Guest contribution by Jumana Qawasme
On Saturday, April 14, 2012, the weekend before Loyola University in Chicago’s Palestine Awareness Week, a group of students and I from the Middle Eastern Student Association (MESA) and Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) built a mock apartheid wall. The tradition started about three years ago. While the university has had no objections or resistance on its part, other pro-Israel groups on campus used the university as a kind of vehicle for its various concerns, excuses, and general nagging.
By the time I first arrived at the apartment where we were painting the wall, the MESA board had already painted the Palestinian flag onto the four panels as a sort of background. It was absolutely beautiful but not in some convoluted, ultra-patriotic way. Rather, it was striking in its bold statement of existence. I was struck by the fact that the Palestinian flag would be an undeniable presence on the Loyola campus, a normally politically-neutral (provided that is even possible) place. This excited me—and the others—beyond belief. [Read more...]
Of Occupation, Resistance and Women
Guest contribution by Roqayah Chamseddine
Despite the establishment of stale orientalist campaigns, created in the name of women’s liberation in the Middle East and North Africa, the existence of enduring, self-sufficient women in the region has far-reaching historical context. The search for female Middle East voices amongst pundits in the mainstream media echoes the same tired “Palestinian Gandhi” aphorism; analysts have long used Laurence of Arabia-esque exoticism as a means to portray the women of the Arab world, in that if they are not subservient housewives they are coy and reserved daughters, sheltered and locked away by the domineering male figures in the household. These conjectures are not false in their entirety, but they are also not subjective as to one specific region, culture, religion or people.
The pervasive Western tradition of characterizing an entire community by certain traits, which their Western audiences can ooh and ahh at, has helped manufacture a plethora of distortions. History confirms that Arab women have long played an active political role in their societies; from Egyptian women who demonstrated alongside men during the Egyptian Revolution of 1919, against British occupation of Egypt and Sudan, to resistance fighter Jamila Bu Hreid of Algeria, who was nearly tortured to death by French occupation forces during the Algerian revolution and independence movement, lasting from 1954 to 1962, which resulted in Algeria gaining its independence from France. South Lebanon, liberated in 2000 after nearly 22 years of Israeli occupation, was also home to female political action. Lebanese women would quietly supply resistance fighters with ammunition, often times wrapping them across their stomachs before passing through Israeli checkpoints unnoticed. [Read more...]