1948 – Sixteen Minutes to Palestine

Unison

March 8, 2012 By Guest Contributor 7 Comments

Guest contribution by Karimah Al-Helew

Dear World,

I just wanted to tell you that I love you. Please Smile. I am a person. A Woman. A Muslim. A Cuban-Palestinian born in America, and I happen to express myself better in poetry—or at least I think I do. With that written, I ask you to stand in my shoes for a minute. Below is a piece, a snapshot, a taste of life in Palestine as it embraced me during my last visit. We live in a place where injustice is as evident as the sky is blue. But with every breath that we breathe, we can counter it, even if it is just by telling someone else’s story. Or our own.

Peace and thank you,
Karimah Al-Helew

Unison

There is so much to say, I can’t just say it
There is so much I’m feeling I can’t just explain it
I try to sift the words that swim in my mind
But I’m afraid of committing an injustice
And these words might be my everything, and still fall behind.
Too often I call upon the whisper of the winds to give my words weight. Ragged breathing—thoughts—my mind in its agitated state.
Recalling memories must become my best trait; for memories are bloodlines to narratives silenced by the Holy Lands woven fate
This is more than skin. Captured moments so deep
I want you to know, to be, to see.
May my eyes be windows and ease this heart in limbo
Even though,
Even though my memory is not photographic
I will work my hardest to paint sounds for you with absolutely no static. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Guest Contribution, Personal, Poetry Tagged With: 1948, 1967, Grandmother, International Women's Day

What’s more surprising than TIME’s twentieth most surprising photo? Its caption

December 14, 2011 By Sami Kishawi Leave a Comment

TIME released on Monday a set of what its photo editors call “the Most Surprising Photos of 2011“. Photograph #20 caught my attention for obvious reasons.

The photograph carries the following caption:

May 15, 2011. An undercover Israeli policeman dressed as a Palestinian woman opens a car door after detaining a Palestinian protester during clashes in Shuafat refugee camp, in the West Bank near Jerusalem. Israeli security forces had been on alert for violence on Sunday, the day Palestinians mourn the “Nakba,” or catastrophe, of Israel’s founding in a 1948 war, when hundreds of thousands of their brethren fled or were forced to leave their home.

There’s something eerily twisted about this image. After hearing about these people, these supposedly menacing Palestinians donning traditional garb and waving around guns, for so long, it is ironic that the only example I’ve ever seen happens to be of an undercover Israeli. In this sense, I can see why this photograph was included in this set.

But what is more surprising is the photograph’s caption. I’d expect a respectable news publication like TIME to be a bit more conscience or at least accurate about its interpretation of history. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Commentary, Media & Journalism, News, Visual Arts Tagged With: 1948, Ilan Pappe, Nakba, Photojournalism, TIME

Pan-Palestinianism and the crime of forgetting the West Bank and ’48

November 7, 2011 By Sami Kishawi Leave a Comment

Whether we want to admit it to ourselves or not, most of us have fallen into a trap — myself included. We are proud of our people, our towns and villages and neighborhoods, but we too often trace our roots just to the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, or ’48 rather than to greater Palestine. And if this doesn’t change, we unconsciously benefit the racist colonialist ideology that seeks to erase our identity, our culture, and our history.

We must learn to appreciate the sheer magnitude of the word ‘Palestine’, particularly in terms of it’s physical presence and political weight. Israel’s invasion of Gaza in 2008-2009 meant that the term ‘Gaza Strip’ dominated headlines for days. But days became weeks and weeks became months and it was almost as if the West Bank and the global diaspora no longer mattered. In all fairness, the Gaza Strip had experienced the unimaginable, and the attention directed towards the thousands of families living within the besieged territory provided many of us with great comfort. But this should not make it acceptable to forget the West Bank and ’48 or to leave millions of other oppressed Palestinians out of the picture. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Commentary, Media & Journalism Tagged With: 1948, Gaza Strip, Operation Cast Lead, Pan-Palestinianism, West Bank

There is a forty-four year old skeleton living in Israel’s closet; this year, it is armed

June 5, 2011 By Sami Kishawi Leave a Comment

There is a forty-four year old skeleton living in Israel’s closet. It is not hidden — even the United States acknowledges its existence — but it continues to decay in the rotten conditions set forth by the occupation.

It first emerged on June 5, 1967 — the Naksa, or the setback, as we call it — during which over 300,000 Palestinians were forcefully evicted from their homes in ways that mimicked the 1947-48 evictions in Palestine, the 1939 evictions in Warsaw, the late-1920s evictions in China’s Tibetan Prefecture. Self-preservation is the claim the skeleton made, but self-preservation never justifiably entail the mass removal of entire groups of people.

Just another stain in Israel’s claimed moral dedication to introducing justice to the region, that’s all.

Every year, on the anniversary of the Naksa, the skeleton makes an appearance. As millions of people worldwide gather in commemoration of those who lost their homes, their families, and their individual agencies, the skeleton scoffs at the world and defends the consequences of its soldiers’ actions.

This year, the skeleton made its expected appearance, but it came heavy with arms. The Israeli military opened fire on hundreds of Syrian nationals and Palestinian refugees protesting the perpetuation of the Naksa, leaving up to 20 dead and 325 wounded, sources say. The skeleton defended its actions, citing the group of protesters as intent on breaching Israel’s borders.

But the skeleton has put itself an unforgiving imbroglio. Questions must be asked. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Activism, Commentary, News Tagged With: 1948, 1967, Israel, Nakba, Naksa, Palestine, Protest, Syria

University of Chicago SJP distributes campus-wide eviction notices to expose illegal home demolitions

May 18, 2011 By Sami Kishawi 2 Comments

In a move that left students shocked, intrigued, and more aware, the University of Chicago’s Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) recently distributed over 200 eviction notices to the three largest residence halls on campus as part of the group’s annual Nakba Commemoration Week. The eviction notices were designed to realistically portray the protocol through which Palestinian families oftentimes find themselves permanently forced from their homes by order of the Israeli government.

Modeled after similar eviction notice campaigns at Harvard and Yale, students spent much of Sunday night hand-delivering the eviction notices to randomly selected dorm rooms and suites throughout campus. The front of the eviction notice reads:

We regret to inform you that your suite or housing unit is scheduled for demolition in the next three days. If you do not vacate within the next three days, pursuant to Code No. 208.2A, we reserve the right to destroy your housing unit. We do not maintain responsibility for anyone remaining inside.

In smaller font, the notice contextualizes the eviction by referencing the number of homes demolished since 1967 and how arbitrary home demolitions, already condemned by various international governance councils and human rights organizations, serve to systematically and illegally punish Palestinian people living under occupation. The protocol outlined in the main statement is authenticated by the Israeli military’s standard procedure. Oftentimes, Palestinian families are unable to fully clear out their homes in time. Personal belongings are almost always destroyed in the demolition. And to avoid having to pay for the Israeli government’s services, some Palestinian families are forced to demolish the houses themselves. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Activism, Local Events, News Tagged With: 1948, 1967, Eviction Notice, Home Demolitions, Nakba, SJP, University of Chicago

Nakba Commemoration Week 2011 at the University of Chicago

May 15, 2011 By Sami Kishawi Leave a Comment

May 15 marks another year of dispossession, land theft, and human rights violations. It’s been sixty-three years since hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forcefully evicted from their homes and made into refugees with no way back. But the Nakba, or catastrophe, didn’t begin and end in mid-May 1948. The systematic uprooting of Palestinians, their homes, their culture, and their overall identities began years earlier as fundamentalist militia groups claiming to represent the manifestation of the Jewish promise set fire to Arab villages, demolished Palestinian homes, executed entire families, and drove away thousands of Palestinian residents in the hopes that these preliminary evictions would give way to a greater, more forceful ethnic cleansing.

Over six decades later, the systematic expulsion of Palestinians from the lands they were once born and raised in continues to this day. Contrary to popular belief, the Nakba has yet to end. We at the University of Chicago hope to make that clear in this year’s Nakba Commemoration Week. Each event is specifically designed to enlighten the public about the various stages of the Nakba with facts, sounds, words, images, testimonials, and real-life simulations. Themed after the standard notice of eviction, these are their stories. This is our struggle.

Filed Under: Local Events Tagged With: 1948, Commemoration, Eviction Notice, Nakba, Palestine, SJP, University of Chicago

Jerusalem Post news editor denies existence of Palestinians

May 9, 2011 By Sami Kishawi 1 Comment

Would you trust a news source if it explicitly breeds hatred and intolerance? What if it attempts to manipulate or even ignore the truth? Or how about if it justifies the oppression it has a moral duty to report on?

Deputy news editor of the Jerusalem Post Israel Kasnett is caught in a very awkward spot. It is unfortunate to see that although the public entrusts him and his staff of journalists to accurately portray the news without indulging in any bigoted ideologies, Kasnett finds it acceptable to promote his fundamentally flawed belief that “63 years ago [P]alestinians did not exist!!!”

Kasnett’s remark, published through Twitter, came as a response to Electronic Intifada co-founder Ali Abunimah’s statement that after sixty-three years, Israel now has its very own “massive ghetto prison for the ethnically cleansed, called Gaza”. Kasnett’s remark also serves as the critical foundation for the denial of the Nakba in which upwards of 800,000 Palestinians were forcefully removed from their homes in 1948. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Commentary, Media & Journalism, News, Opinion Tagged With: 1948, Ali Abunimah, Anti-Semitism, Israel, Jerusalem Post, Nakba, Palestine