July 8, 2022 will mark the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Ghassan Kanafani, a political and cultural icon of the Palestinian resistance and the Palestinian people. We urge all groups, organizations and communities working on Palestine to mark this important anniversary that highlights the immortality of Palestinian resistance and creativity, despite the deliberate policy of targeting and assassination used by the colonizer against Palestinian leaders, freedom fighters and visionaries.
As the current disastrous phase of Anglo-American colonialism sinks even deeper into chaos and anarchy, causing untold suffering in the Arab and Muslim worlds and elsewhere, thoughtful reflection and careful analysis become more urgently needed. Heeding Edward Said’s call, Haider Eid uses literature to “de-orientalize the orient” in Gaza.
Thousands of stories are out there are waiting to be told. Thousands of agonies are screaming to be heard. Every Palestinian story is worth being told.
Studying literature expands our understanding of the possible. Studying (post)colonial literature shows how Palestinian state building has failed to achieve the liberatory promises of contemporary Palestinian nationalism.
Mourid Barghouti, beloved Palestinian poet and the author of the stirring memoir “I saw Ramallah,” died earlier this month in Amman at the age of 76.
Palestine Writes Literature Festival was an exhilarating relief from the pandemic. Writers including Naomi Shihab Nye, Ibtisam Barakat and Ghada Karmi spoke of indigeneity, dispossession, erasure, settler colonialism, oral history, collective memory, the right of return, Palestinian queerness, radical feminism, and the burning need to explore and document all of this in art, film, and writing.
Anti-occupation activist Badia Dwaik wrestles with conflicted feelings on seeing journalist’s photos of his son stopped by Israeli soldiers in Hebron. “I don’t want my child to be a cheap and easy target,” he writes. And what if Mahmoud had let the cigarette fall from his lips and the soldiers dared him to pick it up. They could have used such a pretext to shoot him.
A news story of Indian migrant workers who hid in a cement mixer to avoid a national lock down reminds Aarushi Punia of Ghassan Kanafani’s classic novella ‘Men in the Sun’
Haidar Eid writes, “In Gaza, staying at home leads to some existential questions and deep soul searching. With time to reflect, I am tempted to cross that invisible thin line separating fiction from reality. The real world of occupation, blockade, apartheid, settler-colonialism, and coronavirus on the one hand, and on the other, the imaginary world of my favorite authors.”
Haidar Eid discusses teaching Ghassan Kanafani’s The Land of Sad Oranges to students in Gaza. He says it not only provides insights into the tragic loss of the Nakba, but raises questions of what justice means today.