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Palestinian Cultural Days Returns to Dublin This September

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Palestinian Cultural Days Returns to Dublin This September

Palestinian culture, creativity and lived experience will take centre stage in Dublin this September as Palestinian Cultural Days returns for its second edition, bringing three days of art, music, literature, film, food, workshops and conversation to the city.

Taking place from 25–27 September, this year’s festival opens with the exhibition Min El Mai Lal Mai — From Water to Water, under the theme “Min El Mai Lal Mai”.

Across a programme of cultural and educational events, the festival will explore ideas of geography, identity, memory, belonging, displacement and resilience, while creating space for Palestinian artists, writers, musicians and speakers to share their work and experiences.

The festival opens at The Digital Hub on Friday 25 September from 5pm, with an exhibition inspired by the festival theme alongside Palestinian food from Yaffa Cafe, live screen printing by Dublin Print Collective and music featuring singer Leen Marrouf and qanun player Aziz Abushark. The opening evening will also include poetry from Alaa Al Qaisi and a selection of animated films from Palestine.

Saturday’s programme shifts towards discussion and learning, with a series of talks examining different aspects of Palestinian life and experience. Dr Selma Dabbagh will discuss Out of It, moderated by Dr Rita Sakr, followed by Dr Ahmed Mokhallalati, former Head of the Plastic Surgery Department at Al Shifa Hospital, presenting Healing Under Fire: When Medicine Becomes the Target.

Later in the afternoon, Dr Eman Abboud will explore Palestine’s divided geography and the realities created by separation and restricted movement in Fractured Geographies: Palestine’s Divided Realities.

The day will finish with a dabkeh workshop at 7pm. Places are limited and must be reserved in advance.

Sunday brings another opportunity to explore Palestinian cultural traditions with a tatreez workshop at 1pm. The traditional Palestinian embroidery form is an important part of the country’s cultural heritage, with patterns and techniques passed through generations.

The festival will then move to The Sugar Club for its headline event, with Palestinian rapper and musician Tamer Nafar joined by Róisin El Cherif, performing on Sunday evening.

A founding member of Palestinian hip-hop group DAM, Nafar has become one of the most recognisable voices in Palestinian hip-hop, combining music with commentary on identity, politics and life as a Palestinian. His Dublin appearance promises to provide a fitting musical finale to a weekend focused on Palestinian culture and contemporary expression.

Doors for the Tamer Nafar show open at 5pm, with the performance beginning at 6pm.

For anyone interested in experiencing the full festival, a ticket option is available covering the three-day programme and Tamer Nafar’s headline performance. There is also a separate ticket option for the three-day festival that does not include the Sugar Club show. Some workshops require advance RSVP due to limited capacity.

With its combination of visual art, food, music, literature, education and traditional craft, Palestinian Cultural Days offers Dublin audiences an opportunity to engage with Palestinian culture through a programme that goes well beyond a single weekend of performances.

The second edition of the festival takes place across The Digital Hub from 25–27 September, before concluding at The Sugar Club on Sunday evening.

Further programme details are expected to be announced in the coming weeks.

Tickets for Tamer Nafar’s headline performance are available now: www.eventbrite.ie/e/in-the-name-of-the-father-imam-john-lennon-an-evening-with-tamer-nafar-tickets-1994606835739

Source: https://www.totallydublin.ie/more/palestinian-cultural-days-returns-to-dublin-this-september/

Edward W. Said and Palestine

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Edward W. Said and Palestine

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jadaliyya.com

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[The following reflection on Edward W. Said and Palestine was written by Jadaliyya Co-Editor Mouin Rabbani in late 2003, as part of a series examining different aspects of Said’s life and work commissioned by Asef Bayat, at the time Academic Director of the International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World at the University of Leiden, The Netherlands.]

Edward W. Said played a unique role in the contemporary Palestinian national movement. It is difficult to imagine it being reproduced by another individual Palestinian, a judgement that reflects both Said’s extraordinary qualities and the fundamental transformation of the environment in which he operated during the past three decades.

Said’s involvement with the Palestinian struggle was by his own admission more a matter of coincidence than inevitability. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he was not spurred to a life of activism by the Palestinian nakba (‘catastrophe’) of 1948; born in Jerusalem to an entrepreneurial family with ties to both Egypt and Lebanon – ties that helped it avoid the worst depredations visited upon the Palestinian people by war and dispossession – Said spent the next two decades pursuing his education in Cairo and the United States. On the eve of the 1967 June War, which he would subsequently define as an event of transformative significance, the young Said was a rising and contentedly assimilated star in the English Literature department of New York’s prestigious Columbia University. Retaining only tangential connections with the Arab world (and then largely with the elite, cosmopolitan milieu of his youth beautifully memorialised in his autobiographical Out of Place), his promising academic career appeared to form the limit of his political horizon.

Israel’s overwhelming defeat of the Arab states and occupation of the remaining areas of Palestine in 1967, the overtly triumphalist and crass anti-Arab reception accorded Israel’s victory in the United States, and the rise of the Palestinian nationalist movement shortly thereafter – all against the background of an increasingly turbulent world exemplified by the Vietnam War and the gathering revolt on university campuses – had a profound effect on Said. He actively sought out the emerging Palestinian leadership in a series of visits to Jordan and Lebanon during the late 1960s, and became an increasingly visible and prolific public advocate for the Palestinian struggle for self-determination.

Relentlessly energetic, supremely eloquent, consistently rigorous and witty, always dapper in dress and appearance, Said combined unconcealed moral and political commitment with an indefatigable relish for intellectual and polemical combat, and did so to unparalleled effect. By the late 1970s he had become the leading spokesperson and campaigner for Palestinian rights in the Western world, directly and indirectly responsible for an openness towards the Palestinian narrative among opinion makers, intellectuals, and activists in Europe and North America that would have been inconceivable only a decade earlier. Only PLO Chairman Yasir Arafat and a handful of other Palestinian political leaders maintained greater public recognition outside the Middle East.

Said and Palestinian Politics

Said’s relationship with the Palestinian leadership was complex and went through various stages. A lifelong independent with a profound distaste for the imposed discipline inherent in political organisation, he never joined a political movement although he served as a member of the PLO’s Palestine National Council between 1977 and 1991, and was on several occasions nominated as a negotiator on its behalf. Along with kindred spirits such as the late Ibrahim Abu-Lughod and the PLO’s Lebanon representative Shafiq al-Hut, emerging leaders such as Azmi Bishara and Mustafa Barghouthi, and international comrades like Eqbal Ahmad and Noam Chomsky, Said promoted strategies that sought to reconcile principle with pragmatism, along with tactics that would maximise their potential by achieving support in the crucial battlegrounds of European and American public opinion.

Reflecting this agenda, Said was during the 1970s a pioneering advocate of a two-state settlement and worked closely with Arafat, whom he – correctly – viewed as the only leader capable of persuading both the PLO and the international community to adopt partition as the basis for a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Question of Palestine (1978), although primarily intended to expose a Western audience to the realities of Palestinian history and the legitimacy of Palestinian national aspirations, remains the most powerful statement produced on behalf of a two-state settlement to this day. It not only led to its author’s vilification by Palestinian radicals, but also unleashed a concerted and increasingly vulgar campaign against his scholarship and character by pro-Israel intellectuals and activists that continues even after his death. For Arab intellectuals seeking approval in Washington’s corridors of power, furthermore, shrill denunciations of Said’s “pernicious influence” became de rigeur. Threats against his life, emanating from both Arab and (primarily) Zionist quarters, became routine but were blithely ignored.

Although Said supported Palestinian participation in the 1991 Madrid Middle East Peace Conference, he was by then increasingly estranged from Arafat and the Tunis-based PLO leadership, and offered a blistering farewell when he resigned from the PNC that same year. According to Said, the Palestinian leadership had squandered too many opportunities, failed to mobilise Palestinian capabilities and resources, neglected the crucial struggle for global (and especially Western) public opinion, limited its energies to a largely futile search for friends in high places, institutionalised malfeasance and mediocrity, and – in the logical culmination of this collection of failures – grievously mismanaged the Palestinian response to Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

The 1993 Oslo Accords ensured that the break became definitive as well as increasingly acrimonious. Said accused Arafat of a grand sell-out – signing a “Versailles” that transformed the PLO into a “Palestinian Vichy” – in order to perpetuate his failed leadership and the political relevance of his organisation. Oslo, he consistently argued, would provide only cosmetic changes to the occupation, and deliver a Middle Eastern version of apartheid rather than self-determination. The Palestinian Authority reciprocated by banning his books and attacking him on its airwaves.

As Israeli settlement expansion continued at an accelerated pace during the 1990s and his predictions about Oslo were realised, Said – no doubt inspired by the new South Africa which he had occasion to visit – concluded that a two-state settlement was no longer feasible, and could only function as a transitional phase towards a unitary, democratic state encompassing Israel and the occupied territories. Unlike most of his predecessors and contemporaries in this respect, his vision was however devoid of crass nationalism. He consistently advocated the need for reconciliation based on equality, whose preconditions he identified as Israeli recognition of its responsibility for the historic injustices committed against the Palestinian people, and Palestinian and Arab understanding of the legacy of Jewish suffering culminating in the Nazi holocaust. The Politics of Dispossession (1994), Peace and its Discontents (1996), and The End of the Peace Process: Oslo and After (2000) collected the passionate and prolific output of commentary and advocacy produced by Said during this period, each instalment additionally forming a direct and successful challenge to an increasingly debilitating disease. Given that he continued writing until his final days, a further compendium is doubtlessly in the making.

Said and the Palestinian Cause

Many have commented on the cosmopolitan and consciously progressive humanism that formed the core of Said’s being and politics – and the contradiction presented by his simultaneous embrace of the nationalist struggle of the Palestinians. It was an irony Said both recognised and rejected, and ultimately resolved by spirited opposition to sectarianism of any sort – most obviously the concept of an exclusivist Jewish state in the 21st century Middle East, but unhesitatingly encompassing public denunciations of growing Palestinian religious extremism and indiscriminate attacks against Israeli civilians as well. Indeed, his unrelenting assault on Israeli and US policies was consistently accompanied by withering criticism of the decrepit state of the contemporary Arab world.

As an activist for the Palestinian cause Said displayed those same traits that characterised the other aspects of his life: a level of commitment that translated into an extraordinary capacity for hard work; an insatiable determination to acquire and impart knowledge; an openness to and active sponsorship of innovative thought; selfless encouragement and promotion of new talent; and an incurable addiction to travel, people, and gossip. A zest for life, in short, that seemed to be lived beyond its known limitations.  And above this all stood his sheer eloquence and capacity for representation. To many these qualities achieved their zenith in his After the Last Sky: Palestinian Lives (1986), an extended mediation on Palestinian identity and exile that was enhanced while being enriched by the accompanying photography of Jean Mohr.

For Palestinians who could neither reconcile themselves to the existing realities of the Oslo era, nor embrace the constricting alternatives on offer in the Palestinian and wider Arab worlds, Said and his always dependable output functioned as a moral and political compass. Yet he also had an unforgiving attitude towards criticism, which however slight never passed without response and often resulted in severed relationships. Like Arafat – who by contrast remains largely impervious to insult and condemnation – Said tended to view attacks on his work and person (attacks he needless to say also rejected on their own terms) as overt or concealed political assaults on the Palestinian cause he so visibly represented. He thus felt obliged to always give at least as good as he got, and – entering any number of simultaneous battles others would consider superfluous with unrestrained relish and zeal – typically came out ahead.

Given his extraordinary career and the breadth of his accomplishments, it is perhaps tempting to assess the Palestinian aspect of Said’s life in isolation from his intellectual, scholarly, and broader cultural roles. To do so is however to neglect the organic and vital connections between these seemingly separate personas – connections that not only existed clearly in Said’s own mind (see his Representations of the Intellectual, 1994), but are crucial to understanding the influence of his Palestinian activism. His pioneering role in the development of post-colonial theory, for example, both informed the manner in which he understood and advocated Palestinian self-determination, and immeasurably enhanced his ability to do so. Conversely, his experiences as an Arab at Cairo’s Victoria College and later as a Palestinian in the West doubtlessly contributed to his analysis of the relationship between imperialism, scholarship, and culture – and his insistence that one must first of all unlearn essentialised categories such as East and West.

It would be no exaggeration to observe that national movements produce or recruit individuals of Said’s calibre only once if at all; individuals of independent global standing who personify and express the justice of their cause in multiple environments with moral clarity and political consistency, world citizens whose impact within these varied environments derives from their determination to appeal to a shared humanity and universal values – our fundamental equality as peoples and individual human beings –  rather than to sympathy for a strange people in a foreign land. Although Edward W. Said’s legacy will endure for many years to come, he unfortunately cannot and will not be replaced.

[This article was originally published in the ISIM Newsletter.]

Telling the story of Tawfiq Zayyad

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Telling the story of Tawfiq Zayyad

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mondoweiss.net • 2020-12-21

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On December 20 Mondoweiss published Hatim Kanaaneh’s review of my book The Optimist: A Social Biography of Tawfiq Zayyad. While I welcome any criticism that sheds a different light on a text I wrote, this review baldly misrepresented the book’s contents and mischaracterized my own approach. Kanaaneh makes a sweeping argument that I fall short in ridding myself “of the ‘Jewish Israeli’ tribal prejudices and inimical presumptions about all things Palestinian.”  Needless to say, for a scholar who has dedicated his academic career to studying various aspects of Palestinian history, society, culture, and politics, this is an offensive allegation that should not go unchallenged.

The book itself aims to portray the fascinating life of Tawfiq Zayyad (1929–94), a renowned Palestinian poet, a committed Communist activist, and a charismatic political leader. For four decades, Zayyad personified the collective struggle of the Palestinian citizens of Israel, and a scholarly biography of him has been long overdue. For five years I collected, piece by piece, fragments of information from the Arabic and Hebrew press, several archives, including materials housed in the official Tawfiq Zayyad Institute in Nazareth, and interviews with dozens of family members, friends, and acquaintances, as well as with political partners and rivals. I enjoyed the trust of Zayyad’s family and close friends who shared with me invaluable personal documents. Together these sources enabled me to portray Zayyad both as an influential political leader, but also as a human being with weaknesses.

To be sure, there are inevitable gaps in the history, some of which I discuss in the book. Kanaaneh’s only concern, though, was with the legitimacy of a Jewish-Israeli scholar to tell Zayyad’s story (“What did I expect from him, anyhow, I ask myself?”). From this departure point he seems to scan the text looking for evidence of my presumed biases and prejudices, but the examples he provides are based on an unrefined distortion of the text itself.

I should begin with Kanaaneh’s wondering about what my stance on Zionism is, and the statement in the Mondoweiss Facebook introduction to the review that I do not reject Zionism. Kanaaneh wrote that he even made an inquiry among my “learned associates” to find out what my “formal stand” on Zionism is. While I think scholars should be politically involved, I am puzzled by the requirement to have a “formal” position on anything. I analyze Zionism as a settler-colonial project, I firmly object to any regime of ethnic and racial superiority – including its Zionist version, and I believe that the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine has proven to be incompatible with the principles of human rights and democracy. I do not know what would make these stances “formal.” I do sympathize with Kanaaneh’s initial suspicion of Jewish Israeli scholars and understand where it comes from. At the same time, one need not “wonder” about my politics if one reads my work carefully and with an open mind.

The second major problem in this review is the direct association Kanaaneh made between me and the Hebrew media which I frequently quote in the book. To be clear, in contrast to what was conveyed by the review, the book is based on a variety of sources in different languages, and the coverage of Zayyad by the Hebrew media is only one of them.  Furthermore, I was baffled while reading that I am being accused of “unquestioning of standard Israeli sources.” In the book introduction I explicitly discussed the frequent racist and paternalistic biases of Israeli journalists and the ties of many of them with the security establishment. For that reason, I wrote “it is difficult to tell when a piece of information was accurate, based on some truth but filtered through the surveillance lens, or intentionally fabricated as part of a psychological warfare campaign” (p.8). Furthermore, I dedicated seven pages of the book to analyzing the way the Hebrew media treated Zayyad, trying to explain the irrational hate and fear that characterized his coverage.

However, all of this was apparently not unequivocal enough for Kanaaneh. It seems to me that he was particularly offended by a quote from a 1957 piece in Ma’ariv in which the author, Y. Kinarot, reported about the arrest of Zayyad after a speech he gave in Kanaaneh’s own home village, Arrabeh, echoing the establishment view of Tawfiq Zayyad and referring to Arrabeh as “notorious.” Even though I preceded the quote by suggesting the journalist relied on a source from within the Israeli security services, Kanaaneh associated me with that offensive text and complained that I did not explicitly criticize its hateful tone: “discrediting Tawfiq Zayyad’s political and literary inspirational status by keeping silent vis-a’-vis his detractors is unacceptable.” The book contains many more quotes of negative characterizations of Zayyad and the Palestinian leadership in general and I did not interrupt the text after each one to condemn it.  Reading that quote in its proper context in the chapter, though, should leave any open minded reader with little doubt that I consider Zayyad’s speech in Arrabeh as an anticolonial just action and do not subscribe in any way to the vocabulary used by the Zionist media. Personally, I have visited Arrabeh many times and interviewed many inhabitants during my work on previous books. I have fond memories of my encounters there and I do not need to be educated that the place is not actually “notorious.”

Kanaaneh continues with the argument that I am “complicit with the Zionist tribal narrative of innocence” about the near ethnic cleansing of Nazareth because, among the reasons I listed for the fact that the Nazareth residents were not expelled I mentioned that David Ben Gurion was aware of the importance of Nazareth to the world’s Christian community (an explanation that sounds reasonable to many Israeli, Palestinian and other historians). The real reason, Kanaaneh writes, was that the Canadian Jewish commander of the invading Hagana force, Ben Dunkelman, demanded a written order. However, in the book I explicitly mentioned that Dunkelman received an order from his commander Haim Laskov to evacuate the city’s population and he disobeyed it by asking for a written order (p.25). The review misleads the readers to believe that I ignored the initial expulsion order, and therefore support a “tribal narrative of innocence”.

I have much respect for Kanaaneh as an activist and I am confident that he, like many Palestinians of his generation, could have provided many more valuable memories about Zayyad (actually, an interview with his cousin Tawfiq was conducted for the biography, although not directly by me). When he describes Tawfiq as “our hero” I understand very well what he means because I have learned throughout my research how significant Zayyad was for many Palestinians. At the same time, this sense of ownership, encapsulated in the word “our,” is especially difficult for me, as an outsider, to tackle. More broadly, as a Jewish Israeli who writes about themes and topics which are at the core of the Palestinian national ethos, I am used to suspicious reactions and to the tendency of some readers to question my motives. I think, though, that this case also reflects an unbridgeable gap between the ways a devoted political activist who has personal involvement in the story writes about politics, and the more distant writing of academic scholarship. When this gap is superimposed on the understandable suspicion of Palestinians toward Israelis the risk of misunderstanding is high. It might be, though, that because of my identity, many Palestinian activists need a much more frequent reassurance in the text that I am on their side.

Khalidi: Palestinian Identity

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Khalidi: Palestinian Identity

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palestine-studies.org

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Khalidi: Palestinian Identity
Author:
Nubar Hovsepian
Digital Section:
Reviews

Reviewed Book

    In his 1994 Middle East Studies Association (MESA) presidential address, Rashid Khalidi prodded scholars to be part of the internal discourses of their professional disciplines. He warned that failing to do so would make them provincial and overspecialized, thus preventing them from interacting with broader disciplinary concerns (MESA Bulletin, July 1995, pp. 1-6). It is quite salutary that Khalidi has followed his own advice in the writing and conceptualizing of Palestinian Identity.

In a direct debate with the new scholarly approaches on such topics as nationalism and identity, Khalidi concurs with recent writers (e.g., Benedict Anderson, Ernest Gellner, and Eric Hobsbawm) that national identity is constructed as opposed to being a transcendent given (p. xi). The process of constructing national identity occurs within a multilayered space and time that is shaped by real political and intellectual forces (social agency), but not limited to the role of elites. These agents are influenced by and grapple with competing loyalties including: “transnational” (religious and national); “local patriotism”; and “affiliations of family and clan” (p. 10). These struggles are affected and their outcomes, to varying degrees, are shaped by powerful external (colonial) forces. These processes are undergirded by important social and material transformations that include, inter alia, the formation of new social classes, the expansion of modern communications, the spread of education, and the introduction of mass politics. For Khalidi, these developments are seen as the prerequisites for the emergence of nationalism (p. 32). Finally, the consolidation of identity takes hold at a conjunctural moment marked by a historic crisis that enables the swift and substantial change of attitudes in a society (p. 47, p. 256).
Khalidi’s empirical concern is to document the multiple factors that explain the context for the emergence and consolidation of Palestinian national identity. His approach however, is of great value to scholars interested in other postcolonial societies where national consciousness emerged “without the trappings of an independent state and against powerful countervailing currents” (p. 194). The Palestinians, like the Armenians and Kurds, have managed to retain and cling to their notion of nationhood despite numerous calamities that have befallen them. All three of these Middle Eastern peoples have “been denied self-determination by the great powers . . . , they live in disputed homelands that overlap with those of other peoples, and the territory they claim has ambiguous and indeterminate boundaries” (p. 11). Indeed, these factors lie at the core of the crisis of the modern nation-state in many parts of the postcolonial world.

In this path-breaking study, Khalidi documents the specific processes that explain the emergence and consolidation of a unique Palestinian consciousness and identity. He sheds light on the multiple and interconnected phases of these developments and the adversity that they encountered. His empirical instrumentation is archival in nature. His gripping and rich narrative brings to life the lives and struggles of the mostly urban elites, but also of peasant resistance leaders (chapter 5), as they adapt and respond to major social transformations and to Zionism.
In the late Ottoman period, prompted by the Tanzimat, Palestine, and Jerusalem in particular, witnessed major cultural changes. Education was secularized, public education was established, mission schools proliferated, and the press expanded. A growing government bureaucracy required the services of many teachers and other professionals. Khalidi notes that this “massive expansion of opportunities gave ample scope to individuals of both non-notable and non-Muslim background to achieve status” (p. 61). In this context of development and increasing prosperity, what were some of “the political, intellectual, and ideological options that appeared to be open at the end of the Ottoman era in Palestine” (p. 62)?

Khalidi probes this question by identifying the overlapping and competing identities that shaped the lives of two Jerusalem notables: Yusuf Diya’ and Ruhi al-Khalidi. In this transitional phase of the Ottoman era, these individuals and other people from different walks of life navigated their loyalties, identities, and affiliations among Ottomanism, Islamic solidarity, Arabism, Palestinian patriotism, opposition to Zionism, political party affiliations, and other primordial attachments (p. 84).

The eventual defeat of Ottomanism during World War I combined with the assertiveness of the Zionist movement and the start of the British Mandate in Palestine produced a sense of a historic crisis among “most politically conscious, literate, and urban Palestinians” (p. 149). Khalidi concludes that these transformations were so intense and profound that in a relatively short period of time (1917 – 23), a distinct Palestinian national identity took hold. The new synthesis, however, was to “remain strongly tinged by, and to overlap with, elements of religious sentiment and Arabism both of which had been among its precursors” (pp. 174 -175).

In chapter 8, Khalidi details the survival of Palestinian identity despite the Zionist triumph of 1948 and all subsequent wars. Dispossession, defeat, and exile occasioned the rebirth of Palestinian identity through the establishment of the modern national movement embodied in the PLO. This rebirth after many debacles, including the 1982 Lebanon war, prompted the search for a political solution marked by the quest for Palestinian statehood. The PLO also managed to incorporate new elements into the Palestinian narrative. Defeats, as in 1982, were translated as summud. Thus, failure was portrayed as triumph, which might explain the absence of any official critical evaluation of this episode.

For Palestinians, this national identity was shared irrespective of their domicile. In turn, the PLO served as the symbol and agency that cemented the unity of the Palestinians, whether they were “inside” or “outside” of historic Palestine. The Oslo process, however, has caused the “recentering of Palestinian society,” requiring a redefinition of identity in new circumstances (p. 203).

Although the PLO still exists and officially claims to represent all of the Palestinians, the Palestinian Authority (PA) for all practical purposes has superseded it and assumed most of its functions. This poses some important challenges to the PA in the post-Oslo period. For example, what does it mean to be a Palestinian today, and who has the right to live in Palestine? How will Palestinian citizenship de determined, and whom will it include and exclude? How will these changes be reflected in the educational system and in the civics textbooks?
Perhaps, one should consider the post-Oslo phase as another historic crisis confronting the Palestinians as they attempt to reformulate or reconfigure their identity under rapidly changing circumstances. In this context, Khalidi’s rich discussion of an earlier era needs to be read and studied carefully. For indeed, although historians cannot tell us what will happen, they certainly can present us with a cogent interpretation of an earlier conjuncture.

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Nubar Hovespian is writing a dissertation, “The Palestinian Authority: Education, Identity, Development and Democracy,” for the Political Science Department, City University of New York’s Graduate Center.

Mohammad Bakri: ‘We Resist with Art’

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Mohammad Bakri: ‘We Resist with Art’

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palestine-studies.org

Arts & Culture
Mohammad Bakri: ‘We Resist with Art’
Date:
January 07 2026
Author:
Muhannad Abd al-Hameed

Editor’s Note: This interview, conducted by Muhannad Abd al-Hameed, was originally published in the Spring 2021 issue of Majallat al-Dirasat al-Filastiniyya (IPS’ Arabic-language Journal of Palestine Studies). It is translated into English for the Palestine Square blog by Laila AlQaddumi; translation edited by Laura Albast.

The Israeli military invasion of Jenin camp and the entire West Bank raised political, legal, humanitarian, and security questions about the Israeli occupation of Palestine on a global scale. Yet, it posed only one question to the Israeli regime and the majority of Israeli society: the question of Israeli security.

Israel’s myopic fixation on the security question reflects a profound indifference to the enduring and crushing consequences the Occupation has imposed on  millions of Palestinians. It is this asymmetry in power that the Palestinian filmmaker and theater actor Mohammad Bakri sought to address in his documentary film, “Jenin, Jenin,” using imagery and the language of those affected, to call for an end to the Occupation, which has been the primary cause for recurring humanitarian catastrophes, hatred, oppression, plunder, death, discrimination, and violence. 

Bakri set out from Nazareth to Jenin, accompanied by cinematographer Ramez Kazmouz and sound engineer Nasr. The journey took several hours as the crew attempted to evade Occupation forces deployed inside and around the city of Jenin. They were able to enter Jenin refugee camp just after it had emerged from a fierce battle and had been declared a closed military zone, entry forbidden. 

In Jenin, dust from the destroyed buildings, the smell of death, and the stench of exploding rockets filled the air. People wandered cautiously among the ruins of their camp, gathering remains from beneath demolished buildings and assessing their losses. Just moving around was dangerous due to unexploded shells and mines, snipers on alert, and military vehicles that still tightly controlled parts of the city of Jenin.

Bakri wanted to present the residents of Jenin’s narrative before the blood had dried, and he succeeded. The film “Jenin, Jenin” circulated at record speed, generating solidarity with a people resisting their occupiers with unyielding will, and condemnation of the aggression, the aggressors, and their crimes against a defenseless people. Israel’s ban on the film only heightened its impact and reach, contrary to the occupiers’ desire to monopolize the narrative of the executioner. 

Majallat al-Dirasat al-Filastiniyya (the Arabic Journal of Palestine Studies) spoke with Mohammad Bakri about the battle over the film “Jenin, Jenin” following the Israeli court’s decision to ban its screening and destroy it. In the interview, Bakri discusses the hidden dimensions of the Palestinian struggle, which impacts all aspects of life, including art and culture.

The Israeli court decided to confiscate all copies of “Jenin, Jenin” and ordered you, as the film’s director, to pay compensation of $55,000, in addition to $15,000 in legal costs to the plaintiff, Nissim Magnaji, a reserve officer in the Occupation army. The court accused you of libel, distorting events, and presenting the Palestinian narrative as the sole truth. They also charged you with falsifying facts by accusing the Occupation army of committing war crimes, as though committing war crimes is acceptable, and documenting them is the real crime. How do you view this from a legal perspective, and why did the Israeli court ignore the testimonies you documented from inside the camp, while also dismissing reports by international, local, and Israeli human rights organizations?

I will begin answering this question by referring to the Israeli government’s reaction to the International Criminal Court’s decision recognizing its jurisdiction over the situation in Palestine and over the territories occupied by Israel since 1967, specifically Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. This decision, which could lead to Israeli officials and generals being tried for war crimes in the occupied Palestinian territories, terrified Israel, making it turn the world upside down, so to speak. Netanyahu said the court’s decision was based on lies and motivated by antisemitism — the same response that is repeated anytime Israeli violations and crimes are criticized.

The accusation of antisemitism over “Jenin, Jenin” is similar to what happened with the film “Hanna K.” in 1983, directed by Costa-Gavras, in which I starred alongside American actress Jill Clayburgh. Israeli circles accused Costa-Gavras of antisemitism and published a detailed thirty-point objection, translated into several languages, claiming that the film was antisemitic and called for the destruction of Israel, even though the film tried to be objective. But because the film raised the issue of the Palestinian right of return — for the first time in world cinema — it was deemed a threat to Israel’s existence. I remember standing with my wife in Paris outside a cinema on the Champs-Élysées during the film’s premiere, and someone called the theater saying there was a bomb threat. Naturally, everyone panicked, and the screening was cancelled. 

To return to the question: the Central District Court in Lod gave complete freedom to the plaintiff’s lawyer and his two witnesses to accuse me of lying. They claimed that the film was nothing but lies from beginning to end, that it was a work of science fiction with no bearing in reality, a pure distortion of the truth. They ignored the fact that bulldozers destroyed the center of the camp while residents were still inside their homes; they ignored the pregnant woman who was shot by a sniper, and who later could not breastfeed her child because of her injuries; they also ignored the disabled man in a wheelchair who was buried under the rubble.

They ignored the victims’ suffering, which the film conveyed truthfully. What is worse is that detractors of the film claimed that the people in the film were reading from a script I had written, alleging that I fabricated stories and put them into people’s mouths. I spent five days filming in a place devastated after two weeks of continuous bombardment, during which, as one witness said, the Israeli military alternated their troops three times, taking turns to attack. I’ll conclude by asking: are the testimonies of B’Tselem and other human rights organizations not enough proof of what happened in Jenin camp? They documented crimes that were immediately verified, like the killing of Iyad al-Hallaq, a man with autism, and the murder of Abdel Fattah al-Sharif while he was taking his last breath, instead of being given medical aid. Is the truth owned by anyone? In the Israeli mindset, whoever owns power owns the truth.

In the Israeli Worldview, Whoever Holds Power Holds the Truth

After the Jenin camp catastrophe, the Israeli government refused to implement the UN Security Council’s call for an independent international investigation team, and also rejected the testimonies presented in “Jenin, Jenin”. How is it that the Israeli government is consistently placed above the law, able to act as both the judge and the jury? Why does Israel repeatedly refuse impartial investigations into massacres, including the Goldstone Report on crimes in Gaza, using accusations of antisemitism against anyone who criticizes the Occupation’s crimes?

Let me use a popular proverb: “The chicken thief is always touching his head,” fearing that a feather might be stuck there. They stole the land and claimed historical ownership based on an exclusionary ideology; anyone who rejects this is labeled an aggressor and heretic and must be excluded to ensure their continued existence. Unfortunately, the international system does not hold them accountable, and many Arab states ally with them unconditionally.

The world continues to pay Israel reparations for the Holocaust and places them above the law. It is no surprise, then, that they ignore UN resolutions and human rights reports. They claim to own the truth, and anyone who challenges them is labeled a liar and an antisemite. They monopolize eternal victimhood, claiming to be the only victims in the world, with all others incomparable. This is evident in Israel’s stance toward victims of other massacres, such as the Armenian Genocide of 1915, which Israel has yet to recognize. They do this not only to preserve relations with Turkey but also to maintain a monopoly on victimhood that justifies crimes and excessive force under the banner of security. This instrumental logic contradicts international law, the UN Charter, and the reality, which is that Israel possesses military power far exceeding any genuine security need.

Israelis Ignore the Existence of An Occupation

Israeli political and media discourse justifies the destruction of parts of the Jenin camp, the old city of Nablus, and other areas, as well as the killing of resistance fighters and civilians and the renewed displacement of thousands of Palestinians, under the pretext of protecting Israeli towns attacked by Palestinians. Why does the Israeli establishment ignore its role in denying legitimate Palestinian rights recognized by international law, inflaming the conflict through Occupation, settlement, domination of another people, and closing all political solutions? How do you see this, given that you are accused of ignoring Israeli reasons for invading the Jenin camp in your film? And what is the truth about the archival footage showing the Israeli officer?

Israeli political and media discourse portrayed the 2002 invasions of West Bank cities and camps and the destruction of Palestinian infrastructure during the operation dubbed “Defensive Shield” as a response to Palestinian [suicide] bombings inside Israel, claiming the goal was Israeli security. This narrative was promoted globally and, unfortunately, found receptive ears in Western countries, especially among the Bush administration. These states ignored the real cause fueling the conflict: the Occupation of Palestinian land, domination of a people, deprivation of freedom, and plundering of resources. They ignore that the Occupation is the catalyst for the Palestinians’ responses — whether through literature, poetry, art, peaceful protest, or resistance. Israelis never ask themselves what drives hundreds of young men to sacrifice their lives. They never examine their role in suffocating, humiliating, and oppressing Palestinians and closing political horizons, thereby contributing — along with other factors — to the phenomenon of suicide attacks. Palestinians paid a heavy price when Israel used these attacks to justify building the apartheid separation wall. Yet Israel never asked why violence persisted in other forms, such as stabbings and car rammings, nor why resistance continues in diverse forms. As long as Occupation, settlement, and colonial domination persist, cycles of violence and resistance will continue until freedom is achieved, just as history has shown for all colonized peoples.

As for the “archival shot” used by the Israeli officer and upheld by the court: documentaries commonly use archival footage. All films about world wars use archival footage. I used an archival image supporting testimonies; I did not imply that the soldier in the image committed the act.

The Occupation army that invades Palestinian land daily is accused of violations every day. Soldiers come to arrest or kill, to protect settlers who steal land and uproot trees, to demolish homes, confiscate land, suppress protesters, and perpetuate catastrophe. They do not come as tourists.

The ‘Sacred Executioner’ Monopolizes Victimhood

There are always two narratives in the ‘Palestinian–Israeli conflict’. “Jenin, Jenin” presented the victims’ narrative. Those shown were victims expressing pain and suffering, while Israeli courts and media adopted the soldiers’ narrative. How do you see this contradiction?

I deliberately avoided portraying Palestinian heroism or fighters. I did not film combatants or focus on resistance; I left viewers to read between scenes. I wanted to expose collective punishment inflicted on camp residents — children, women, elders — people not responsible for attacks. I did not present officials, factions, or human rights organizations.

Why were the lives of Jenin Camp’s residents destroyed and plunged into a new Nakba? Why are victims forbidden from being victims, while the “sacred executioner” and the colonizer monopolize victimhood? In “Jenin, Jenin,” I wanted these people to tell their stories freely. These testimonies resonated because they were honest and were supported by visible devastation: destroyed homes, graves, people wounded and homeless, the smell of death, all under military presence. This angered the Israeli establishment, which recognizes only one narrative: its own.

While producing the film, I attempted to interview the driver of the ‘Caterpillar D9’ bulldozer that demolished the homes, but I found him too proud of what he had done, agitated while recounting his experience, so I excluded him to avoid reducing the Occupation’s crimes to a single soldier. He was merely a cog in a massive machine responsible for a policy of excluding Palestinians and bringing calamities upon them. Moreover, the Israeli narrative already dominates the media, while the Palestinian narrative is marginalized. All my life, I have heard, read, and watched the Israeli narrative; Israelis have produced hundreds of films that deny the existence of Palestinians, that consider our rejection of the occupation and demand for our rights as a threat to their existence, a form of antisemitism.  I chose to set aside the ever-present Israeli narrative and instead present the Palestinian narrative, absent or relegated to the margins of the media and cultural landscape. This is what enraged them.

Therefore, I decided to turn away from a powerful, omnipresent Israeli narrative and to present the Palestinian narrative that is absent — or present only on the margins of the media and cultural scene. This is what angered them: we hear their narratives and respond with ours, while they try to impose a single narrative.

The Camp’s Children Die in Play and in Reality

According to principles of human rights and children’s rights, children should not be drawn into this kind of violence so that they do not lose their childhood. However, the Occupation army, which targeted the camp centers with rockets, tank shells, sniper bullets, and the ‘Caterpillar D9’ bulldozer, made children part of the disaster that befell the camp. Yet, in contrast, the presence of children’s opinions and testimonies in the film was striking. What message do you wish to convey by including them?

While wandering the ruins of the Jenin Camp, I saw children playing a disturbing game — carrying one another on a stretcher like those used for martyrs, chanting “the martyr is beloved by God.” It was heartbreaking. Children were leaping out of childhood, dying both in play and in reality. This was the case of Najwa Jalamneh, 12, whom I discovered by chance while she was sitting on her cousin’s grave. Her cousin was 12 when he was killed. She did not join the children in their game and initially refused to give her testimony. When she began to speak, she spoke in the language of adults, like many children under the Occupation whose childhoods had been stolen. Najwa wanted to challenge her occupiers before ever hearing Ghassan Kanafani’s saying, “Do not die before you become a worthy adversary.” Through Najwa and through the martyr’s game, I wanted to show that one of the worst consequences of Israel’s war is how children are ripped from their childhood. Children should be protected from war; they should be in parks, playgrounds, and libraries. 

Children are the future, and I wanted to show  that children do not forget their rights or their cause, contrary to the Israeli saying, “The old will die, and the young will forget.” I also wanted to show how collective punishment spares no one, not the old or the young; they all pay the same price.

Using Film as a Narrative Tool Enabled Its Reach

Usually, the Occupation authorities pay little attention to Palestinian media and political discourse, believing it to be weak or ineffective. However, when the Palestinian narrative was presented through art — cinema and theater, and earlier through poetry, literature, and academia — the authorities went into a frenzy and declared war on the film. Based on your experience in theater and cinema, how do you view the importance of art and culture and their ability to influence perceptions, including their impact within Israeli society?

Since I live inside the Green Line, or what is called “inside the inside,”  I was often surprised to hear a considerable number of Israelis say that the play “The Pessoptimist,” based on Emile Habibi’s masterpiece which I performed on stage, changed their views on certain issues or made them think in a different way. The same applies to other works that artists belonging to the Israeli left adapted into artistic productions in the 1970s and 1980s. There are also the two works Men in the Sun and Returning to Haifa by the novelist Ghassan Kanafani, and the film Gate of the Sun directed by Yousry Nasrallah and based on the novel by Elias Khoury. Art has the power to influence. Plays like “The Pessoptimist” and films like “Jenin, Jenin” moved audiences, even inside Israel. I witnessed silence and tears at screenings. While extremists attacked the film, others defended it. Art can humanize, challenge ideology, and influence global opinion, which is why the Israeli establishment fears it. 

When “Jenin, Jenin” was shown in Tel Aviv, extremists gathered and tried to prevent the screening, continuing to raise slogans and chant against the film and against me until the cinema management asked the police to remove them from the hall. After that, I sensed a kind of engagement with the film. I don’t mean a change in Israeli public opinion — let us admit that art alone cannot change viewpoints among the Israeli majority, who are deeply entrenched in the colonial religious and nationalist right. The Israeli establishment and government are those who shape Israeli public opinion, and they operate based on their own interests and ambitions and are against change. But we can influence global public opinion, and we can affect the people who are committed to human rights, justice, equality, and opposition to occupation and racism in Israel.  Through committed and professional art, we can challenge the Israeli narrative, expose its lies, and make incremental changes. I was deeply moved by the testimony of Israeli director Ram Levi, one of the most prominent Israeli film directors and the director of the film “Khirbet Khizeh,” who insisted on giving a statement at the Lod court despite suffering from Parkinson’s disease. He told the court: “You have no right to try Bakri, this is an infringement on the freedom of expression and democracy…I served  in Gaza and witnessed war crimes worse than  Jenin.” 

Israeli documentary filmmakers’ unions also expressed solidarity.

Since the declaration of war on your film, you have received support and advocacy on multiple levels. What are your thoughts on the supportive polarization around the film, and how can it be developed further?

The Israeli campaign against the film backfired, spreading the Palestinian narrative globally and building solidarity.  The most eloquent response came from Arab filmmakers who celebrated the film after it won the Best Documentary Film Award at the Carthage International Film Festival in 2003. Another prominent solidarity campaign was launched from Italy in 2008, through a petition signed by a large group of Italian filmmakers, including Giuseppe Bertolucci, Saverio Costanzo, and Moni Ovadia.

The reception, solidarity, and celebration among Palestinians, especially in the Jenin camp, were very special and met with warmth. I was deeply saddened to hear of the death of Iyad Al-Sumoudi, who was my host and guide throughout filming and to whom I granted an honorary producer position on the film. 

Palestinian artists issued a petition of support and solidarity in the face of the fierce Israeli attack on the film, and the Palestinian Ministry of Culture and Minister of Culture Atef Abu Saif took an honorable, supportive stand for me.

After the court’s unjust ruling was announced, I received hundreds of calls and donations. The support from Palestinian camps, artists, ministries, and international filmmakers reaffirmed that this was not just my battle. It was a battle for culture, narrative, and freedom of expression.

In conclusion, we will not surrender, and we will continue to resist through art.

About The Author:

Muhannad Abd al-Hameed is a Palestinian journalist.

The Palestinian Gazelle

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The Palestinian Gazelle

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themarkaz.org • 2024-11-01

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Manal Mahamid

is a conceptual multidisciplinary Palestinian artist based in Haifa and Dublin since 2020. Born in Moawia, a Palestinian village, Mahamid has developed a diverse body of work that spans sculpture, video, installation, painting, and photography. She earned her Master’s in Fine Arts at the University of Haifa in 2006, thanks to a scholarship of Excellence from the university. In 2010, she obtained a degree in Museology and Curation from the University of Tel Aviv. In 2024, she completed a Master’s in Culture Policy and Arts Management from University College Dublin (UCD).Mahamid’s work has been recognized with numerous accolades, including being shortlisted for the A.M. Qattan Young Artist of the Year Award in 2002. She received the Delfina Foundation’s Resident Artist Award in 2007 as part of the Riwaq Biennale, a collaboration between the Delfina Foundation and the A.M. Qattan Foundation. Her art has been showcased in over 50 group exhibitions worldwide, with notable exhibitions in London, Chicago, Cairo, Dusseldorf, Haifa, Ramallah, Um El Fahim, and Jericho. She also participated in the Qalandiya International Festival in 2014 and 2016, organized by the Arab Culture Association in Haifa. Her solo exhibitions include The Tale of a Gazelle (2016), Work in Progress, and her most recent exhibition Lines of Flight in Waterford.

As a Palestinian artist working across sculpture, video and photography, my practice is deeply rooted in exploring the complex intersections between colonialism, identity, and the altered landscapes of my homeland. I use art to confront the ways in which colonial regimes reshape not only human narratives but also the ecological realities of a place. I believe that land, animals, and plants are not passive victims in this transformation; they are active bearers of history, witnesses to the trauma of erasure, and symbols of resilience. My project, The Palestinian Gazelle, emerged from these reflections and became a pivotal part of my ongoing exploration of environmental justice and ecological resistance.

The project began with a personal experience at a zoo in Israel, where I noticed a sign at a gazelle enclosure. In Arabic and English, it read “The Palestinian Gazelle,” but in Hebrew, it was labeled “The Israeli Gazelle.” This deliberate reclassification was more than just a change of words — it was an act of environmental violence, a clear attempt to overwrite a piece of the landscape’s story. It echoed a broader policy of naming, erasing, and reassigning identities within the land itself. I realized that the renaming of the gazelle was symbolic of a larger process where even nature is co-opted and redefined by the occupying power. This manipulation of ecological narratives reflects a form of ecological colonialism — where the natural world is altered to reflect the colonizer’s claim over the land and its history.

The gazelle has long been an iconic symbol in Palestinian culture, representing beauty, grace, and a connection to the land that predates political borders. But in this encounter, I saw how even the natural world is not spared from colonial narratives that attempt to sever the people’s connection to their environment. A later experience in the same zoo deepened the project further. I saw a gazelle with an amputated leg, and when I asked, the zookeeper explained that they had “saved” it by cutting off its limb. This explanation struck me as disturbingly familiar. It reflected the paradox of colonialism: to preserve something by mutilating it, to “save” it by altering it beyond recognition.

From this encounter, the gazelle became a powerful metaphor in my work. To me, the amputated limb mirrors the experience of Palestinians, whose connection to their land has been severed, fragmented, and rewritten. Yet, despite the dismemberment, the gazelle stands, dignified and defiant. It symbolizes the broader fight for environmental justice, where the struggle is not only about protecting land and species but also about preserving cultural identities and historical narratives against a backdrop of systemic erasure.

In creating The Palestinian Gazelle, I aimed to highlight how colonial forces not only control human narratives but also manipulate ecological ones. Through video, sculpture, and mixed media, I traced the journeys of the gazelle across a divided and militarized landscape, defying checkpoints, borders, and fences. Running through these terrains, I wanted to capture the absurdity of imposed boundaries on a land that once flowed freely. The act of running became a visual metaphor for resistance: a refusal to accept fragmentation and a reclamation of the land’s natural continuity, challenging both environmental degradation and the politics of ecological apartheid that seek to compartmentalize and control movement.

My large-scale sculpture of the amputated gazelle is a deliberate representation of this resilience. Despite its missing limb, the gazelle stands proud — not as a pitiful creature, but as a survivor—a reflection of a disrupted yet unbroken identity. It represents a landscape that, like the gazelle, has been cut apart and claimed, yet continues to endure. By emphasizing the mutilated yet enduring body of the gazelle, I wanted to address the broader issues of environmental trauma — where the land and its inhabitants bear the visible and invisible scars of conflict.

The use of the gazelle in my work is a way of reasserting its true identity — one that is deeply entwined with the history and ecology of Palestine. I am fascinated by how the animal’s image appears throughout Arab literature, poetry, and music as a symbol of longing and connection to the land. It is an image that belongs to a time before borders and barbed wire, when the land was whole. In my work, I aim to make visible the tension between what the land was, what it is forced to be, and what it could be if freed from these constraints.

By placing the gazelle in landscapes that span from the north to the south of historic Palestine, I invite viewers to reimagine the land as it once was — continuous, whole, and resilient. I want people to see not just the physical beauty of the gazelle but the broader ecological and political story it tells. This is not just an animal; it is a living archive of a land under siege, a creature caught between survival and loss, and a reminder that even in the face of attempts to amputate its history, it endures.

Through The Palestinian Gazelle, I hope to address not only the political erasure of a people but also the environmental and ecological impacts of these narratives. The project is my way of reclaiming the landscape and asserting a form of ecological justice that insists on the inseparability of land, identity, and the natural world. For me, the gazelle’s journey is a story of interrupted yet unbroken continuity — an emblem of ecological and cultural endurance that refuses to be confined to the narrow definitions imposed by colonial narratives.

Welcome to Palestinian Culture Days Dublin

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Welcome to Palestinian Culture Days Dublin

Palestinian Culture Days Dublin (PCD.Dublin) is a dynamic initiative founded by a collective of activists, artists, and intellectuals from both Palestinian and Irish communities. Our mission is to foster cultural exchange, understanding, and collaboration between Palestine and Ireland through diverse artistic and cultural disciplines.

Mission:
We are dedicated to promoting Palestinian culture and heritage while celebrating its deep connections to the Arab world. By sharing these rich traditions with Irish audiences, we strive to build a bridge of mutual respect and appreciation.

What We Do:
PCD.Dublin organizes a variety of events and activities throughout the year, encompassing multiple art forms:

  • Cinema: Showcasing films by Palestinian filmmakers and those inspired by Palestine.
  • Theatre: Presenting plays that explore Palestinian narratives and shared experiences.
  • Music: Featuring performances by Palestinian and Arab musicians, blending traditional and contemporary sounds.
  • Visual Arts: Hosting exhibitions of paintings, sculptures, photography, and multimedia works.
  • Performing Arts: Collaborating with performers to bring Palestinian stories to life on stage.
  • Cultural Discussions: Organizing talks, panels, and workshops to engage and inform Irish audiences.

Our Activities:
In addition to year-round programming, we host intensive cultural celebrations during specific periods to immerse Irish audiences in the vibrancy and diversity of Palestinian and Arab culture.

Our Vision:
We aspire to cultivate a vibrant cultural dialogue that deepens understanding, fosters empathy, and strengthens ties between Palestinian and Irish communities. By highlighting shared values and unique perspectives, we aim to inspire solidarity and collaboration.