Photo credit: Alan Gignoux
Date taken: 2004
Location: Burj Al-Barajneh refugee camp, Beirut, Lebanon
Zeinab Al-Saqqa, a refugee living in Burj Al-Barajneh refugee camp in Lebanon, is shown in this portrait wearing the wedding dress she wore before being evicted from her home in the Palestinian village of Al-Nahr. The dress is the only possession she brought with her when she fled for her life. [Read more...]
Footage from the 1980s gets me every time. It’s the graininess, I think, and the punchy contrast that sometimes convinces me I’m seeing the world through all the wrong lenses.
It can be an eerie feeling watching a man’s grainy and somewhat abstracted face rush across the screen. But what if the element of familiarity jumps at you and you recognize the beard, or maybe the color of his hair, or the trademark cigarette in between his index and middle fingers in his left hand?
This might sound unreasonable to you but that element of familiarity is what has kept me from Sabra and Shatila. The massacre, its memory now thirty years old, caught on film, tape, and paper, has tested me each time its anniversary solemnly marched by.
Sure, I know a bit of the history and background of one of the world’s most gruesome, most forgotten massacres. But ask me if I’ve seen any footage or if I’ve ever looked into primary sources beyond face value and you’d get an embarrassed ‘no’.
That changed yesterday. I managed to find a few scattered clips of the 1982 massacre. I spent much of the afternoon and evening catching up on my history. [Read more...]
Guest contribution by Eman Sahloul
As the Syrian revolution scrapes the end of its eighteenth month in protest, the loyalty war rages on outside its borders amongst government figures, activists, and “activists”. As someone very much in tune with news, rumors, and international relations—better described as the who’s-covering-who’s-butt affair—I have become particularly interested by one certain contention: Palestine, Syria, and Hassan Nasrallah.
This conflict of interest, as some may call it, has been addressed by several from a strictly political and historical standpoint. I can reiterate for maybe the eleventh time the arguments I and others have made.
I could point out once again that the Assad regime took part in peace talks with Israel in 2008, clearly contradicting its big-shot statements that Israel doesn’t exist.
I could go at length about the utter nonchalance the Assad regime displayed after Israel captured, or rather strolled into, the Golan Heights in 1967, despite how much the regime parades its resistance title.
I can refresh everyone’s seeming mental abeyance on the 1976 Tal Al-Zaatar massacre in Lebanon, where the murder of over 3,000 Palestinians was carried out by yours truly, the Syrian Army. [Read more...]
Finals week finished and as part of my tradition to return to normalcy, I went for a refreshing haircut at Mike’s in northwest Chicago, as far from campus as I could get. The owner was out and an elderly man filled his place. Having been a regular at Mike’s for years now, I wondered who this man was and how he fit into the medley of young barbers representing all shades of brown. His seat was empty so he called me over.
I quickly learned that he’s the owner’s father, a veteran barber from Beirut who, in just thirty minutes, managed to share so many memories and even more wisdom that I found it only appropriate to jot this experience down.
Wielding sharp shears in one hand and a thick comb in the other, he told me of his early days in Jaffa. He would spend hours overlooking the Mediterranean Sea in all its calm glory, watching children not much younger than him wade out into the dense water and ride the miniature incoming waves.
He traveled to Gaza regularly to visit his aunts and uncles and has fond memories of the days he spent in Mokhayyam al-Shaati’, a refugee camp in the heart of Gaza City right along the coast. The ports were open at that time and he would watch boats unload their cargo freely. Although small and rocky, the mina saw its fair share of action. Even smugglers found the port to be a useful leg in their journeys moving cars and furniture through the Middle East. [Read more...]
Since 1955, the Press Photo of the Year award has gone to the most telling of photographs, the ones that capture, contain, and organize the most reality and raw emotion in a rectangular field of pixels. Each photograph presents a narrative of the human condition and is oftentimes the strongest visual representation of an era of importance. They catalyze change by attracting the world’s visual attention.
Of the fifty-four photographs honored with the distinction, three feature Palestinians as the subjects. Three. The first shows Palestinian refugees fleeing from their homes again in 1976 during civil war in Lebanon. The second, from 1982, reveals the aftermath of the Sabra and Shatila massacre. The third, taken in 1993, shows Palestinian children raising toy guns as a sign of defiance at the close of the First Intifada. You’d think, then, that giving the world three opportunities to witness the realities lived by Palestinians would prevent the perpetuation of such injustices, no?
Here are the photographs with brief captions.
1976
Palestinians flee the La Quarantaine district of Beirut, Lebanon in January 1976. What makes this photograph especially moving is the context behind it, the fact that these refugees were remade into refugees. The father likely experienced the same rocking explosions almost three decades ago when he was a child, and now his children get to follow in his footsteps. (Photo by Françoise Demulder) [Read more...]
Guest contribution by Danya M.
Overhead they heard sounds of air planes dropping explosives onto the village, soldiers shooting up in the air and at those who dared to defend themselves, screams of women and children not knowing what to do, and the noise of panicking civilians running from their homes.
This was the scene on July 16, 1948, exactly two months after the establishment of the state of Israel. Before that night, Saffuriyya was a thriving agricultural village with thousands of years of history behind it. Saffuriyya was once was a blossoming village overlaying a hilltop, but now only remnants of destroyed buildings show from underneath the unhistorical trees planted by the Jewish National Fund in order to cover up what was once a rich and beautiful history.
A local resident whose family came from Saffuriyya holds a picture of the village in 1945. (Courtesy of Danya M.)
I wonder what will happen to the man who calls for the assassination of the President of the United States. The post-9/11 era dictates that the mere thought of something so absurd, something so backwards, merits serious consequences. The Department of Homeland Security elevates the national threat level. A Patriot Act-like bill pushes its way through Congress. Those associated with the plot are arrested, interrogated, sent to Guantanamo, and kept there. The President is safe.
But I’ve left out one blaring detail that has the power to quell Washington’s reaction: the man’s political and religious affiliation. [Read more...]
A brief deconstruction of “Sh*t People Say About Israel”
Pro-Israel students, under the guidance of The David Project, recently joined the “Sh*t [people] say” internet craze on YouTube with their own video, “Sh*t People Say About Israel”. Filmed at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the film clearly takes aim at supporters of the Palestinian cause and patronizes them as ignorant and misinformed. But the video fails on so many levels. Let’s see what kind of “Sh*t” these student hasbarists have to say.
1. Israel doesn’t even want peace.
If it did, it probably wouldn’t be incarcerating children or building concrete barriers through Palestinian villages or preventing Arabs from marrying Israelis or arming fanatical settlers colonizing the West Bank or demolishing homes or tearing through olive tree groves or shooting high velocity tear gas canisters at the faces of unarmed demonstrators.
2. I heard everyone there is in the army.
In Israel, military service is compulsory for all citizens above the age of 18. Recruits serve between two and three years and are given the opportunity to extend their service. Clearly, not everyone in Israel is in the military at any given moment, but the mandatory service means that most adult citizens have, at one point or another, served as an active military unit involved in the maintenance of a condemned and illegal occupation of Palestine.
Mind you, there does exist a refusenik subculture in Israel, but unless these individuals refuse to join the military for religious reasons, they are often stigmatized and prosecuted under Israeli law. Maya Wind, for example, spent forty days in a military prison for refusing to join the Israeli military on the basis that she could not agree with the military’s illegal activity towards the Palestinian people.
[Read more...]