in Power

2011-02-06T18:39:00.001-05:00

In the Huffington Post, February 2, 2011

In the face of a spectacular and inspiring people's revolution, Hosni Mubarak's first tactic to hold onto his despotic post was to send his police thugs into the streets as looters and rioters to provide him with an excuse to do what he does best: clamp down and terrorize Egypt's citizens. But thanks to the incredible solidarity of the people, this subversion was unsuccessful. Neighborhood watch groups repelled and 'arrested' those looters and turned them over to the army.

When demands for Mubarak's departure grew louder from from an even bigger crowd, he dug his nails in deeper, staking his claim to the few remaining months in his tenure of torture and intimidation of the Egyptian people.

As his intransigence stretched out, so did the protests and the risk of chaos grew. It was easy to predict, as I did in a Twitter post, that Mubarak was waiting for mayhem to ensue naturally, due to the inevitable food and fuel shortages, so he could step in to "restore order".

But the people's resolve for freedom, civil liberties, and government transparency could not be conquered by exhaustion or hunger.

Now we see that Mubarak's latest tactic is to send in armed gangs, mostly from his notorious police force, to ignite riots.

Mubarak is intentionally trying to provoke a bloodbath in Egypt, his own country!

Why?

In a pathetic speech to his people, he claimed to hold onto power for the sake of maintaining security and order. In fact, the protests, involving millions of people were entirely peaceful and miraculously orderly. It was Mubarak who actively changed that and any bloodshed from this moment forward will rest entirely on his shoulders. He should be tried and punished for the violent consequences of his maniacal ego that will not accept the clear, definitive, passionate, and unified voice of the people to rid Egypt of his tyranny.

There is little doubt that some in the US and Israel are quietly pushing for Mubarak to maintain power. We have heard and read statements that confirm this in one way or another. Nearly every American network has counted Mubarak's contributions to Israel's interests as his crowning achievement, as if Israel should be the priority of every Egyptian.

What arrogance! What hypocrisy for the West not to stand, unequivocally, behind a people's undaunted cry for freedom!

In truth, few in the West want Arabs to have such freedom or democracy. People who hold the reins of their own destiny are more difficult to deal with because they tend to demand fair play, justice, and respect for themselves. They also might not sit silently, for example, the next time Israel decides to rain the death of bombs, missiles, and white phosphorous onto the already battered, hungry, and besieged people of Gaza.

May God give the Egyptian people the strength to hold their ground and may their revolution for democracy and freedom spread like a brushfire through the Arab world.

Make no mistake, it is only a matter of time, and especially if Mubarak employs more terror against his own people in order to stay in power.

A Defining Moment for President Obama's Leadership

2011-02-06T18:04:00.001-05:00

In the Huffington Post, January 23, 2011

A UN resolution is being circulated among the fifteen members of the Security Council and it is likely that all but the United States will accept it. The language of the resolution affirms what previous UN resolutions and international law have already established: That Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, namely all territory beyond the 1967 borders, including East Jerusalem, are illegal.

Although President Obama has made it clear that he opposes these settlements and considers them an impediment to peace, it is expected that the Obama administration will, nonetheless, follow previous administrations in being the only dissenting voice on the Security Council when it comes to resolutions that hold Israel accountable to internationally accepted standards. And by "dissent," I mean veto.

On one hand, a veto by the US can be regarded as nothing new. The US consistently provides this kind of political cover for Israel's crimes. Sometimes an international uproar follows but it dies out without discernible repercussion. But there are reasons to think that a veto of this resolution might not pass so easily. Consequences might be apparent on both the national and international front for the US.

For starters, Obama has been publicly humiliated by Prime Minister Netanyahu's rebuff of an unprecedented American bribe in return for a pittance and temporary adherence to international law to stop settlement construction on confiscated Palestinian land -- partially and for only 90 days. This public rebuke of the President of the United States came not long after other slights, including the announcement of new illegal settlement construction on the eve of Vice President Joe Biden's arrival in Tel Aviv last year.

Israel's public belittling and disregard for its only ally and chief benefactor amounts to biting the hand that feeds it. For Obama to now step in and give sanction for something he openly and repeatedly opposed will further expose his weakness and inability to stand up to a tiny country that arguably owes its survival to the US. A veto will also further increase the isolation of the US from the consensus of the rest of the world, which is increasingly less tolerant of Israel's unrelenting crimes and its lack of accountability.

While the US could withstand such isolation in previous times, there are several reasons why this may not hold true now. For starters, the US is embroiled in two losing wars in the Middle East that make the ire of the "Arab street" (which is sure to be spurred by yet another veto) more relevant. The repressive Arab dictators, who routinely suppress displays of mass political dissent and unrest, might be more apt to hear popular anger at a US veto and press matters more vigorously with the UN given the sweeping popular revolution we are witnessing now in Tunis. Furthermore, Israel's harm to US interests was underscored last year by unprecedented political commentary from the highest echelons of the US military, when Commander General David Petraeus made it clear to the White House that Israel's intransigence was jeopardizing American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The proposed UN resolution merely affirms previous UN resolutions (some of which were even authored by the US), basic tenets of international law, and the already articulated position of the Obama administration regarding Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land. It is a minimal recognition of the right of the indigenous population of Historic Palestine to exist as a free people in their own homeland. For Obama to veto this resolution now would surely corroborate the perception of him as a cowering and ineffectual president who cannot withstand the political pressure that Israel exerts domestically in the US. The risk of igniting more popular movements in the Arab world that could overthrow US clients in the region is more real now than ever, given the inspiration from Tunisians. Finally, Obama would risk further harm to American troops in two already damaging and draining wars. Republicans would surely exploit all of the above, which, given the current economy, could easily translate into a one-term presidency.

But what if he allows the resolution to pass?

It is well known that standing up to Israel carries great political risk, including a one-term presidency, as in the case of Jimmy Carter and George Bush Senior, both of whom merely threatened or tried to withhold American tax dollars and loan guarantees for Israel to curtail its flouting of international law. However, rewind a few presidencies to Dwight Eisenhower, the first American president who stood on principle against Israel despite enormous domestic pressure, withheld US tax dollars and even threatened UN sanctions if Israel continued to occupy the Gaza Strip and the Gulf of Aqaba it had invaded and captured in 1956.

On top of that, this all occurred during the home stretch for reelection, a risky time to incur Israel's ire, and Eisenhower's advisors were begging him to back down lest he lose the election. But President Eisenhower had had enough of Israel's trickery and flouting of the law and his resolve was echoed by his Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, who said: "I am aware how almost impossible it is in this country to carry out a foreign policy not approved by [the Israelis]...but I am going to have one. That does not mean I am anti-Jewish, but I believe in what George Washington said in his Farewell Address that an emotional attachment to another country should not interfere."

The rest is history. Ben-Gurion, Israel's Prime Minister, was forced to turn and leave Gaza. Eisenhower, of course, was reelected. There are many differences that can be cited between the circumstances of Eisenhower's stand and that of Carter's and later Bush, Sr. Eisenhower took his case directly to the American people. On a radio address to the nation, he said:

We are now faced with a fateful moment as a result of the failure of Israel to withdraw its forces behind the Armistice lines, as contemplated by the United Nations Resolutions on this subject.

I would, I feel, be untrue to the standards of the high office to which you have chosen me, if I were to lend the influence of the United States to the proposition that a nation which invades another should be permitted to exact conditions for withdrawal... We cannot -- in the world, any more than in our own nation -- subscribe to one law for the weak, another for the strong .... There can only be one law -- or there will be no peace.

Such is the language of leaders. Rather than back down from a politically inconvenient principled stand, Eisenhower appealed to, and trusted, his people's basic sense of justice and fair play, by revealing the moral clarity of his position. No president since has displayed that kind of leadership vis-à-vis Israel, and our nation continues to pay a heavy price a result. It is for this reason that the US position on this UN resolution may well be a defining moment for President Obama's leadership.

Susan Abulhawa is the author of Mornings in Jenin and founder of Playgrounds for Palestine

Susan on Al Jazeera's Listening Post about "Breaking the Silence" group in Israel

2011-02-06T17:59:00.002-05:00

Susan on Al Jazeera's "Listening Post". On this link, the story beings at minute 15:00; susan's part begins after minute 23:00
http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/listeningpost/2011/02/201125105032750179.html

Susan on Blogtalk Radio with Barbara Howard

2011-01-16T09:29:00.000-05:00

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/therecipebox/2010/11/30/for-book-lovers-susan-abulhawa-on-mornings-in-jeni

The AntiSemitism to Come? Hardly

2010-12-22T19:08:00.002-05:00

(In addition to the Huffington Post, this essay was also published in el Pais in Spanish and Aftenposten in Norwegian)

Bernard-Henri Levy, the French pop star of philosophy and intellectual elitism, authored an essay that featured my novel, Mornings in Jenin, as one of three distressing developments that led him to ask "is there no end to the demonization of Israel?" It was titled: "The Antisemitism to Come." The other two happenings that concern him, he says, are the growing boycott of Israel and an acclaimed documentary film called Tears of Gaza.

First, a look at Mr Levy's targets:

1) Mornings in Jenin is a work of historic fiction, where fictional characters live through real history; and I encourage anyone to do their own research to verify the accuracy of the historic events that form the backdrop for the novel. 2) Tears of Gaza is a documentary film by Vibeke Lokkeberg, in which she reveals the horrific impact of Israel's bombing of Gaza in 2008 to 2009, especially on children and women. 3) The activists participating in and encouraging an economic boycott of Israel are ordinary citizens all over the world who are heeding the call of their conscience to take a moral stand against a grave injustice that has gone on far too long against the indigenous population of Israel and Palestine; namely, the Palestinian people.

Rather than offer an intelligent analysis of any one of these three things that trouble him, Levy essentially resorts to name-calling. He simply slaps on the word "antisemitism" to discredit any negative portrayal of Israel. This word -- with its profound gravity of marginalization, humiliation, dispossession, oppression, and ultimately, genocide of human beings for no other reason but their religion -- is so irresponsibly used by the likes of Levy that it truly besmirches the memory of those who were murdered in death camps solely for being Jewish. And I thank Kurt Brainin, a Holocaust survivor who wrote a touching letter expressing exactly that in response to Levy.

Nowhere in Levy's essay does he identify anything truly antisemitic in any of the three elements to which he refers. Because he cannot. If he could, I think he would. In fact, the people who today are being marginalized, humiliated, dispossessed, and oppressed for the sole reason of their religion are Palestinian Christians and Muslims. That is the real antisemitism of today.

Israel has been wiping Palestine off the map, expelling us and stealing everything we have. All that remains to us is less than 11 percent of our historic homeland, now in the form of isolated Bantustans, surrounded by menacing walls, snipers, checkpoints, settler-only roads and the ever-expanding Jewish-only settlements built on confiscated Palestinian property. We have no control over our own natural resources. The amount of water one receives is based on one's religion, such that Palestinians must share bathing water, while their Jewish neighbors water their lawns and enjoy private swimming pools. According to Defence for Children International, in Jerusalem alone, Israel has imprisoned 1,200 Palestinian children this year, who are routinely abused and forced to sign confessions in Hebrew, which they do not understand. Israel routinely targets Palestinian schools and has created a full generation of lost souls in Gaza, who are growing up knowing only fear, insecurity, and hunger. Documents pertaining to Israel's brutal siege of Gaza and its merciless attacks on that civilian population show the cold mathematical formulas designed intentionally to produce food shortages and hunger in Gaza. Christian Palestinians have all but been wholly removed from the place of Jesus' birth. And on goes the inhumanity -- the constant expulsions, home demolitions, systematic theft, destruction of livelihoods, uprooting of trees -- especially olive trees which are so precious to Palestinian culture -- curfews, closures, institutional discrimination, and on and on.

Instead of upholding the best of Jewish ideals that champion justice and the uplifting of the oppressed, Mr. Levy rushes to Israel's defense, repeating the tired mantra of "the only democracy in the Middle East." Apartheid South Africa, too, called itself a democracy, while it mowed down little boys in Soweto (with arms, incidentally, supplied by Israel). So did the United States, during a time when at least 20 percent of its population lived as slaves, bought and sold like cattle.

Equally outrageous is Mr. Levy's wholesale labeling of anyone who criticizes Israel as "antisemitic". For exposing Israel's extensive crimes, we must face the defamation that we are immoral, racist, and hateful. In the case of Vibeke Lokkeberg, Levy makes it a point to inform the reader that she is a former model, ignoring her accomplishments as an experienced filmmaker and author. Apparently, in addition to suggesting she is racist, he perhaps wants readers to think she is also not intellectually qualified to create anything of merit. This tactic of attacking and trying to discredit the messenger rather than address the actual message is an age-old propaganda method.

Mr. Levy accuses us of "demonizing Israel", when in fact, all we do is pull back the curtain, however slightly, to show a dark truth he wishes to keep hidden. I suspect that Mr Levy feels, as most Jewish supporters of Israel do, that he is more entitled to my grandfather's farms than I am. After all, that is really the foundation of Israel, isn't it? The question that should be asked is "why?" and "how?" Why should Jews from all over the world be entitled to enjoy dual citizenship, both in their own homeland and in mine, while we, the natives of Palestine, languish in refugee camps, a diaspora, or patrolled ghettos and bantustans? How is it that a country with one of the most powerful militaries in the world, that has been committing well-documented war crimes against a principally unarmed civilian native population for six decades now, is depicted as the victim? And worse, the real victims, who are trying to resist their own extinction, are depicted as the aggressors?

Nelson Mandela once said: "We know all too well, that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians." Now, in addition to such notable personalities speaking out, people all over the world are slowly joining the struggle for justice and freedom for Palestinians; and it seems inevitable that Israel's systematic ethnic cleansing will at last be opposed by a critical mass of people that will compel Israel to abandon its institutional racism, such that the native non-Jewish population might at last live with the same legal and human rights as Jews in the Holy Land. This is clearly what really worries Mr. Levy.

My Encounter with a Zionist in Crisis with her Beliefs

2010-11-01T20:52:00.001-04:00

By Susan Abulhawa

I received a lovely letter from a reader who identified herself as a Jewish American. To preserve her anonymity, I’ll call her 'Sally'. She wrote that she loved Mornings in Jenin, even though the historic backdrop of the narrative did not reconcile with what she learned about Israel growing up. It seemed a heartfelt letter and thus worthy of a similar response. I did not see Sally as a Zionist or even as a Jew. I saw her as a woman, a mother, and a fellow writer. So, I was delighted when she came to my panel debate with Alan Dershowitz at the Boston Book Festival, and when she asked if we could talk more after the event, I was happy to invite her to lunch with a group of friends. She was soft spoken, with a gentle demeanor and through the course of the table conversation, I realized that we also shared similar beliefs regarding some matters of spirituality.

Sally and I continued to correspond occasionally, both privately and with a group of people who were at lunch that day. Soon, she let me know that one of her friends was now questioning her own Zionist beliefs because of something she heard at her Temple. As a result, Sally’s friend had chosen a list of documentaries to watch. Naturally, I asked what those documentaries were and she sent a list of about 12 or so films that were made 1) to show how awful Arabs are, 2) to present rosy pictures of normalization of Israel’s illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, 3) to show what Israel’s aggression against Lebanon was like from an Israeli paratrooper’s perspective!, or 4) to depict mixed Arab and Israeli towns as a paradise where everyone is equal.

I find that when people are truly searching to understand, they can find the right sources, especially in this information age. Likewise, when people are confronted with an uncomfortable reality that jars an existing belief, they can turn around and find what they need to prove that they were right all along. Reading the list that Sally sent to me, it was easy to see what category she fit into. Here is the response that I sent to Sally:

If I were trying to get a better view of something, i'd at least look for ones made by third party sources who don't have their own personal beef in the situation. Although with this list, she'll be able to put her head back in the sand and say she did her research and it all proved she was right before.

Sally’s response was immediate and indignant. I’ll spare you the full email, but suffice it to say that she was offended that I had “insulted” her dear friend, and she closed with this:

I know you are much, much more invested in all of this than I and therefore more passionate than I, but please give me the benefit of the doubt before writing words that insult my friend. You may not realize it, but we are two people who will spread our knowledge with others and that can only help you. I am also getting ideas for my next book that can include this message as well.

Let me start here: I know you are much, much more invested in all of this than I and therefore more passionate than I.

It is true that I am “much, much more invested” in “all of this” than she is. How much more? I’d say at least a few centuries more, several generations of grandparents more, many acres of family property more, and one shattered and dispossessed family more. And what is “all of this”? That would be my country. My history. My family. My countrymen. My only heritage and only inheritance. The place where I belong. The place to which I am not allowed to return because of my religion. “All of this” is a collection of refugee camps where people have lived their entire lives in destitution – honorable people, of nobility and peasantry alike, who have been stripped of everything for the sole crime of being born into their own skin.

Now: but please give me the benefit of the doubt before writing words that insult my friend.

As if it is not insulting to me that an American woman, with absolutely no ancestral, historic, cultural, or biological ties to the land, should announce to me that she needs to do more research to determine whether or not I indeed have a right to inherit my grandfather’s farm, reserving, of course, her own right to my grandfather’s farm.

But the most egregious insult is this: You may not realize it, but we are two people who will spread our knowledge with others and that can only help you. I am also getting ideas for my next book that can include this message as well.

I suppose she misunderstood my intentions in corresponding with her in the first place. Perhaps she thought I was trying to win her over, to “help [me]” spread the word. So let me make one thing very clear, to her and to anyone who isn’t sure if they should maintain that they are entitled to keep Palestine as their summer home away from their own home. You are standing on the wrong side of history. That’s why the ground feels shaky beneath your support of Israel. You are standing on the side of a military occupation that daily strips people of their belongings, of their livelihoods, of their dignity and cuts off the very food they eat, the water they drink. You are on the other side of Nelson Mandela’s legacy. The other side of every native people’s struggle for self-determination, for human rights and for basic human dignity. It is not for me that you educate yourself. It is for your own soul. For your own conscience. I am comfortable on solid ground. It is physically defenseless, but morally impenetrable ground. Whatever research you chose to do and what you choose to learn is for you and only for you. My correspondence was with you, as a woman I thought I could be friends with. I was not asking for your help. But one day you will be asked for something else. Perhaps your children or grandchildren will want you to explain what you did when Palestinians were being wiped off the map so you and every Jew around the world could have dual citizenship, a summer home, if you will, on top of my grandparent’s graves.

Palestinian Novelist, Susan Abulhawa, Thrashes Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz

2010-10-31T19:56:00.001-04:00

Trainwreck in Boston: Dershowitz calls a Palestinian novelist a bigot and a Holocaust-denier

Five Books

2010-10-31T19:41:00.001-04:00

Susan Abulhawa chooses FIVE BOOKS on Palestine

Humanizing a Shrinking Nation

2010-08-11T07:53:00.002-04:00

Writer Susan Abulhawa discusses Palestine and the power of the novel
22.7.2010
by Rebecca Louder

On the morning of May 31st, mere hours after the Israeli flotilla attack, the Grapevine met with Palestinian-American writer Susan Abulhawa at her hotel. Susan was in Reykjavík on her way back from the Lillehammer Literature Festival in Norway. She held a small event at The Culture House to promote her latest book, Mornings In Jenin, a newly edited version of her first publication The Scar of David. The book follows the story of several generations of Palestinian characters and their personal struggles with location, identity, family and human rights. In America, her book has caused a controversial response for its pro-Palestinian stance, but she has continued to be outspoken on the topic despite the backlash. The writer seemed distraught as the charged events of the morning loomed over our interview.

How do you think fictional works can impact the global discourse on Palestinian-Israeli relations?

I think that writers, artists, musicians, poets and filmmakers in any society of conflict have a unique role to play in bringing the issues in the headlines to a human level. That’s the power of art and literature, in general—to remind us of our common humanity and that there are human beings who live the headlines and experience them in ways that are not abstract, in ways that a reader would experience them. You can take an individual through history through the lives of characters that they can get to know, that they can love or hate or what have you. Regardless, they get to know them and they can see conflict and the politics or the history through their eyes. That’s the beauty of a novel, as opposed to non-fiction or history textbooks that have more of a sterile, distant prose.

What is your personal experience in all of this?

My parents were refugees of the 1967 Six Day War. Neither of them can really return to their place of birth nor live in the homes where they were born, or even visit their parents’ graves. I lived in Jerusalem when I was a little girl. Actually there’s a chapter in the book based on that, it’s called ‘The Orphanage.’ That’s really the only part of the book that is autobiographical. The entire historic background is non-fictional. It was real important to me that the historic background and the historic characters, the locations, the seasons, the fruits, etcetera, that all be real. The characters are fictionalised.

Your work has been quite controversial in the past. Why do you think that is?

I think anything that humanises Palestinians or criticises what Israel is doing creates a fury, basically. People try to shut you up. It’s not just me; it’s anybody, whether it’s academics, intellectuals, artists, what have you. That’s kind of a trend. There’s always a campaign of character assassination in trying to marginalise people.

Pro-Palestine sentiments are often deemed as being terrorist-sympathetic or anti-Semitic. Have you had these accusations launched at you?

Precisely. I think everybody who expresses this has. I don’t accept it. I’m neither a terrorist nor an anti-Semite. There’s nothing in anything I do or say that would indicate that. I think readers are smarter than that. I think they’ll see that when they read the book.

How has the book been received?

In Norway, and other European countries it’s gotten really good reviews. In America it has gotten limited reviews, but what it has gotten has been very good. Most journalists and reviewers in the United States just don’t want to touch it.

It’s not the first time. There was this wonderful play called My Name Is Rachel, it was based on the life of Rachel Corrie [American activist with the International Solidarity Movement who was crushed to death by an IDF bulldozer in 2003]. They managed to shut that down. There’s all this art by Palestinians, beautiful stuff that just reflects what’s inside of them, what they see, what their lives are about. It gets shut down. There have been several instances in the United States where that has happened. It’s because there are very powerful forces in the United States that don’t want Palestinians to appear human, because then it becomes harder to justify killing them. It becomes hard to justify raining death on this civilian population that really has nowhere to go and nowhere to run.

What is your hope for the region?

Of course there is hope. To me the solution is, and always has been, very clear. It’s the simple application of international law and the application of the universality of human rights. The declaration that Palestinians are human beings who are worthy of human rights. We are the native people of that land. We’ve been there for centuries, if not millennia, and everything has been taken from us. When the international community has the will to give more than just words and say that yes, we deserve the same rights that are accorded to the rest of humanity. That’s where the solution lies.

The West claims to value certain principles of human decency and equality, that they apply in their own countries yet support something entirely different in Israel. For example, nowhere in the West would any country allow the construction of neighbourhoods and settlements where only a certain group of people were allowed to live. No one would accept a housing unit for whites-only or having a road where only whites could travel, and yet that’s what Israel does. It’s a situation where human worth is measured on ones religion.

Palestine had always been a place where people of various religions lived. It had been a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic place and that’s the ideal, isn’t it? It should not be a place of exclusivity. It’s important that my words not be interpreted that Israelis should be kicked out or anything like that, because I don’t advocate that. That’s their country now. People were born there and live there. That’s where they’re from.

Why do you think the international community allows these human rights violations?

You’ll have to ask them. I don’t know. It’s hypocritical, it’s outrageous, actually. Luckily, the people of these nations are not necessarily on board and people of various countries are taking matters into their own hands. They are boycotting Israel and Israeli goods, and this flotilla, the Free Gaza movement, these boats have been travelling to Gaza from Cyprus carrying people from all over the world. These are ordinary citizens who have made history because they refuse to be silent in the face of what’s happening in Gaza.

People are literally and intentionally being starved to death in Gaza. Food is not allowed in or out, the economy has completely collapsed, the education system has completely collapsed. Eighty percent of Gazan children suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, a crippling psychological disease and entire generations are being lost. The international community is doing nothing about it. Ordinary citizens are taking matters into their own hands and delivering boatloads of aid. Then today we find out that Israel in fact boarded that flotilla and killed a few people. So it remains to be seen whether the international community will yet again be silent.

Do you have any hope that they won’t be?

Well, they’re already condemning it, but they always do. They give lip service to it and then they do nothing. So I don’t place any hope or faith in any of these leaders or the so-called official international community, but I do place a lot of hope and faith in the international community that’s made up of world citizens and people of conscience to speak up and not to let this continue. People can’t really say “I didn’t know”. It’s everywhere. Israel has been held above the law. They have committed war crimes for over six decades and have done so with impunity.

This is where literature comes in, in my opinion. In the West when you say ‘Palestinian,’ people automatically conjure these really negative images and that is in large part due to this propaganda campaign over the years to paint Israel as this poor, vulnerable nation that’s just trying to defend itself when in fact it is the aggressor. Israel manages to paint Palestinians as these crazy, irrational aggressors, and that it’s just defending itself against this principally unarmed civilian population. Palestinians have nowhere to run. It has no navy, no army, no air force.

But when I think of Palestine, I think of a beautiful people. I think of a long suffering and enduring nation that despite everything gets up every morning and goes to those damn checkpoints, tries to get to work, tries to get to school and go about their daily lives. I think of a rich culture and good music and good food and stupid jokes and proverbs. I think of human beings, and that’s what I hope this book shows.

2010-06-26T10:49:00.003-04:00

Reclaiming the Palestinian Story
To see oppression up close is different from reading about it. As a group of writers, artists, filmmakers and actors from various countries discovered recently at PalFest, the Palestinian Literature Festival

In the USA, the ‘Palestine-Israel conflict’ is principally told as a single story thread of a beleaguered Jewish state amidst irrational enemies. Palestinians are too often depicted as the aggressors or, when mentioning their suffering is unavoidable, they are described in the sterile prose of numbers and statistics. It is stunning how few Americans realize that for the past 60+ years, Israel has been systematically wiping Palestine off the map:

But perhaps that is changing.

I recently returned from PalFest, the Palestinian Literature Festival, where I had the privilege of seeing my country through the eyes of notable individuals who had never been there before. PalFest was to take place in the West Bank, an area significantly smaller than Connecticut; however, because Palestinians are not free to move about from one West Bank town to another, a centralized festival is untenable. So, PalFest travels to the audiences in each town instead.

For seven days and six nights, I was off an on a tour bus throughout Occupied Palestine with some 30 other writers, artists, filmmakers, and actors from the US, UK, Sweden, South Africa, Norway, Italy, and Spain. Although these were all well-read sophisticates, it seems none was prepared for the reality on the ground. Without exception, each participant was shocked by the system of apartheid that he or she witnessed. To see oppression up close is different from reading about it.

On our last bus ride, one PalFest participant asked me, “What was the moment for you?”

The first thing to mind was the most recent: a conference with Gazan teachers and students from three universities. It was a video-conference because we were denied entry into Gaza and Gazans surely are not allowed to leave their tiny sliver of land. They spoke to us about the inhuman siege since 2006, the barbaric month-long bombardment that one Israeli soldier described as putting “a magnifying glass looking at ants, burning them,” their polluted water, deteriorating general health, the unravelling of families, the tunnels that have been Gaza’s only lifeline for food and now the Egyptian underground wall that will seal off these tunnels. One young woman said she could live with the shortage of food, water and medicine, “but the intellectual siege” is intolerable, she said. For years, she hasn’t been able to get books to read, save what few can be smuggled in from tunnels.

Yet this was not the worse of what we heard or saw. There was the ghost town of Hebron, emptied of its native inhabitants, who have been terrorized by settlers into fleeing. The bypass, Jewish-only roads; the Jewish-only settlements on confiscated Palestinian property; the wall and system of checkpoints that surround, separate, and suffocate Palestinian towns; the tents housing families near the rubble remains of their demolished homes in Jerusalem; and the armed settlers and soldiers.

What seemed to surprise most, however, was that Palestinian society still teems with will and life and resolve and intellectual curiosity – that despite all the odds, they are not a broken people.

If I had to identify the moment now, it would be a comment made by my friend Dr. Rev. Mitri Raheb who took us on a tour of the place now best described as “The Little Ghetto of Bethlehem”. He articulated something I already knew but have never quite put into words. “They didn’t just steal our country, our homes and properties. They stole our story. We are the people of the Bible. The Bible is our story, but they have taken even that,” he said.

I have always understood that we are the descendants of the original inhabitants (including the Hebrew tribes) who converted between religions. But I’m not religious and our story springs from the native human narratives of the land. And now, as the first and second generations in the Diaspora can communicate in the languages of the West, our voice can be understood in ways it was not previously.

The world is at last listening, reading, watching, and sometimes taking action as we struggle to reclaim the things stolen from us. Through our own literature, art, poetry, activism, music, film, photography, and culture; through our humanity, we are reclaiming our home, our heritage, basic human rights, our dignity, and our story.

Susan Abulhawa is the author of Mornings in Jenin (Bloomsbury 2010) and founder of Playgrounds for Palestine

Interview in Frettabladid (Iceland)

2010-06-06T21:52:00.003-04:00

http://vefblod.visir.is/index.php?s=4110&p=94235

Vonin er allt sem við eigum
Þeir sem eru löngu búnir að missa þráðinn í því sem kallast ástandið fyrir botni Miðjarðarhafs ættu að fá sér friðsæla göngu út í bókabúð og ná sér í skáldsöguna Morgnar í Jenín. Hún er þörf áminning um hryllinginn sem Palestínumenn hafa búið við, kynslóð fram af kynslóð. Hólmfríður Helga Sigurðardóttir hitti höfund bókarinnar, baráttukonuna Susan Abulhawa, í vikunni.
Bókmenntir eru mikilvægur hluti andstöðunnar við ríkjandi hugmyndir. Palestínumönnum er svo ranglega lýst í vestrænum fjölmiðlum að fólk er hætt að líta á þá sem manneskjur.

Bókmenntir eru mikilvægur hluti andstöðunnar við ríkjandi hugmyndir. Palestínumönnum er svo ranglega lýst í vestrænum fjölmiðlum að fólk er hætt að líta á þá sem manneskjur. Ímynd fólks af Palestínumönnum er að þeir séu brjálaðir og ofstækisfullir. Bókmenntir búa yfir þeim töfrum að geta dregið hið mannlega fram í fólki. Með þeim er hægt að sýna fegurð fólks og menningar þess. Það er vegna þessa að bókmenntir eru öflugt mótstöðuafl. Það er erfiðara fyrir fólk að láta sér standa á sama um þig ef það skilur að þú ert manneskja." Þannig lýsir hin palestínska Susan Abulhawa, höfundur bókarinnar Morgnar í Jenín sem nýverið kom út í íslenskri þýðingu, ástæðu þess að hún hefur pennann að vopni.

Í Morgnum í Jenín rekur hver tragedían aðra. Atburðirnir sem lýst er í bókinni hafa allir átt sér stað og fjöldi fjölskyldna hefur mætt sömu skelfilegu örlögunum og sögupersónur hennar. Við lesturinn er erfitt að ímynda sér að Palestínumenn geti enn þá borið von í brjósti um betra líf. "Þetta er bara raunveruleikinn sem þetta fólk býr við. En bókin er líka full af ást og að lokum er það ástin sem bjargar aðalpersónum hennar. Ástin og vonin er það sem hefur hjálpað þeim að þola við. Vonin er eina leiðin til að halda lífi við svona aðstæður. Ef fólk missir vonina veslast það upp og deyr."

Berst fyrir betra lífi

Undanfarin ár hefur Susan helgað lífi sínu baráttunni fyrir Palestínu. Hún er meðal annars ein af upphafsmönnum verkefnisins Play-grounds for Palestine, sem byggir leikvelli fyrir börn á Vesturbakkanum, á Gasa og í flóttamannabúðum. Hún fer reglulega til Palestínu og þekkir vel þær aðstæður sem fólkið býr við. "Ég get ekki nægilega vel lýst því hvað aðstæður þarna eru hryllilegar. Enginn ætti að þurfa að lifa svona. Fólk þarf að fara í gegnum eftirlitsstöðvar oft á dag til að komast ferða sinna og er fullkomlega upp á náð og miskunn átján ára hermanns komið, sem er ef til vill ekki í góðu skapi. Ég mun aldrei skilja viðbrögð alþjóðasamfélagsins og leiðtoga sem enn eru að rökræða þessi mál fram og aftur. Þetta er svo sáraeinfalt. Ísrael hefur engan rétt á að neita fólki um mat, að ganga í skóla, byggja spítala eða veiða í hafinu. Eini tilgangur Ísraelsmanna með þessu er að tortíma palestínsku samfélagi."

Byggt á eigin lífi

Morgnar í Jenín er skáldsaga en vissir hlutar hennar vísa í líf Susan sjálfrar. Sem barn dvaldi hún á munaðarleysingjaheimili í Jerúsalem, alveg eins og ein af aðalsöguhetjum bókarinnar. Foreldrar hennar voru flóttamenn frá því í stríðinu árið 1967 en hún fæddist í fátækt í Kúveit. Hún bjó ekki hjá foreldrum sínum sem barn, vegna erfiðra aðstæðna hjá þeim, heldur hjá fjölskyldumeðlimum. Þegar hún var þrettán ára flutti hún til Bandaríkjanna en þangað var faðir hennar kominn. Faðir hennar staldraði ekki lengi við í Bandaríkjunum og frændi hennar, eini ættingi hennar þar, féll frá skömmu síðar. Hún var því alein í Bandaríkjunum strax á unglingsárum og var í fóstri þar til hún var nógu gömul til að sjá um sig sjálf.

Jenín breytti lífinu

Susan lærði líffærði og var við störf hjá lyfjafyrirtæki í Bandaríkjunum þegar fréttir bárust af fjöldamorðum í Jenín árið 2002. Þá fann hún sig knúna til að fara til Palestínu. "Það sem ég varð vitni að þar breytti lífi mínu. Þegar ég sneri aftur í lyfjafyrirtækið, eftir að hafa verið að grafa lík upp úr rústum, sló það mig svo sterkt að aðaláhyggjuefni hálaunaðra samstarfsmanna minna var að það stæði til að minnka við þá bónusgreiðslurnar. Þá sá ég að ég gat ekki verið þarna lengur. Guð var mér góður því stuttu seinna missti ég vinnuna," rifjar Susan upp og hlær. "Það var gott fyrir mig því ég var einstæð móðir og hefði ekki haft hugrekki til að hætta sjálf í vinnunni. Næsta dag lá ég í rúminu, grét allan daginn, og byrjaði að skrifa fyrsta kaflann í bókinni."

Það gekk ekki þrautalaust fyrir sig að fá útgefanda að bókinni. Susan var óþekktur höfundur og ekki hjálpaði þjóðernið eða umfjöllunarefnið til. Að lokum fann hún lítið útgáfufélag en vissi ekki að það var í fjárhagserfiðleikum. Þegar tíminn var kominn til að gefa bókina út var fyrirtækið farið á hausinn. Í millitíðinni hafði bókin hins vegar verið gefin út á frönsku. Í gegnum útgáfufélagið þar komst Susan á mála hjá breska útgáfufélaginu Bloomsbury og bókin var í kjölfarið gefin út á tuttugu tungumálum, þar á meðal íslensku. Í gegnum Bloomsbury í Bretlandi var bókin svo gefin út hjá Bloomsbury í Bandaríkjunum.

Ópólitísk í fyrstu

Á fyrstu fullorðinsárum sínum lét Susan sig pólitík lítið varða og féll ágætlega að bandarísku samfélagi. Það var ekki fyrr en hún fór að skrifa pólitískar greinar í blöð, komin á fertugsaldur, að hún fór að finna fyrir því að sumir litu hana tortryggnisaugum. "Þegar ég varð pólitískari og fór að láta í mér heyra fóru margir að líta mig hornauga. Og eftir 11. september hættu margir að tala við mig - það varð til bylgja af hatri á öllu arabísku. En það voru líka mótviðbrögð við þessu frá öðrum Bandaríkjamönnum. Yfirleitt eru Bandaríkjamenn góðar manneskjur, en þeir eru mjög barnalegir og hafa lítinn skilning á umheiminum. Í Evrópu finnst mér meiri skilningur - að minnsta kosti skilningur á því að Evrópa sé ekki endilega miðpunktur alheimsins."

Von um frið

Susan ber þá von í brjósti að einhvern tímann muni ríkja friður á milli Ísraelsmanna og Palestínumanna. "Hvort sem útkoman verður eitt, tvö eða tíu aðskilin ríki er mikilvægt að undir engum kringumstæðum verði mannslífið mælt eftir húðlit eða þjóðerni. Palestínumenn eiga að búa við grundvallarmannréttindi. Heimurinn þarf á að horfast í augu við það óréttlæti sem hefur verið látið ganga yfir Palestínumenn og biðjast afsökunar á því."

En hefur hún raunverulega trú á að Ísraelsmenn og Palestínumenn geti lifað friðsamlega á sama landi? "Sögulega er Palestína land margra þjóðerna og trúarbragða. Þannig á það að vera. Sagan sýnir að það er hægt að koma réttlæti á, án þess að þeir kúguðu snúi sér strax við og reyni að útrýma fyrrum kúgurum sínum, eins og margir virðast óttast. Sjáðu bara Suður-Afríku og réttindabarátta svartra í Bandaríkjunum. Það er engin ástæða til að ætla að þetta verði öðruvísi í Palestínu. Það var ekki byggt á neinu jafnræði, þegar fólkið sem lifði af helförina sneri sér við og fór sjálft fremja hræðilega glæpi á fólkinu sem fyrir var. Með því að veita Palestínumönnum sömu réttindi og Ísraelsmönnum er ekki verið að veita þeim nein völd yfir þeim. Palestínumenn vilja ekki lifa í hefnd eða við stöðugt ofbeldi. Þeir eru bara fólk sem vill fá að lifa sínu lífi með reisn."

A call to conscience, in the name of humanity

2010-06-04T06:13:00.002-04:00

I was on my way back from Norway and Iceland in the immediate aftermath of yet another of Israel’s “operations” against unarmed civilians. Its navy went at least 50 miles into international waters and boarded a global humanitarian flotilla from the Free Gaza Movement, which was carrying food, medicine, school supplies, and building material to the besieged and hungry people of Gaza. The boat had been inspected in Turkey by an independent sources as well as the Turkish authorities. Israel knew this. The human toll thus far is 9 unarmed civilians, murdered. Israel has refused to release their names and over 680 have been taken to unknown locations. By holding the only witnesses to this crime, Israel is stealing precious time to disseminate its propaganda and spin the story to its advantage.

Before anyone had a chance to react, Israeli PR and spokespeople were busy feeding stories and giving interviews. Their claim amounts to this: “Rioters” from all over the world left their lives to gather on a boat to lure Israeli commandos into international waters and proceeded to attack them with sticks and kitchen knives. These highly trained Israeli special unit soldiers with the most advanced and technological weapons known to man had no choice but to kill unarmed civilians on this boat. Thus, Israel acted in “self defense” against “terrorists” and organizations with “links to Hamas and Al Qaeda” – A mendacious mantra that has become tiresome.

The abuse of language does not stop there. Israel goes on to claim that its barbaric devastation of Gaza is an “embargo” and therefore legal – as if the intentional starvation and devastation of an entire people were legitimate!

The Free Gaza Movement was started by friends of mine – ordinary citizens of the world who refuse to hide behind “I didn’t know” or “What could I do?” as Israel has slowly turned Gaza into a death camp, where food and medicine are disallowed in sufficient quantities. The consequences are clear in reports from the World Health Organization – rampant malnutrition, with at least 10% of Gaza’s children having stunted growth for lack of food; where the education system has all but collapsed not least because Israel has bombed hundreds of Gaza’s schools and continues to prevent the import of books and school supplies; where Israel rains death from the sky onto this captive civilian population with no place to run or take refuge, leaving thousands dead and wounded and 80% of Gaza’s children suffering from post traumatic stress disorder, a crippling disorder that may well produce generations of lost children; where employment (not unemployment) hovers around 20%; where the sewage system cannot be repaired after Israel’s assault and clean water is a luxury few have; where fishermen are fired upon by the Israeli navy dare they try to catch a day’s food in their own waters; and where diabetics, asthmatics, dialysis and cancer patients must die because they lack the most basic medicines and cannot leave to get help in other countries.

So, as Gazans have been left by Israel and by the “international community” to trod in their own excrement, drink toxic water, beg for food, die of treatable diseases, wet their pants at night and quiver with fear in the arms of their equally bewildered parents, unable to work, to fish, or to get an education; unable to breath or to find hope in this tiny sliver of a prison land, world leaders meet to decipher the “competing narratives,” issue their impotent “statements” and summon their Israeli ambassadors for a slight smack on the hand.

Incidentally, these so called “rioters” and “terrorists” with international “terrorist links” include Hedy Epstein, an 85-year old Holocaust survivor, Mairead McGuire, an Irish Nobel Laureate, Henning Mankell, an renowned Swedish author, a baby whose name I do not know, a journalist for Al-Jazeera, and many other known and unknown extraordinary individuals from all walks of from a multitude of nations. They are my heroes. They are doing what leaders have failed to do, namely to stand up to extreme racism, tyranny and oppression. Not for one moment do I believe Israel’s lie that these individuals were carrying and firing guns.

What do you believe?

More importantly, what will you do?

My trip to Norway and to Iceland was my first in each country. I fell in love with both. The beauties of the lands were matched only by the warmth, humor and hospitality of their people. And so it is in the name of this first impression and new friendships, in the name of humanity, I call you to conscience – to ask yourselves what have Palestinians done to deserve such a fate? What have we done to deserve the world’s silence as Israel slowly and cruelly wipes us off the map and destroys our society, then kills those righteous individuals who try to show a minimal recognition of our humanity? And I call you to action – to take a principled stand, somehow, some way, even if your leaders don’t.

susan abulhawa is the author of Mornings in Jenin and the founder of Playgrounds for Palestine

Palestine/Israel: A single state, with liberty and justice for all, regardless of religion

2009-12-26T09:31:00.004-05:00

by susan abulhawa
and Ramzy Baroud

Prior to the establishment of Israel, Palestine had been multi-religious and multi-cultural. Christians, Muslims and Jews, Armenians, Greek Orthodox, to name a few, all had a place there; and all lived in relative harmony. Other nations fought wars and waged epic struggles to attain the kind of coexistence that was already a reality in Palestine.But while the world strives toward the noble truths that we are all created equal, Israel legislates the notion of a Chosen People with exclusive rights and privilege for Jews. Where countries have worked to integrate their citizens to create the richness of diversity, Israel is working in reverse, employing racist policies to "Judaize" the land whereby property and resources are confiscated from Christians and Muslims for the exclusive use of Jews. Where there is consensus that certain human rights are inalienable, Palestinians have lived subject to the whims of soldiers at checkpoints; of airplanes and helicopters raining death onto them with impunity; of curfews and restrictions and denials; and of violent armed settlers who fancy themselves disciples of God.

Living under Israeli occupation, in refugee camps or in exile, we Palestinians have endured having everything callously taken from us – our homes, our heritage, our history, our families, livelihoods, freedom, farms, olive groves, water, security, and freedom. In the 1990s, we supported the Oslo Accords two-state solution even though it would have returned to us only 22% of our historic homeland. But Israel repeatedly squandered our generosity, confiscating more Palestinian land to increase illegal Jewish-only colonies and Jewish-only roads. What remains to us now is less than 14% of Historic Palestine, all of it as isolated Bantustans, shrinking ghettos, walls, fences, checkpoints with surly soldiers,and the perpetual encroachment of expanding illegal Israeli colonies.

While the Palestine Authority has led us into a shrinking land mass, less water, more restrictions, ominous walls and merciless slaughter, notable individuals and popular movements have mobilized for Palestine as once happened for South Africa. Moral authorities like former President Jimmy Carter, Nobel Laureates Desmond Tutu and Mairead Maguire, and former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson have condemned Israeli Apartheid. Organizations supporting the Divestment and Boycott Campaign against Israel include religious institutions such as the Presbyterian Church, The World Council of Churches, United Church of Christ, Evangelical Lutheran Church, the Anglican Church, the Federation of European Jews for a Just Peace, among many others. It includes civil and professional organizations such as the National Lawyers Guild, the Irish Municipal, Public and Civil Trade Union in Ireland, as well as labor unions in Canada, Britain, and other nations. An academic boycott of Israel has spread throughout the UK and other parts of Europe and taken root in US universities across the country. The International Solidarity Movement has seen thousands of individuals come to the Occupied Territories to protect Palestinians from the violence of settlers during the olive harvest; to protect children on their daring daily journeys to school; and to bear witness to the inhumanity of military occupation. The Free Gaza movement has transported by boat hundreds of people willing to risk their lives to bring greatly needed supplies to the besieged people of Gaza. This Christmas, internationals will march to the Egypt/Gaza border to break this siege. These are but a few examples of growing popular support for the Palestinian struggle.

When compared with the accomplishments of these grassroots movements, the futility of "negotiations" becomes painfully apparent. It is clear that we cannot look to our leaders (elected or imposed) to achieve justice. Just as only the masses could bring South Africa’s Apartheid to its knees, it will be the masses who will also bring Israel’s Apartheid crashing. The continued expansion of international action demanding the implementation of Palestinian basic human rights is inevitable.

The notion of religious-ethnocentric entitlement and exclusivity for one people at the expense of another has been rejected the world over. Palestinians reject it and we assert that we are human beings worthy of the same human rights accorded to the rest of humanity; that we are worthy of our homes and farms, our heritage, our churches and mosques, and our history; and that we should not be expected to negotiate with our oppressors for such basic dignities. The two-state solution was and remains an instrument to circumvent the basic human rights of Palestinians in order to accommodate Israel’s desire to be Jewish. Polls show that Palestinians refuse to be the enemies of our Jewish brothers and sisters anywhere, just as we refuse to be oppressed by them.

It is time for our shared land to be the inclusive and diverse country it had been. It is time for leaders to follow the people’s determined movement toward a single democratic state, with liberty and justice for all, regardless of religion.

Susan Abulhawa is the author of Mornings in Jenin (Bloomsbury, 2010); and Ramzy Baroud is the author of My Father was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story (Pluto Press, 2009).

Publishers' Weekly Review

2009-10-26T08:48:00.004-04:00

Mornings in Jenin Susan Abulhawa. Bloomsbury, $15 (316p) ISBN 978-1-60819-046-1

In this richly detailed, beautiful and resonant novel examining the Palestinian and Jewish conflicts from the mid-20th century to 2002, (originally published as The Scar of David in 2006, and now republished after a new edit), Abulhawa gives the terrible conflict a human face. The tale opens with Amal staring down the barrel of a soldier's gun—and moves backward to present the history that preceded that moment. In 1941 Palestine, Amal's grandparents are living on an olive farm in the village of Ein Hod. Their oldest son, Hasan, is best friends with a refugee Jewish boy, Ari Perlstein as WWII rages elsewhere. But in May 1948, the Jewish state of Israel is proclaimed, and Ein Hod, founded in 1189 C.E., “was cleared of its Palestinian children...” and the residents moved to Jenin refugee camp, where Amal is born. Through her eyes we experience the indignities and sufferings of the Palestinian refugees and also friendship and love. Abulhawa makes a great effort to empathize with all sides and tells an affecting and important story that succeeds as both literature and social commentary. (Feb.)

A CICATRIZ DE DAVID released in Brazil (23 January 2009)

2009-02-01T12:50:00.001-05:00

A CICATRIZ DE DAVID
(The Scar of David)
Susan Abulhawa
Editora Record
448 páginas
Preço: R$ 39,00
Formato: 14 x 21 cm
ISBN: 978-85-01-07965-7

“De tempo em tempos uma obra literária transforma o modo como as pessoas pensam.” Library Journal

Com o surgimento do Estado de Israel em 1948, a família palestina de Dalia e Hasan, que vive ao ritmo da colheita da azeitona na terra dos seus antepassados, Ein Hod, vê seu destino mudar. O pequeno povoado torna-se importante peça do percurso sionista para estabelecer e expandir o recém-formado Estado. Durante a expulsão dos palestinos, o filho mais novo do casal, Ismael, marcado por uma cicatriz no rosto, é raptado pelo oficial israelense Moshe e entregue como presente a sua esposa Jolanta, que sonhava ser mãe.

Dali em diante, o menino passa a se chamar David, e é educado segundo os preceitos da religião judaica, ignorando suas origens e desprezando os árabes, enquanto os membros de sua família biológica são expulsos das terras e deslocados para um campo de refugiados em Jenin, administrado pela ONU. É lá que nasce Amal, caçula de Dalia e Hasan e narradora deste conto de um mundo dividido. Seu nome significa esperança, algo que Dalia perdeu depois de anos de guerra e opressão, esperando retornar à amada Palestina de seus ancestrais. Pelos olhos de Amal, os leitores conhecem a rotina de gerações de refugiados e as humilhações impostas aos palestinos pelo exército israelense. Testemunham também histórias de amor que ultrapassam as barreiras das batalhas e do ódio, nascimentos de crianças e jovens desenvolvendo uma apreciação pela poesia e os estudos. Aguardando um hipotético retorno à terra natal, Yousef e Amal, os filhos sobreviventes da família dizimada, terão de amadurecer e dar sentido a suas vidas.

Enquanto isso, Moshe, angustiado pelo remorso, ainda ouve os gritos da mãe da criança que seqüestrou. Sua inquietação é multiplicada pelo sonho de um lugar seguro para o povo judeu estar mergulhado em sangue. Dalia, sufocada pela demência, recebe a notícia de que o marido foi dado como morto após a guerra. Seu filho mais velho, Yousef, é constantemente espancado e torturado.

Vinte anos depois de seu rapto, o jovem David seguirá para o front durante a Guerra dos Seis Anos, onde se defrontará com o irmão Yousef, feroz combatente da causa palestina, que o reconhece por sua cicatriz. É o início de uma guerra fratricida entre o irmão mais velho, vencido pelo ódio, e Ismael-David, que se tornou inimigo do próprio povo, e de uma longa jornada em busca da verdadeira identidade de um homem partido ao meio.

Resta à narradora, Amal, que parte para os Estados Unidos para viver o “sonho americano”, preservar a memória da Palestina e dos entes próximos. Passado entre 1941 e 2002, A CICATRIZ DE DAVID é um romance pungente, que tenta entender uma das mais intricadas questões geopolíticas da humanidade.

Susan Abulhawa, filha de pais refugiados da Guerra dos Seis Dias, é uma escritora americana de origem palestina. Viveu em vários lugares do Oriente Médio antes de se estabelecer nos EUA, onde fez pós-graduação em ciências biológicas. Frustrada pelas notícias tendenciosas sobre a situação de seu povo, começou a escrever ensaios para jornais, como o New York Daily News, Chicago Tribune, Christian Science Monitor, Philadelphia Inquirer etc. Em 2002, ao testemunhar a barbárie que ocorreu em Jenin, resolveu contar a história do seu povo. Ao regressar da visita, fundou a Playgrounds for Palestine, para construir áreas de lazer para as crianças de territórios ocupados. Como escritora participou de duas antologias: Shattered Illusions e Searching Jenin.

Susan Abulhawa Interviewed by VPRO Dutch Radio

2009-01-31T14:42:00.007-05:00

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 Jordanië 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

2009-01-31T08:56:00.009-05:00

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?

http://www.turkishweekly.net/news/62962/palestinians-will-never-forget.html

Los Angeles conference calls for grassroots fightback

2009-01-31T08:25:00.004-05:00

Workers World

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/

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

2009-01-30T19:41:00.007-05:00

Susan Abulhawa interviewed by Brazil's O Globo

2009-01-30T19:24:00.006-05:00

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).

Obama's VP pick right for Israel?

2008-11-08T06:44:00.001-05:00

The following essay by Susan was published in the Washington Times on 18 September 08

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/sep/18/obamas-vp-pick-right-for-israel/

McCain eclipsed the democratic convention buzz, gained women voters, simultaneously reassured middle to far right conservatives and may have positioned a female presidential candidate for the Republican ticket for future elections. It makes sense. On the other hand, the best explanations for Barack Obama's choice of Joseph Biden still don't jibe.

It's true that Mr. Biden brings some political experience to Mr. Obama's ticket, but so could many of Mr. Obama's other choices. Mr. Biden also narrows the race gap, which unfortunately still exists in America. But again, so could any of the other choices.

So, what then? Mr. Biden, the self-proclaimed Zionist, assuages Israeli and Jewish American fears that Mr. Obama might not be so accommodating to Israel.

I know it's hard for the average American to believe that Israeli interests could have such influence on a presidential election. Israeli propaganda does an outstandingly good job of diffusing any meaningful debate on the Middle East or Israel's role in shaping our foreign policies. Whether by defaming Jimmy Carter for daring to speak out or by censoring or ignoring important scholastic books such as "The Israel Lobby" by Professors Walt and Mearsheimer, Americans are kept ignorant of just how important it is to please Israel in order to have a real chance at occupying an elected post in Washington. Every politician, newsman, and pundit knows that you cannot be elected in Washington without the blessing of the American Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC), known simply as "The Lobby" in Washington.

Under the Clinton administration, the head of AIPAC had to resign after someone leaked a tape of him discussing how AIPAC was negotiating with the president about whom he should select for Secretary of State. It is undeniably the most powerful foreign interest group in Washington, and arguably the most powerful lobby in general.

Henry Siegman, former head of the American Jewish Congress and a Middle East expert at the Council on Foreign Relations admitted that "When it comes to the Israeli-Arab conflict, the terms of debate are so influenced by organized Jewish groups, like AIPAC, that to be critical of Israel is to deny oneself the ability to succeed in American politics." A noteworthy example of the great influence Israel wields on American foreign policy came in the summer of 2006, when Israel attacked Lebanon. As the world over condemned the attack, we stood alone in support of Israel. On July 18, the Senate unanimously approved a resolution "condemning Hamas and Hezbollah and their state sponsors and supporting Israel's exercise of its right to self-defense." After language was removed from the bill urging "all sides to protect innocent civilian life and infrastructure," the House version passed by a landslide, 410-to-8.

Thus, in response to the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers (which followed the killing of a Lebanese man inside Lebanon), Israel killed and maimed thousands of civilians, decimated civilian infrastructure, and littered Southern Lebanon with over 100,000 of the world-banned unexploded cluster bombs. Congress unequivocally approved and supported Israel's actions with this resolution, which AIPAC actually wrote! Even when a post-war analysis by the State Department was delivered to Nancy Pelosi and Mr. Biden, asserting that Israel may have violated the Arms Export Control Act with its use of American-made cluster munitions in Lebanon, bipartisan support of Israel remained unwavering.

This potentially explosive report detailing how Israel may have used American supplied weapons to commit war crimes was ignored by Mr. Biden and Mrs. Pelosi, both of whom have traveled to Israel repeatedly, along with scores of other politicians, genuflecting as they always do to extol the virtues of the Jewish State and profess undying and uncompromising support for a country that is currently in violation of at least 200 UN Resolutions and has been condemned in the harshest terms by human rights organizations worldwide. It is a country that has been repeatedly caught spying on America (most recently, two top AIPAC officials were indicted based on evidence that they accepted and passed on to Israel confidential national security secrets from a Defense Department analyst working with AIPAC) and which continues to defy U.S. demands to stop annexing and colonizing private Palestinian property with illegal Jewish-only settlements. One would think such behavior would at least draw some criticism from candidates. But rarely does any politician dare.

Mr. Biden has proved himself an acolyte of Israel. In an interview with Shalom TV, Mr. Biden proclaimed: "I am a Zionist." Ira Forman, the executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council said that "Biden is a great friend … with a solid pro-Israel record." Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Biden brings "The Lobby" to Mr. Obama's corner and that's why he was picked. Let us at least open up the discussion to include the influence of this foreign interest lobby. Americans deserve to understand the forces behind decisions that affect us all individually and collectively as a nation.

A couple of videos, finally up: 1) An interview at The Hague, 2) Borders bookstore

2008-07-27T03:11:00.002-04:00

The Hague: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6952533258672654497&q=&hl=en

Borders Bookstore: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7608332922556165257

Zionists lash out at Susan and other Arab writers

2008-07-27T03:07:00.002-04:00

An article by the Israel Hasbara Committee lashed out at Arab writers and their supporters for the boycott of the Salon du Livre. The article is here: http://www.infoisrael.net/cgi-local/text.pl?source=5/e/030420081; and the part pertaining to susan is below:

Outlandish claims that were once limited to far-out Islamist websites are now comfortably seated in the mainstream media. Susan Abulhawa is indignant because the Paris Book Fair honored Israel “a 60 year old country established in place of the ancient land of Palestine” (Lib?ration March 18). The Jews have turned a “once multi-religious, multi-ethnic, and multi-cultural land” into a place reserved for Jews only. "Jesus was Palestinian, some Palestinians are Canaanites, Israel is guilty of ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and turning Gaza into a concentration camp. Palestinians are forced to negotiate for their basic human rights." Abulhawa, invited by Fox News to comment on the Annapolis meeting politely, explained to a dimwitted reporter that the Palestinians should not be asked to negotiate with their oppressors. The prestigious Buchet-Chastel will publish the French translation of Albuhama’s novel Scar of David, in which a Palestinian child stolen by an Israeli soldier in 1948 becomes a soldier in turn and discovers his Palestinian brother Youssef...

Essay, published in THE CANADIAN, 15 May 08

2008-05-15T08:07:00.002-04:00

http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/home/Frontpage/2008/05/14/02348.html

Sixty Years of Dispossession, Humiliation, and Oppression in the Middle East

We watch these celebrations with an ineffable collective loss and grief, and an equally deep vow never to give up our basic rights as the natives of Palestine.

I recently took part in a four-person panel discussion of solutions to the conflict that arose 60 years ago and still persists when Israel was established in Palestine, displacing more than half of the native Palestinian population. We were two Jews and two Palestinians and I was the only woman.

I listened carefully to each of my fellow panellists talk about the two-state solution and heard potential fixes for everything from the settlements and water, to regional balance of power and refugees. The other Palestinian on the panel still believed in the two-state solution even though it is neither "ideal nor just" but he was willing to compromise anyway. Just to live. To walk home without going through five checkpoints. I wasn't as willing. He lives there, I don't. I get it. But I'm Palestinian too. And the country they stole was also my inheritance, my history and heritage, my home where my family has lived for centuries.

Creating a disjointed Palestinian state completely surrounded by Israel on what is now less than 16% of historic Palestine is and always was unjust and immoral, as it overrides basic principles of justice and international law and precludes repatriation for over 5 million refugees. The other panellists felt that I essentially was unrealistic or naïve. I listened again to all the things that Israel would "never agree to" and a rehashing of the endless "peace initiatives" in all the glory of their persistent failures to do anything but increase Palestinian misery.

What Israel will or will not "agree to" ought to be moot because Israel has never been vague about its nefarious intentions to have all of Palestine without Palestinians. Everything they've said and everything they've done and continue to do speak to this fact. It is not about what Israel will or will not accept, but whether we and all of humanity, Jews and Gentiles alike, will accept that Palestinians should not have certain self-evident and inalienable rights accorded to the rest of humanity.

Each initiative to settle this conflict reflects some creative design to circumvent Palestinian basic human rights in order to accommodate Israel's desire for religious purity. The world is willing to leave five million Palestinian refugees out in the cold ("to be settled at a later date") because Israel insists on "Judaising" the homes, cemeteries, farms, and history they stole from them.
The international community raises no objection to Israel's eternal control of all Palestinian borders, economy, water, and air. Gaza's 1.6 million human beings languish in darkness, mass hunger and misery deliberately imposed by Israel, without so much a peep from the Security Council.

It is not clear to me what we have done to the world that we should be so excluded from humanity, but this persistent trampling of our human rights must end. Either nations have accepted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a document that applies equally to all human beings, or we do away with that document all together and join to Israel's law of the jungle. There can be no selective application of its principles - principles that guarantee the right of refugees to return to their homes; that promise us a right to our own history and heritage and freedom from foreign occupation and oppression.

We are not less human that we should be expected to continue to "negotiate" with our oppressors for basic human rights. For decades now we have extended our collective hand in willingness to accept the two-state solution, a desperate offer of great compromise on our part. And for that same length of time, Israel has continued to steal more and more of our land, to kill, maim, and dispossess more and more of us. The daily horrors inflicted on my countrymen have nothing to do with terrorism or our corrupt leadership. Our great crime is that we are not Jewish. We are oppressed, denied, humiliated daily, dispossessed and robbed because we are not Jewish.

The concepts of human equality, human dignity, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are not the exclusive privies of West. They are also ours and we are not powerless to demand them. Ours is the power of an indigenous people struggling against a colonial oppressor hell-bent on taking our place, even though there is space enough for both peoples.

History has already taught us that military might is no match for such a power. Increasingly, people of conscience, including our Jewish brothers and sisters, throughout the world are speaking up for our rights, often at great personal expense to themselves. Academics, labour unions, churches, and civic institutions around the globe are divesting from Israel. We should stop engaging in theoretical debates about a dead and bloated two-state solution, rummaging through the wreckage of countless peace initiatives, giving up more and more, hoping this merciless military occupation will have mercy on us.

Human worth cannot be measured by arbitrary standards, like skin color or religion. History will teach us this lesson yet again, and it will judge harshly all the 60th anniversary celebrations taking place around the world on this day when we grieve for the identity, land, and heritage taken from us because we are not Jewish. We watch these celebrations with an ineffable collective loss and grief, and an equally deep vow never to give up our basic rights as the natives of Palestine.

Susan's first song, written and sung by her...

2008-05-08T08:30:00.004-04:00

http://denparrish.com/mp3/IGoToThoseDays.mp3

Additional Photos from Paris

2008-05-02T09:15:00.009-04:00

most of these pictures were taken at her reading at the Shakespeare and Company bookstore. Paris, France

I'M SO EXCITED!!! my first song

2008-04-25T13:07:00.004-04:00

Mark invited me to post directly on this site to share with you my first song. I've been taking guitar lessons from a most excellent teacher and friend for the past couple of months. Even though I can't yet read or write music, Dennis encouraged me to try to write something; so, I did. I gave him the lyrics and sang the melody for him. He listened and transcribed the music. I tried to record the song in my voice, but when he played it back to me it sounded more like a train wreck; so, Dennis recorded it in his voice. Here it is!

http://www.denparrish.com/SusanAbulhawa.html

Susie on Dubai TV during the Salon du Livre

2008-04-25T13:03:00.000-04:00

http://www.dailymotion.com/relevance/search/ouamoussi/video/x4pt6t_news

Susan on Radio Monte Carlo in France [i forgot to post it earlier]

2008-04-25T05:04:00.001-04:00

http://www.rmc-mo.com/rmar/emissions/083/emission_principal_23.asp

The Gift of Olive Oil

2008-04-15T20:26:00.005-04:00

A token of love…
Something from the soil of things shared:

a heritage
a longing
a wound
a love

The sweet and bitter tastes of centuries gone.
The hard caress of weatherworn hands of pickers
The tales of backbreaking toil, scribbled on beautiful fellaheen faces.
The ballads of old, sung to trees and sleepless Palestinian children
The untamed agonies of loss and expired love,

the soot of memory,
the breath of hope,
the fury,
the tears of babes
and patriarchs,
mothers and whores,
gods and men.

This nectar of tragedy is ours to consume
Ours to love
Ours to bury and bring back to life

Take it from their tireless hands
Their boundless capacity to endure

And without bread or za’atar, dip your finger in this oil
Press it between your tongue and palate

Do it again
Until you hear the primal calls of an earth packed beneath boot steps and tank treads
...and it will haunt you with an unexpected song.

-by susan abulhawa

Watch the debate with Susan Abulhawa on France 24

2008-03-21T15:50:00.004-04:00

click here to watch the debate regarding the boycott of the Salon du Livre.

http://www.france24.com/en/20080312-debate-israel-arab-world-boycott-paris-book-fair&navi=DEBATS

A blog entry about Susan's reading in Paris

2008-03-19T12:32:00.002-04:00

from Anne-Marie of "Voice of a City" in Paris

http://www.voiceofacity.com/paris/?p=980

Susan in LIBERATION, a leading French newspaper

2008-03-19T12:13:00.003-04:00

Click below to read a translation of Susan's essay "Why will no one hear our voice"

http://www.liberation.fr/rebonds/315974.FR.php

Review of Les Matins de Jenine on France3 Livre Jour

2008-03-19T09:09:00.005-04:00

click below:

http://unlivreunjour.france3.fr/?fichesEmissions=/france3.fr/programmes/unlivreunjour/archives/41141865-fr.php

a beautiful review, matched with historic footage, by Olivier Barrot on France3 Livre Jour

Susan Abulhawa at the Salon du Livre

2008-03-13T07:44:00.007-04:00

Susan Abulhawa is currently in Paris for the Salon du Livre. Yesterday, she was interviewed on France 24 Arabic and held a debate with opposing views on the Salon du Livre's decision to honor Israel this year and the writer's boycott that ensued as a result. The debate was very lively and Susan's arguments were powerful, succinct, and well-stated. The video will be posted here as it becomes available to us.

The following are photos from a dinner held at Vera Michalski's home, proprietor of Buchet-Chastel, where approximately 50 people, including journalists, dipolomats, writers, artists, and publishers, gathered in honor of Susan's book, Les Matins de Jenine.

Why Will No One Hear Our Voice?

2008-03-09T20:14:00.005-04:00

The following open letter was translated into French and the response from the Salon du Livre was generally dismissive. However, it has garnered considerable attention from French media and Susan will be giving several French television interviews and she will hold scheduled book signings in Paris bookstores not affiliated with the Salon du Livre. A schedule of these events will be posted soon.

No matter how great the injustice done to us Palestinians or how deeply our grief curls into time and into the earth, it seems the world still refuses to hear our voice and insists that we shall not exist in history except as squatters, terrorists, or subhuman creatures unworthy of our own land and heritage or of the right to defend ourselves and resist oppression. The latest institution to contribute to the erasure of millennia of our Palestinian culture and history is the Salon du Livre, with great influence from the French Ministry of Culture.

Every year this book fair chooses one country to honor and showcase its contemporary writers. This year, the choice was Israel: a 60 year old country established in place of the ancient land of Palestine with an imported population (Europe, the former Soviet Union, U.S.A., Ethiopia, etc.) in place of the native population, the Palestinians, who were ethnically cleansed from most of the land and who still languish in the abject conditions of refugee camps, under a cruel military occupation, or at the whims of winds that swirl us about in a Diaspora. Israel, with an abysmal human rights record, leading the world with the most violations of international laws and UN Resolutions, has taken a land once multi-religious, multi-ethnic, and multi-cultural and turned into a place of exclusivity for Jews only. This country, called an Apartheid State by moral authorities the likes of Desmond Tutu and Jimmy Carter and accused of Nuremburg crimes by leading scholars of international law like Drs. Francis Boyle and Richard Falk, is the nation that France has chosen to celebrate at its most celebrated Book Fair.

Yet, until recently, I thought we still had a chance in March. I naively thought that France would welcome our narrative and present my book, The Scar of David, especially since the French version (Les matins de Jenine) is being released on 6 March. It is a story that I pulled it from the depths of my country’s anguished soul and from the most primal scream to be heard and recognized for the violated nation that we are. But no Palestinian [even Palestinian-Israelis] are invited and I was thus encouraged not to come.

How can this be? Do they know that Israel sits on top of emptied Palestinian villages? The crops that Israelis eat come from a soil fertilized and made rich from the bodies of my Palestinian ancestors and fruit from trees planted by those same ancestors, starting with my grandparents and going back centuries if not millennia? I am unquestionably a daughter of Jerusalem, even if Israel deems me not to be human enough to live and thrive there as all my ancestors before me have. Does the Salon du Live wish to pretend, as Israel does, that Palestine and Palestinians do not and never did exist? Do they know Jesus was Palestinian and many Palestinian Christians can trace their ancestry to the first century? There are Palestinians whose surnames are “Canaan”. No Israeli has roots that sink as deeply into that land as the dispossessed Canaan family must! Has it occurred to the organizers that those Hebrew tribes that existed in Palestine 3,000 years ago are more likely to be my ancestors [if indeed genetic continuity is possible over such a period], not the ancestors of Russian Jews or any other imported Israeli ethnic group?

Or is the Salon du Livre simply complicit in the ongoing efforts of Israel to rid the world of us and any memory of our heritage, culture, history and gaping wound?

The world has roared with contempt at Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s alleged desire to wipe Israel off the map. And yet, Israel has actually been slowly wiping Palestine off the map for the past 60 years, in deeds and words. Every day acres of land are confiscated from what little remains to us of Palestine in order to build Jewish-only domains. Every day our men and women, as young as 12, suffer in their jails and torture chambers without charge or trial. At every turn, there is a wall, a bullet, or a checkpoint to deny, starve, or humiliate and break us. Death constantly comes at us from air land and sea with the most sophisticated weaponry. Every hope or dream we might have suffocates in refugee camps unfit for human beings but which our proud people have endured for more than half a century. Recently the commissioner-general of UNRWA warned that “Gaza is on the threshold of becoming the first territory to be intentionally reduced to a state of abject destitution, with the knowledge, acquiescence and–some would say–encouragement of the international community.” So, the world watches life being slowly and deliberately extinguished in Gaza, as Israel, with unbearable irony, turns Gaza into a massive concentration camp. And around the world, the voices of our leaders, artists, writers, and activists are silenced, ever we try to speak, to protest, or scream in agony for help. Yet our demise is met not with contempt, but with muffling of our painful narrative and celebration at international book fairs like the Salon du Livre!!

Why??

What have we done to deserve such a fate? What have we done to France or to the world that no one will stand against such injustice? Everything has been taken from us and our hearts carved out because we are not Jewish! What has been our crime that we should be so excluded from the human race, forced to negotiate endlessly with our oppressors for the basic human rights accorded to the rest of humanity? Spoken of as if animals when we dare to fight back? Why will no one hear our voice? What hope do we have if even lovers of books will pretend we do not exist and therefore have no story worth reading?

susan abulhawa is currently in Palestine installing two new playgrounds

2008-02-23T14:30:00.001-05:00

for more information, visit her trip blog at http://pfp2008trip.blogspot.com/

Susan Abulhawa among Three Artists to celebrate the legacy of Dr. Evelyn Abdalah Menconi

2008-02-10T11:10:00.000-05:00

Evelyn Abdalah Menconi
Memorial Cultural Series
Co-Sponsors:
The William G. Abdalah Library, The American-Arab Media Foundation, and Tawassul

Remembrance, Images, & Musical Resonance
The Palestinian Narrative ♦ Muslim Women and the Veil ♦ Qanun Expressions

In Commemoration of the Palestinian Nakba and the Armenian Genocide

Thursday, April 24th, 2008
Boston Public Library, Rabb Lecture Hall
Reception: 5:30 to 6:15 p.m.
Lobby, Rabb Lecture Hall
Program: 6:30 to 8:15 p.m.

Susan Abulhawa is the author of the novel, The Scar of David, which portrays the Palestinian narrative from the Nakba to the present. She will discuss and read from her novel.

Rania Matar is a documentary photographer. She will present and elucidate her photographic series on Muslim Women and the Veil: Modesty, Fashion, Devotion, or Statement.

Jamal Sinno is a master qanunist. He will play traditional musical selections throughout the program.

The Series honors the legacy of the late Dr. Evelyn Abdalah Menconi, known for introducing Arab cultural traditions to the public and highlighting achievements of gifted Arab-Americans.

For library information and directions, go to http://www.bpl.org/ or call 617.536.5400.
Open to the public - Wheelchair accessible - Assistive listening devices are available. To request a sign language interpreter or for help with other special needs, call 617.536.5400 x2295 or 617.536.7855 (TTY) at least two weeks before the program.

For program information, please call 781-648-1245.

Susan Abulhawa will lead a workshop at the Sabeel Conference in April

2008-02-06T15:19:00.000-05:00

http://www.fosna.org/conferences_and_trips/documents/PhiladelphiaConferenceTwoPageFlyer_001.pdf

Philadelphia Sabeel Conference

IN SEARCH OF A HOMELAND
Israelis and Palestinians seek peace, place and security in the Middle East

KEYNOTE ADDRESS: Dr. Hanan Ashrawi, former Palestinian spokesperson
and Minister of Higher Education

Read bio at UC Berkeley website: http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/Elberg/Ashrawi/Ashrawi.html

April 25-26, 2008
A two day conference will be held at Villanova University, Connelly Center to promote education and advocacy about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Sixty years ago in 1948, Israel celebrated its
independence while Palestinians endured their Nakba, or catastrophe, as they fled their land as refugees. Various speakers will address the history and root causes of the conflict as well as the current realities and hopes for peace. Workshops will offer time for discussion and advice. There will also be a film screening, cultural event, and art exhibit by renowned local artist Rajie Cook. Many of the speakers will be available for other interviews or events.

SPEAKERS INCLUDE:
Rev. Naim Ateek, Director, Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center, Jerusalem
Christian Strategies for Non-Violent Peacemaking
Dr. Marc Ellis, Director for Jewish Studies, Baylor University
The Jewish Dream and the 1948 Reality
Dr. Elia Zureik, Emeritus Faculty, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada
A Journey of 60 years; the Story of Palestinian Refugees
Dr. Yvonne Haddad, History of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, Georgetown University Understanding our Muslim Friends
Jeff Halper, Coordinator, Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, (2006 Nobel Peace Prize nominee) Reframing the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: A View from the Ground
John Hubers, Former Middle East Director, Reformed Church of America. Whose Homeland Is It? Confronting Christian Zionism
Susan Abulhawa, Author and founder of Playgrounds for Palestine.
Fr. John Sullivan and Sr. Maria Rieckelman, Maryknoll Missionaries Led six pilgrimages to the Holy Land.
Rev. Kail Ellis, Dean, College of Liberal Arts and Science, Villanova University
Dr. Roger Allen, Professor of Arabic, University of Pennsylvania.
Dr. Linda Hanna and Leila Barclay, Environmental Impact of War; Jewish Voice for Peace members, Jewish Anti-Occupation Activism

SPONSORS
The Ecumenical Working Group for Middle East Peace, Philadelphia area; The Villanova Center for Peace and Justice Education, and The Office of Justice and Peace of the Augustinian Province of St. Thomas of Villanova; Friends of Sabeel—North America. Sabeel (Arabic for "the way") is a
Jerusalem based ecumenical peace movement initiated by Palestinian Christians.

Register Online: www.fosna.org

Contact: Rev. David Yeaworth D.Yeaworth@worldnet.att.net 610-525-2776
Bishop Allen Bartlett allen.jerrie@worldnet.att.net 215-928-0506 Joyce
Wilson jdw225@comcast.net 267-909-8085

Susan Abulhawa to be keynote speaker at PAWA's annual banquet

2008-02-04T10:19:00.001-05:00

The Palestinian-American Women's Association (PAWA) cordially invites you to International Women's Day Commemoration

We Shall Never Forget
Commemorating the 60th Anniversary of the Nakba

keynote address by: Susan Abulhawa, Award Winning author of The Scar of David

also featuring:
Khalil Bendib, Political Cartoonist
A Debka Group
and much more..

Saturday, March 8th 2008
6:00 pm - Reception
7:00 pm - Arabic Dinner

La Mirada Holiday Inn
14299 Firestone Boulevard
La Mirada, CA 90638

For tickets and more information: 949-369-6510 or 909-861-8645

Gold Tables: $1000, Silver Tables: $800, Bronze Tables: $650
Adults: $50, Students: $40T

ickets also available on our website:http://www.pawasca.org/

Letter in The Nation

2008-01-31T15:52:00.000-05:00

http://www.thenation.com/bletters/20071231/pollitt

Ho-Ho-Holiday Donations, 2007 Edition

Please add Playgrounds for Palestine to your list of nonprofits worthy of support. This foundation was started by a Palestinian- American friend of mine, Susan Abulhawa. With donated funds, she buys playground equipment at discount from a Pennsylvania manufacturer, ships it to Israel, goes through endless time-consuming paperwork to get Israel's permission to transport it to the OPT, then hires locals to assemble and maintain the playgrounds in villages in Gaza and the West Bank.
Palestinian kids live in abysmal conditions. Bringing a little joy to their lives is so easy for us, so meaningful to them. Susie tells me that the people living in Rafah in southern Gaza have planted gardens all around their playground and keep it in very good repair. They cherish it.
Susie, a single mother with an MS in biology, works as a medical writer. She has also published a novel worth your attention, Scar of David. It has been published in several languages and has received great acclaim and awards in Europe. It has not so far received th attention it deserves in the United States. The story of a Palestinian family and their fraught entanglements with Israeli Jews, it is moving and compassionate.

Evalyn Segal
Unitarian Universalists for Justice in the Middle East
Philadelphia, PA

LTE, Philadelphia Inquirer

2007-12-07T06:45:00.001-05:00

RE: A threat equal to terrorism by Shimon Peres, president of Israel

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/opinion/20071206_A_threat_equal_to_terrorism.html

That was the most disingenuous baloney I've ever read. So, according to the President of Israel, Arabs are to blame for terrorism and global warming. Why doesn't he go for broke and blame us for the tsunami that hit Southeast Asia, as well? Never mind the fact that Israel is intentionally starving 1.5 million Gazans (half of whom are children) who are stuck in an open air prison while Israel is preventing not only the movement of human beings in and out, but also of food, medicines, fuel and other essentials of life. They've made sure Gazans have no clean drinking water, no functional hospitals, no work, no joy, no hope. Only misery beyond misery because they dared to elect representatives that Israel doesn't like. Israel is cutting off electricity, plunging Gazans into darkness; It regularly flies sonic planes to break the sound barrier, a sound so intense that it makes Palestinian women miscarry and traumatizes children so badly that they become brain damaged. What gives Israel the right to do that? It's ironic that Shimon Peres will wag his finger at us considering that Israel was born from Jewish immigrants to Palestine who blew up hotels, buses, schools, and lynched Arabs and British officers before they secured the most modern weaponry to kill and terrorize on a much larger scale.

Susan Abulhawa
http://www.scarofdavid.com/, http://www.playgroundsforpalestine.org/

The Arabs of Annapolis

2007-12-06T20:18:00.000-05:00

by Susan Abulhawa / December 6th, 2007

Annapolis was hoopla, smoke and mirrors, much ado about nothing, a ho-down of politically bankrupt men trying to garner popularity among their respective constituencies. It seems that George Bush and Ehud Olmert have figured out how to join the ranks of those who exploit the Palestinian tragedy and suffering to further their political ends without actually doing anything to alleviate that tragedy. For all the ruckus, speeches, leaders and dignitaries, what came out of Annapolis was yet another meaningless statement, this time (drum roll, please) Israelis and Palestinians agreed to agree on something by 2008.

And yet . . . I wish the absurdity of it were truly so benign as a hullabaloo. If you were paying attention, you’d have heard the menace of ethnic cleansing and seen the malignancy of cowardice.

George Bush made it clear that the United States will not pressure Israel into doing anything it doesn’t like. Plainly, the United States, the country that gives Israel $14,346 for every woman man and child in Israel, will not insist that Israel withdraw from the West Bank , which it has been occupying illegally since 1967. It will not insist that Israel stop detaining and torturing Palestinian men, women and children, leaving them to languish for years without charge or trial. The US, a country founded on the principle that all men are created equal, will not insist that Israel provide full rights under the law for non-Jews equal to that it accords for Jews. The US will continue to give Israel more money and weapons that it has ever given to any country and we will not even insist that Israel comply with one single UN Resolution (out of over 200 resolutions censuring Israel) or the Geneva Conventions, or any other tenet of international law. We will not require, in concurrence with our own laws, that this recipient of massive foreign aid do something to correct its abysmal human rights record. We will, however, in 2008, issue the first instalment of a brand-spanking-new $30 billion aid package to Israel.

Onto Ehud Olmert, who made it clear that Israel will only hold “bilateral negotiations” with Palestinians — no third parties allowed. Plainly, again: Palestinians can turn blue in the face and die, but they will still be denied their natural right as natives of that land to return to the homes from which they were forcibly expelled for the high crime of not being Jewish. Their resources, particularly water, will of course, always be controlled by Israel. Similarly, all borders, hence all movement and every aspect of their economy, will be controlled by Israel. Other basic human rights, for which Palestinians are required to “negotiate” include the right to education, the right to move freely in one’s own country, the right to pray in their holy places, the right to live and thrive in Jerusalem as they have for all of time, the right to life, the right to live without snipers situated all around you and checkpoints everywhere you go, the right to get to a hospital when you’re having a baby or when your father is having a heart attack, the right not to be beaten arbitrarily, the right not to be humiliated because you aren’t Jewish, the right not to have your family’s farm confiscated because Jews from New York want to come over and play cowboy with state issued Uzis, the right to visit your grandparent’s graves, the right to play. You name any inherent right, Palestinians are required to negotiate with their oppressors to have it.

I suppose this is nature of imperialism, and how cruelly it operates when good people do nothing to stand in its way. It’s a bitter truth, but I get it. No one really expected Bush or Olmert to care whether Palestinians live or die. Israel’s primary aim has always been clear: Palestine without Palestinians.

What I don’t understand, however, is what were all of those Arab leaders doing participating in that charade in Annapolis? I don’t remember what Abu Mazen said. I don’t care. Turning on his brothers said more than I wanted to hear. What was going through their heads in Annapolis, knowing that, in the meantime, Israel has cut off food, medicine, and fuel to 1.5 million human beings trapped in the open prison that is Gaza. Children as young as five years old in Gaza are forced to leave school and work 10 back-breaking hours a day to bring two shekels ($0.26) home, which now has no electricity, no clean water, no food, no fuel, no joy, and is constantly under the threat of sonic planes that fly from Israel to break the sound barrier over them, terrorizing everyone on the ground; making women miscarry and small children so traumatized that they become brain damaged. What gives Israel the right to do this? To starve 1.5 million Palestinians, half of whom are children? How do Abu Mazen and other Arab leaders turn their backs on our tortured brothers and sisters to shake the very hands that drip with Palestinian and Iraqi blood. What are we to make of that? What are Gazans to make of it?

Palestinians in Gaza are dying like dogs, of hunger and lack of medicine. This is not happening because a tsunami hit their shores, or because a drought has created famine, or because a tornado has destroyed all infrastructure of civil society. This humanitarian catastrophe, for which the UN and human rights organization around the world have condemned Israel, is man-made. Our countrymen are being intentionally starved! Or, as Dov Weisglass joked, “[Israel’s] idea is to put Palestinians on a diet”.

Nor is Hamas innocent. They have put pride and power above the welfare of their people. And so, Gazans go hungry, cold, and sick. Fishermen are not allowed to fish. The sick cannot leave for medical treatment. There are no antibiotics, vitamins, or vaccines in hospitals. Students cannot leave for university. There is no work. No industry is functional. Classrooms are as empty as the bellies of the children who should be occupying them. Israel is cutting off electricity to Gaza and so they live in darkness.

Is there no mercy for 1.5 million besieged souls? Have we not one Arab leader with the courage to put a stop to this genocide? Not one leader with courage enough to intervene in the internecine fighting between Fateh and Hamas? To demand that the democratically elected representatives of the Palestinian people be included in any summit or negotiations? How is it possible that Arab men who command the greatest natural resource ever known to man manage to be utterly powerless to stop the wholesale robbery and rape of Palestine or Iraq? Is attending such a farce as Annapolis the best they can do?

“A” is for Apartheid or Annapolis

2007-12-06T20:16:00.000-05:00

by Susan Abulhawa / November 28th, 2007

In the 80s, we gave up 78% of our homeland to try to pick up the pieces of our lives on the remaining 22% of Palestine. This was, and remains, the only true (brave or otherwise) concession ever made in the so-called ‘Middle East Conflict.” Next came Camp David, then Madrid, then Oslo, then another Camp David, Taba, Wye, (deep breath) Sharm el Sheikh, the Disengagement, the Road Map. Through it all, Israel continued to divide, carve out, confiscate and settle that 22%. They scattered us into a diaspora, shut down our schools, bombed damn near every inch of the West Bank and Gaza, herded us into ghettos, set up checkpoints all around us and employed every tool of imperialism, times ten, to get rid of or subjugate us as a cheap labor force.

Now we arrive at yet another surreal meeting in the clouds: Annapolis. Everyone is invited except the PLO — the sole and only legitimate representative of the Palestinian people — and the democratically elected members of the Palestinian Authority (that would be Hamas). At this meeting, Israel will throw us a few bones, like releasing some prisoners (who will most likely get rounded up again when the hype dies down) while it is intentionally starving 1.4 million human beings in Gaza, cutting off fuel, electricity and clean drinking water. Annapolis will serve only to move Israel a little closer to stamping out the “refugee problem,” those Palestinians and their descendants whose homes, farms, property and history Israel stole.

Palestinians are the natives of the land that was called Palestine for the last several thousand years until 1948 when Jewish foreigners changed its name to Israel. We are the natives in every sense of that word: historically, legally, culturally, ethnically, and even genetically! True there were Jewish tribes in that land some 3,000 years ago. There were also Canaanites, Babylonians, Sumarians, Philistines, Assyrians, Persians, Romans, Byzantines, and Brits. Palestinians are the natural descendants of all of these peoples who passed through that land, intermarried and converted between religions. When you understand this, it becomes clear why Palestine has always been a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, and multi-religious society. In other words, the idea of “tolerance” and co-existence that the West fought to attain and claims to cherish and hold dear, was already a reality in Palestine. Israel has taken that ideal, turned it on its head, and beat it to a pulp so every Jew in the world can have a place where he or she can go and see none but fellow Jews. Remarkably, the world sees nothing wrong or out of the ordinary with this and would like us to simply live with it, negotiate with a juggernaut military power that has made no secret of its desire and intent to take all of Palestine and get rid of as many of us Gentiles as it possibly can.

Never in history has the world so cruelly called on an oppressed, robbed, and battered native people to sit down with their oppressors to “negotiate” for their freedom. Even worse, what we are expected to negotiate away are our basic human rights, in order to have a few checkpoints removed so we can call those ghettos — surrounded by a 20 foot concrete wall with guard towers — a “state.”

We are being asked to give up our natural right to return to the homes from which we were forcibly removed because, and only because, we are not Jewish. We are asked, as native Muslims and Christians, to give up our natural right to live and thrive in Jerusalem as we have for all of time. We are told that we should not expect to have the right to control our own water, economy, airspace, or borders. Why? Why should we accept such an inferior status and inferior fate? We are not children of a lesser god that we should be expected to relinquish God-given, self-evident rights accorded and upheld for the rest of humanity. We are not animals to be disposed of so that Jewish individuals around the globe can have dual citizenship, a sort of summer country in the Hamptons.

Would anyone have thought to support the desire of White South Africans to live as separate and superior humans and expect Black South Africans to “negotiate” with the Apartheid government for their basic human rights? Of course not! Anyone with a mind and conscience took for granted that Blacks have equal rights as Whites. That is self-evident and non-negotiable. So is our right as non-Jews in Palestine to be accorded the same rights and privileges as Jews in our ancestral homeland. Human dignity and equality simply should not be topics of negotiation in the 21st century.

Even more vulgar is Israel’s insistence that we recognize its right to be a state of the Jewish people. This country that stole everything from us – our homes, our holy places, our trees and farms, our institutions, our history and heritage, the cemeteries where our grandparents and forefathers are buried – because we are not the right kind of human in their eyes. They want us not only to attest that such an affront to humanity is legitimate and appropriate, but that it is somehow a right!

Let me, as one dispossessed and disinherited Palestinian, say with all the force of my love and anguish for my country, my family, and my countrymen, that I do NOT recognize such right. A right is something inherently and unquestionably just. Jewish exclusivity and entitlement at the expense of non-Jews is not a right, for God’s sake, it is racism!

2007-11-28T20:15:00.000-05:00

Susan Abulhawa appeared as a guest on a popular morning news and local interest program, GoodDAY Philaelphia (FOX-29) Wednesday, November 28, 2007. She was interviewed by co-anchor John Anderson and introduced by Sheinelle Jones. Susan Abulhawa discussed the Annapolis Summit from the Palestinian perspective and in the context of other struggles for human rights, particularly the anti-Apartheid movement in South Africa. Susan Abulhawa is an award winning Palestinian author (THE SCAR OF DAVID) and founder of Playgrounds for Palestine.

Susan Abulhawa appears at CROSSING BORDER FESTIVAL in The Hague

2007-11-16T17:20:00.000-05:00

Saturday 24 november

OXFAM NOVIB / PEN AWARDS

For the last five years Oxfam Novib and the PEN Emergency Fund have presented five awards at the Crossing Border Festival to journalists and authors that as a consequence of their writing have been persecuted, imprisoned, tortured or worse. The presentations are in the most part symbolic, as many of the recipients are either in hiding or prison. In many countries, writers, journalists, poets and columnists are imprisoned and often without trial. This is because they’ve written something that the local authorities don’t agree to. They’re denied access to a lawyer and often face torture. Frequently their families are fully unaware of their plight or even whether they’re still alive. Oxfam Novib and the PEN Emergency Fund annually present five awards (of around € 2500) to writers whom suffered a great deal for their writing. From 14.00 – 16.00 [2 to 4 p.m.] on Saturday 24 November, there will be a special programme with performances including:Tthe presentationing of the Awards by the mayor of The Hague, Wim Deetman, an interview with Susan Abulhawa and a musical performance from LaXula. Tickets cost € 5, and are available from festival tent Cuatro at the festival tent's box office, telephone reservations possible on 070-3462355

http://www.degeus.be/boekpagina.php?id=1293

http://scarofdavid.com/

Susan Abulhawa's SCAR OF DAVID receives 2007 National Best Book Award

2007-11-05T07:19:00.000-05:00

USABookNews.com

Fiction & Literature: Historical Fiction Winner:
The Scar of David by Susan Abulhawa
Journey Publications, LLC
ISBN: 9772078-8-6

Susan Abulhawa, author of THE SCAR OF DAVID, was announced today by USA Book News as the 2007 Winner of the Fiction & Literature - Historical Fiction category in this year's National Best Book Awards. Last month Ms. Abulhawa was a featured presenter at The Wisconsin Book Festival and the Dutch edition of the book was released by Het litteken van David-DeGeus with a presale of 10,000 copies, including 9,000 to Oxfam-Novib. Oxfam is a global organization dedicated to confronting social injustice wherever it is found.

The Scar of David Synopsis

The Scar of David is historical fiction about a Palestinian family from the village of Ein Hod, which was emptied of its inhabitants by the newly formed state of Israel in 1948. It is told in the first person by Amal, who is born into that family in a UN-administered refugee camp in Jenin, where her family would eventually die waiting, or fighting, to return to their beloved Palestine.

Set in lap of one of the 20th century's most intractable political conflicts, this novel weaves through history, friendship, love, frayed identity, terrorism, exhaustion of the spirit, surrender, and courage. Three massacres and two major wars provide five corners to this novel:

Sabra and Shatila, Southern Lebanon, 1982;
US embassy bombing, Beirut, 1983;
Refugee camp of Jenin, West Bank, 2002;
The Naqbe, Mandate Palestine, 1948; and
The Six Day War, Middle East, 1967.

During the family's eviction from their ancestral village, Amal's brother Ishmael is lost in the mayhem of people fleeing for their lives. Just a toddler at the time, Ishmael is raised by a Jewish family and grows up as David, an Israeli soldier. During the 1967 war, Amal's eldest brother, Yousef, comes face to face with David, his brother the Jew. Yousef recognizes his brother by a prominent scar across David's face. The title of this story takes its name from this scar, and assumes other layers of meaning as it is told.

The end is the beginning: terrible suffering packaged by Western press into perfidious sound bites like the "Middle East Conflict" and "War on Terrorism."

But through the course of this story, a would-be suicide bomber is given a name, face and life of a man pushed to in comprehensible limits; an Arab girl of pious and humble beginnings escapes her destiny and lives the "American Dream," which her soul cannot bear; an Israeli man becomes tangled in a truth he cannot reconcile, and his identity can find no repose but in the temporary anesthetic of alcohol; and a nation of destitute refugees, living under the general label of "terrorists," emerges in the context of an unredeemed history.

This story reveals Palestinians in the fullness of their humanity as they teeter on the margins of life against a cruel military occupation, a corrupt leadership, an indifferent international community, and the undaunted will to take their place among the nations as human beings, worthy of human rights and the basic dignity of heritage.

FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT:

http://www.scarofdavid.com
markbmiller (at) aol.com

Dutch Edition: http://www.degeus.be/boekpagina.php?id=1293
Italian Edition: http://www.wuz.it/Articolo/tabid/77/id/506/Default.aspx
Other translations to follow in 2008