Sawt al Niswa | صوت النسوة - Palestinians

Brainstorming Nakba

deema kaedbey — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 21:00:00 +0000

Jehan Bseiso

At curious four I asked my mother why Superman did not speak the same language I did

She told me that

Our cartoon hero is a little boy forever ten

His hands clasped behind his back, invisible handcuffs

She told me I had to learn another alphabet, another geography,

In the Big Yellow Atlas, for kids, full of pictures

We stenciled in your awkward shape into maps that didn’t even want you

We had to learn your name in their language
They told me I spoke funny.

So I rinsed my accent at school; madraseh instead of madrasa

I read about diaspora and exile and power structures

Without knowing what they meant

So you’re American? On paper

And Jordan? Is what I know

And Gaza? An old wives tale

We are bastard children of hyphens and supplements and sentences that start with

Originally I’m from…

At home,
Baba counted in dead bodies, in ratios, and for breakfast we had

Nostalgia and symbols

We read Kanafani, Darwiche and Said

When we found tongues

We learned to speak from the margins of pages,

From the periphery

Maybe this is Freud’s “oceanic feeling”.

A veritable storehouse in the unconscious

To be from a place and not know the place

There are simpler ways of being in the world, I’m told.

Still I choose Za3tar and Shatta and this awkward Fat7a.

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Uncivil Rights for Palestinians: Women's Voices

deema kaedbey — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 21:00:00 +0000

Sonya Knox

On August 17, 2010 the Lebanese Parliament passed the latest version of a “civil rights” bill for Palestinian refugees. Rather uncivil than civil, the bill maintains the official, state-sanctified racism against Palestinian refugees. While it is no longer illegal for Palestinians to work in menial jobs, the new law continues to ban Palestinian refugees from syndicated white collar professions (like doctor, lawyer, engineer, dentist), and continues to ban them from owning property (a right which was taken away from them in 2001) and from inheriting any property bought before 2001.

This was not the version of the bill that should have passed. Earlier bills, proposed this June, would have granted Palestinian refugees in Lebanon – foreign residents for over 60 years – the right to work in any profession, to own and inherit land, and to access the National Social Security Fund. The version that passed was not the bill advocated for by the Campaign for Civil Rights for Palestinians, by the Right to Work Campaign and the Campaign for Employability of Palestinians. It certainly is not what concerned activists and NGOs have been fighting for since the end of the Lebanese Civil War. In fact, it’s not even similar to the bills that were originally proposed to Parliament.

It is hardly surprising that Lebanese politicians have yet again chosen to reinforce the most racist, discriminatory and basest sentiments in society – fear-mongering and protectionism are invariably more popular than progressive social development theory or basic human rights. What was surprising was that, for a brief moment, Lebanon could have started on the path to becoming a different place: a country where skills and not wasta is rewarded, a society where institutionalized racism is no longer defended, a place people want to stay in, invest in, rather than flee.

Over the past few days I’ve talked with friends and colleagues who live in the camps, second and third generation Palestinian refugees living in Lebanon, and asked them what they thought of the latest “civil rights” bill and how their lives might have changed had they really been granted civil rights. These are their words.

Rasha, 17, Bourj al Shemali^¹

I never get it, right, I never get why the Lebanese think I would want to stay here. Look, it’s not like I have a choice. Do you really think that 60 years ago my grandparents were like, “Oh, we’re bored of Nablus, what we want to do is leave behind all our money and the house and the family business and go live in this dirty, crowded camp where we can’t work”?!

Look, if I could go someplace else, I would. But I can’t. They don’t give visas to 17 year-old refugee girls. And they don’t let us do anything here. My brother has been trying to find work for like years, he has a computer degree from the university here, and when he applies, they tell him, “We don’t hire Palestinians.”

But I don’t understand why the Lebanese punish us. I mean, ok, the civil war – and I know what happened, I watched all of 7arb Lubnan – but that wasn’t me. I wasn’t even born yet. I’ve done nothing wrong.

But, yeah, when they were like the government is going to let us work like everyone else, I had this idea. See, I’m studying accounting now. It’s fine, but I don’t really like it. What I want to study is Arabic literature, the old classics and poetry. There’s no way that’s going to happen, because I don’t even have the baccalaureate, and then how would I get the money to study? How would I convince my family to pay so I can study something like that? But then, like, if we had the right to work, then I could become an Arabic teacher – not in UNRWA – but at a university. And then I could work, too, and help out. But we don’t have the right to work. So nevermind.

Layla, 38, Bourj al Barajneh

I never believed it would happen. I’ve lived here my whole life, I know how the Lebanese think, and I never believed they would give us rights. They’re scared, it’s a society of fear. They’re scared of each other, so they blame us, they punish us and put the army around the camps and make sure we can’t work decent jobs. And if, somehow, we actually manage to make some money, we can’t invest it back into Lebanon, because we can’t buy property.

So of course I knew the bill wouldn’t pass. Because being Lebanese means being racist, and they’re not ready to change. Look, we all know that it makes more sense to have Palestinians working here than all the other foreign workers. Because we live here, so whatever money we earn, we spend here. The money stays in Lebanon. We already pay the VAT and it’s not like we get any Lebanese health or education services. So this bill, it’s not a logical response, it’s just racist.

But what, what if all that was dropped? What if we could work anywhere, build anywhere, not be presumed guilty and have to worry every time we see the Army? Then I wouldn’t see everything always closed-off. I wouldn’t feel so choked. I would say, “Ok, good, now we can get to work and make something of ourselves here and work hard, so that we’ll be strong when we go back to Palestine.”

Dania, 24, Beddawi

I broke off my engagement last month. I don’t know why, something happened to me and I can’t be happy with him. So it’s bad, it’s really bad right now because it was kitbil kitab and now we have to pay his family a lot of money. My parents tell me it’s ok, that they don’t want me to be this upset, that they support me. But I’m scared and I’m upset and I want to get a job. I don’t want my parents paying the money of the divorce, I want to pay it off.

So, yes, I want a job. I have a civil engineering degree. I have a degree from the Lebanese University in English literature. And I speak English well. Do you think I’m going to find any work? There isn’t anything in the camp that pays well – even the international NGOs are stopping their work here. And Tripoli? Do you really think anyone would hire a Palestinian in Tripoli?

When they said that they were going to change the laws, you know, to give us rights, I thought that maybe things would get better. I know it would take time, but that yes, there would be opportunities. My father could open a store, I could work in an engineering firm, things would be better. But nothing’s changed, and I still need a job.

1 Names and places are all changed

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Hamayel Budrus: The Documentary

deema kaedbey — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 21:00:00 +0000

Yassmine Saleh

In its third successful film-making, after Control Room and Encounter Point, Just Vision won multiple awards for its documentary on Budrus’ non-violent resistance against the construction of the Separation Wall on its land. Just Vision’s director is Julia Bacha, who directed her first award-winning documentary about Al-Jazeera network in Control Room. Just Vision defines itself as a “non-governmental organization supporting Israeli-Palestinian peace-builders through media and education.” Without going through the details of the lessons learned from the Budrus example in resisting the construction of the Separation Wall, suffice it to say that the experience is indeed valuable and important. It is important to have that struggle documented as the film did, to make it a historical record and a testament to a crucial period in the continued Palestinian resistances against Israeli colonial measures, in all its forms. Yet this article attempts a meditative look at the way that the Palestinians and the Israelis in the film were portrayed and represented. The film begins with Ayed Morrar, who is a Palestinian man in the village of Budrus and the leader of the non-violent resistance in Budrus, directing a statement to the camera. We don’t hear the question posed to him. The form of the film is made in a way that lets the those who are in the film speak in a free flow, not in a question and answer form. Ayed organizes a meeting with the men of the village to brainstorm ideas for the best course of action against the Wall’s construction. In his own words, Ayed explained to the gathered men that they have to decide whether they want to resist the Wall’s construction or accept their fate as a given. After a few male-only demonstrations against the Wall occurred, it was time for Iltizam and the rest of the women in the village to join the resistance. According to Iltizam, the time had come for her to join the resistance, just like her earlier generation of family members did before her in the First Intifada. Resistance should not exclude women’s participation with her fellow men, Iltizam told her father. Iltizam’s courage surpassed her fear of the Israeli soldiers. At some point we see her crawling inside a hole dug by an Israeli bulldozer to stop the bulldozers from uprooting more trees. No one would have imagined that a girl would do that, but here she did it, and other women joined her, she said. Ayed was able to gather Israeli, Hamas, and Fatah activists in the demonstrations and marches. We also see a group of international peace activists from South Africa and other countries come to support the resistance.

The most memorable moment of the film occurred after Salam Fayyad came to visit the village. In preparation for the visit, the people of Budrus made extensive arrangements befitting a presidential welcome, where the people welcome Fayyad and a Scout troupe of boys and girls played on their musical instruments. A tense moment arises between Mr. Ayed and one of the advisors to Mr. Fayyad about the latter’s lack of concern to the threatening Wall on Budrus land. A frustrated Ayed said, “they cannot act like they own a tent that they want to control. A leader under occupation does not sit at his office; he should be among his people in the field attending to their needs.” In Ayed’s view, Fayyad’s visit and the accompanying welcoming celebration served the latter’s PR image and did not in any way help or show any sympathy to the plight of the villagers. Even more than that, the statement also reflected a general disappointment with the Palestinian Authority for not supporting the people of Budrus in preventing the uprooting of the olive trees, the theft of lands and the construction of the Wall.

This last statement made a good impression on the audience in Ramallah attending the premier of the film. Some cheered and clapped. In addition to documenting the escalation of violence on the side of the Israeli border army and the daily demonstrations that Budrus’ men and women held for nine months, the film also zoomed in on the story of a female Israeli soldier. The film focused on her life, in addition to interviewing other Israeli soldiers one of whom was an American-speaking soldier who was the representative of the Israeli Army in Budrus. The film producers put the spotlight on this aspect of Palestinian-Israeli interaction as a way to put a human face to the Israeli bulldozer machine as they are razed the olive trees to the ground. The second effect of incorporating the Israeli soldiers’ narrative was to lessen the impact of the brutal acts on the Palestinian civilians. Indeed, Yasmina the soldier explained to the camera that she chose to join the Border Police Army unit because it is “on the front line and it ensures the most equality between male and female soldiers.” We see her beating up Palestinian men and women with a baton. The film credit stated that Yasmina finished her military service, got married and made a family. Watching this entire account in New York City had a different feeling altogether. The US context of the soldier’s lives that was shown by the film, served to create an intimate, humanizing image of the Israeli soldier that strikes a sharp contrast with the image of her beating up the Palestinians and oppressing them, as if the latter image were the exception to the norm. As though this account is not what Palestinians live and see in their daily interactions with the Israeli soldiers. Thus showing the extra-military context that worked to find a common denominator between the Israeli military persona and the American audience, deprived the reality of a Palestinian context, in essence a propagating a myth – that beneath the military machine lies a human face. But the film also showed other cases of Israeli men who opposed the Wall’s construction and stood with the Palestinians to protect them against the Israeli soldiers’ beating of Palestinians. One particular man chose to go to prison for his support of the Palestinians and for posing as a human shield in front of Israeli violence. The biggest pitfall in the film is that it portrayed the Budrus experience as a victory, when in fact the only victory that happened is that it was no longer built on Palestinian Budrus lands but on Green line lands – the Palestinians were able to save 95% of the land. But what about the remaining 5%? Neglecting this fact and brushing it aside reflects the entire agenda and the tone of the film, which essentially celebrated the means (Palestinian non-violent resistance) as an accomplishment, regardless of the ends’ outcome. The viewer concludes that using non-violent resistance was a remarkable achievement that deserves congratulation. Portraying this as a victory essentially perpetuates an injustice. As much as the film succeeded in portraying the insidious designs of the Israeli army and soldiers, there still is some criticism to be made here. At the outset, the Israeli soldiers overall were portrayed as mere robots coming to Budrus’s land to “construct the Wall no matter what” for the security of the state of Israel.

The soldiers were interviewed extensively to explain what they are doing. “Just following orders.” The spokesman of the IDF in Budrus was an American-looking soldier speaking in his perfect English to the camera about the necessity of constructing the Wall. The power disparity between Palestinians and Israelis did not seem to be a central issue in the film dynamics. We see that the Israeli Army opted not to use violence against the Israeli and international activists on site. In fact the Israeli soldiers ordered the citizens of their country to leave the site so that they can beat up the Palestinians who stand in the way of the bulldozers. Although we see that an Israeli activist gets arrested violently and later put in prison for not complying with the orders of the Israeli soldiers. Aside from feeling that Palestinians have to settle for less with regard to their just cause and rights, the film left much to look for in terms of accurately representing the issue of the Separation Wall. This occurred particularly when Ayed addressed the camera to explain his reasoning for resisting the construction of the Wall. At one instant Ayed stated that “even though he believes that all states and nations have the right to defend themselves and protect the security of their borders, including Israel, yet Israel cannot build a wall on other people’s lands.” This reflects another dilemma with the representation of the Palestinian cause and Palestinians generally in the film. It mainly reflects the way that the Palestinian leadership distorted the Palestinian liberation strategy for resistance.

Another critical issue in the film is the way the Palestinian non-violent resistance was portrayed to have happened solely as a result of Ayed’s leadership and ability to gather IDF in Budrus and other Fatah activists together against the Wall. This is a point to be debated much, as it purports to show that it was an extraordinary feat to have a Hamas and a Fatah activist come together to resist the Occupation. But in fact, all Palestinians, of all walks of life and political affiliations fight and resist in different ways. The last point to mention here is that local Palestinian cinema is able and willing to represent the Palestinian voice accurately and in a nuanced way. The problem, however, is that this cinema does not get endorsed abroad the same way that Just Vision’s Budrus became famous and was received in major international and American festivals. Palestinian cinema suffers from a lack of representation abroad that is on par with films about Palestine that are made by non-Palestinians and feature a select few Palestinians stars (most famous of them Hiam Abbas).  Without giving an exhaustive list of Palestinian film-makers and Palestinian cinema in general, suffice it to say here that Palestine has a lot of talented filmmakers and excellent films that portrayed the conflict and the resistance that ordinary Palestinians face and conduct on a day-to-day basis. These films include Rae’d Hilou’s Hopefully for the Best, a documentary about the lives of ordinary Palestinians in the city of Ramallah and their reaction to the impending war on Iraq. They also include films made by Mai Odeh that are never mentioned. Palestinian voices documented by Palestinian film-makers need to be endorsed more abroad to show the reality of the Palestinians in their own contexts.

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Palestinian Fairies Project

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What's Music Got To Do With It

Pascale Ghazaly — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 21:00:00 +0000

www.maxkeiseronfacebook.com

Maya Mikdashi

The arguments have become familiar. We want to enjoy life; music is not political; dancing should unify us, not divide us. We can’t keep being the sacrificial lamb of the Palestinian cause. Aren't you Lebanese? Are you an Islamist? Don’t you like rock and roll music, coca-cola, and dancing under the stars at open-air raves? Aren’t you for the freedom of expression? Are you (gasp) intolerant?

The questions that the debate whether we, in Lebanon, should join the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaign against Israel engenders have nothing to do with liking music, being fanatical, or censorship. The issue is not a band that played a concert in Tel Aviv, had a stopover in Cyprus, and continued on to Beirut. It is not that this same band performed the week the Israeli state attacked a flotilla of peace activists trying to break the criminal blockade of Gaza, an area of land that is home to over 1.3 million Palestinians and has been placed under siege for over three years. The question is not whether or not we can, or should, empathize with Palestinians living within a settler colony. The question is not if we have to be political. The question is: Can we afford not to be political? Can we absolve ourselves of responsibility towards each other as citizens and residents of Lebanon, as Arabs, or as human beings in the name of music and a good time? And if and when we do absolve ourselves of responsibility, what kind of politics are we engaging in? When we surrender politics to the politicians, what are we doing?

The political permeates every aspect of our lives. From the moment we wake up in particular neighborhoods in, for example, Beirut to the moment that our maid brings us our evening snack and puts our children to sleep, we are engaged in politics. This engagement continues as each of us drives in his or her car to locations that are close by, when we pass by the myriad unkempt children and disabled adults standing in highways selling their sadness, maneuver through a security checkpoint in a politician’s neighborhood, and as we sweat in long pants during the hot summer in a failed attempt to avert the unwanted verbal and physical advances of men on the Manara who know they are not accountable to anyone. Politics is about the struggle over life, how we live it, where we live it, who gets to live a livable life, and who gets to live. We are political because we are alive. Depoliticization is a political process, it is a tactic of a power that aims to separate the messiness of shared life into compartments such as “culture,” “government,” “economy,” “personal life,” “government,” and, my personal favorite, “civil society.” Once segregated into neat, independent packages, we are told that our “political” involvement begins, and ends, at the level of government. Depoliticization comes with neoliberalism, an ideology that masks its praxis being claims to be a “way of life.” The idea that Liberalism is a way of life or that it is simply “good values” has historically fueled capitalist expansion, colonialism, and the imperial notion that western history is at once the telos and the unfolding of world history. More recently, neoliberalism has been the ideology driving the perversion of human rights discourse to justify the invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, the banning of the headscarf in France, and the reinvigoration of authoritarian regimes in the Arab world.

One does not have to engage in an ideological analysis to see that art, and in this case, music, is anything but apolitical. When U2 announced that it would not play any concerts in apartheid South Africa, they were making a statement. When Elton John refused to heed to the boycott of South Africa and played concerts in that country, he was also making a statement. Playing a concert in an apartheid state is a statement. When international artists perform in Israel after a BDS campaign has been launched and after they have been asked to join it in solidarity with the oppressed, their performance lends legitimacy to a political regime that openly calls for the continued occupation of Palestinian lands, legal and infrastructural apartheid, and the expulsion of indigenous populations outside the state’s borders. Perhaps musicians who play venues in Israel today are ignorant about the political situation. But is ignorance an excuse? Today, people with access to information have to consistently choose to remain ignorant of current events. Furthermore, ignorance about structural oppression, ongoing settler colonialism, and apartheid, is a luxury of power that contributes to violence against those that are not powerful. Neutrality in the face of gross inequality and oppression is the most insidious form of partisanship towards the powerful. Every act of boycott is a statement against the status quo.

Lebanese event organizers who invite artists that perform in Israel are not breaking any laws. But they are making a statement as to the normalization of ties with Israel and they are not supporting the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions initiative. People who want to attend these events are entitled to spend their leisure time however they want. But they too are making a statement as to the normalization of Lebanese ties with Israel and they, too, are choosing to not support the BDS campaign. If the choice for artists is between profiting monetarily from apartheid oppression and making a statement by not performing in Israel, for patrons, the choice is between allowing those who profit monetarily from apartheid to continue to profit monetarily from your own money. The calculations are simple. If enough people decide that they will not patronize performances by artists who also perform in apartheid Israel, either the event organizers will need to cater to this new reality or, imagine, we could actually force international artists to choose to either play in Lebanon or in Israel. Imagine Lebanon being “happening” enough to be a rival of Israel in terms of what is known as the “cultural scene” or the “summer circuit.” Imagine us being more effective than the hollow regimes that rule the Arab Middle East.

When I engage in an act of boycott against DJ Tiesto, I am also making a statement that I refuse to entrust the entire arena of politics, and the question of Lebanon’s relationship with Israel, to politicians that I know are corrupt, sectarian, and inefficient. I am making a statement that I refuse to normalize ties with a state that has invaded my country three times in the years that I have been alive, displaced over a million of my fellow citizens and destroyed tens of thousands of their homes as recently as 2006, and denies the right of return to over 400,000 Palestinian refugees living in Lebanon. I do not have a gun. I do not have a political party. I have a choice; to allow artists who break the boycott to profit from me or not. I make that choice because I cannot accept the logic that my life, or a Palestinian life, is worth less than an Israeli life. I make that choice because I refuse racism and the violence that it licenses.

My decision to boycott musicians who do not adhere to the BDS campaign is not because I am anti- Israel or because I am pro-Palestine. You can blame Palestinians for all of Lebanon’s problems and still take a stance against apartheid. If you are against the logic of racism and its articulation as settler colonialism, then you are also against apartheid. Apartheid is a technology of rule that has been operationalized in many different countries in different historical contexts, and will continue to be operationalized as long as it continues to be normalized. We should be demanding that artists refuse to be complicit in this system. Boycotts work. Today, sixteen years after the fall of the apartheid regime in South Africa, we should not expect less of the world. And we definitely should not expect less of ourselves.

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