Support for Palestine gives hope for change

Blogging about Palestine is not easy, especially lately. I have plenty of material, but I had no words to express what was in my heart. I still don’t. But I’m a novelist. It’s my job to find the words to express emotions…words that will make the reader feel the sorrow and the desperation of the character. I cry as I write because that’s the only way to make the reader feel the pain.

But after the hero has been challenged beyond endurance, he or she dredges up the last bit of strength and will to make one last push to overcome and triumph. That makes a satisfying novel. The hero (and the reader) are satisfied.

Unfortunately, what has been happening in Palestine is not the stuff of novels. The people of Gaza have been pushed beyond endurance, but that last shred of strength and will may only serve to help them survive. There has to be a shred of hope somewhere.

Maybe there is just a glimmer, like a lone firefly on a hot summer night. 

Protests from around the world showed up on Facebook.

In New York they marched over the Brooklyn Bridge.

Then there were pictures from New York from Jewish Voice 4 Peace NYC

http://pic.twitter.com/guQkq7lTuJ

In Oakland, California, thousands gathered to protest an Israeli ship docking.http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/17/israeli-ship-remains-at-sea-thousands-protesters-gather

They kept it blocked for four straight days!

http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/charlotte-silver/israeli-ship-blocked-unloading-oakland-four-straight-days?utm_source=EI+readers&utm_campaign=fbf67c6938-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_e802a7602d-fbf67c6938-299155689

The London rally was amazing in size and intensity! http://www.london24.com/news/huge_rally_to_support_gaza_and_protest_against_israel_takes_place_in_london_1_3721166

One of the most impressive demonstrations was in Karachi, Pakistan, where thousands upon thousands of people flooded the streets as far as the eye could see! (Palestine Festival of Literature)

Did it have any effect? The tiniest firefly-glimmer of hope  begins to flicker.

Gallup poll shows young Americans overwhelmingly support Palestine.

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/news/americas/13203-latest-gallup-poll-shows-young-americans-overwhelmingly-support-palestine

And Uruguay joined Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Peru and Venezuela in having an embassy in the Palestine   http://bit.ly/1u5l4Wr

More Palestinians made homeless in the wake of home demolition by Israel

Activists hold flags as they protest latest demolitions

Today another Palestinian village has been hit by devastating home demolitions. Sixty-six people were made homeless, including 36 children in the community of Ain el-Helwe in the Jordan Valley. The Jordan Valley has been continuously inhabited for 11,000 years. It has been home to Canaanites for thousands of years, and now many of their descendants are being forced from their ancestral homes. 

On Saturday, 1 February 2014, the United Nations humanitarian coordinator for the Palestinian territories said, “I am deeply concerned about the ongoing displacement and dispossession of Palestinians… along the Jordan Valley where the number of structures demolished more than doubled in the last year.” (Picture and quote from: http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2014/02/01/U-N-slams-Israel-destruction-of-Jordan-valley-homes-.html)

The Jordan Valley is only the latest of the home demolitions to be publicized on the internet. The demolitions in and around Jerusalem continue in near-total silence. The two videos below show recent activity in home demolition. You Tube has videos documenting home demolitions that date back seven years and more.

The short video shows how one man salvaged what he could from the wreckage of his home and moved his belongings into a nearby cave. In the short interview, he says that a judge forbid him from rebuilding. The man asked the judge where his family was supposed to live. The answer—that’s not my problem.

The next video talks about the very real possibility of new recently constructed apartment buildings being demolished. One local resident claims that no one will leave and the Israelis will have to demolish the building with the residents inside. A representative of a local NGO is quoted as saying, “That’s the way they clear land for future settlements.”

ART - Telling the Story

What is art? Despite the fact that the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/art-definition/) says the definition of art is controversial, and that it has even been debated if art can be defined, few of us have any doubt that art exists—with or without a definition. We even know that it has existed almost as long as mankind has existed, and that it involves creativity.

What is the purpose of art? Again, there are differences of opinion. Some say that art needs no purpose, that beauty itself is sufficient. Others say that artists create the art as an act of expression. They are telling the world something through their art.

Palestinian artists, more than any other group, feel compelled to include their story in their art. Even Palestinians who were born in the diaspora and Palestinian-in-laws find ways to express their feelings through their work. Or perhaps I have it the wrong way around—perhaps it is the Palestinian condition that generates the immense emotional pressures that, for some, can only be relieved through art.

The connection between intense emotion and art has been used for decades by those treating pediatric victims of trauma. The results are poignant and heart breaking. (Click this link or view below)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byn4Byyya48

Whether it is a Palestinian artist who lived through the Nakba and was forever scarred by the experience, like Ismail Shammout (http://ismail-shammout.com), often called the father of Palestinian painters, or a young vibrant artist like John Halaka (http://www.johnhalaka.com/artwork.html) whose work often moves into new territory, they have one thing in common: empathy for the oppressed. They also have to fight for the right to show their work. John Halaka has said that “American curators are cowards when it comes to political art.” http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/sarah-irving/american-curators-are-cowards-when-it-comes-political-art-says-palestinian-artist

Art does not always express itself in paint. There are also amazing literary artists, like Lisa Majaj, whose wonderful poetry in her book, Geographies of Light, evoke more than a sense of loss, the call upon an entire culture which she uses as a foundation for her own identity. To hear her poem, “Guidelines” read and later discussed by another Palestinian American poet of note, Naomi Shihab Nye, go to  http://www.loc.gov/poetry/poetry-of-america/american-identity/naomishihabnye-lisasuhairmajaj.html 

Her book is available through Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/dp/1934832081  

Novelist abound in the world of Palestinian art. Sahar Khalifeh, Susan Abulhawa, Raja Shehadeh, are just a few of the names I can pull from my limited personal experience. There are many more.

Even my own novel has earned some modest recognition.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1450513948 

In Gaza fast food is not always fast

KFC being dragged through the tunnel
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/kfc-fast-food-meals-smuggled-1891820

Today I finished the manuscript of my new novel and wanted to celebrate by taking a break from cooking. We went to KFC for some chicken.  We jumped in our little red car and in no time at all, there we were with chicken in our hands.

What an easy, everyday thing to do. People all over the world enjoy the Colonel’s secret recipe. I even have a picture of my husband in front of a KFC franchise in China. KFC is all over the world, but not in Gaza.
  

KFC in China

Palestine was granted “non-member observer status” in the UN in November 2012 as nation 194.  That’s a lot of nations, and 120 of those 194 nations have at least one Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise.  Gaza doesn’t have one, but El-Arish, just over the border in Egypt does.  So what’s the problem? As the old saying goes, “you can’t there from here.” The blockade imposed on Gaza severely limits the number of people and the goods that cross into Gaza.

Sometimes a prisoner looks through the bars of his cell and has a desperate longing for a taste of something the rest of the world takes for granted. Sometimes something as simple as fast food can make a connection with the outside world. Eating a piece of the colonel’s chicken is just one small way of making that connection—a small way of thumbing a nose at the blockade, a small way of exercising a tiny forbidden freedom.

The New York Times article of May 15, 2013, says that the fast-food delivery is anything but fast in Gaza.

“It took more than four hours for the KFC meals to arrive here on a recent afternoon from the franchise where they were cooked in El Arish, Egypt, a journey that involved two taxis, an international border, a smuggling tunnel and a young entrepreneur coordinating it all.” http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/16/world/middleeast/tunneling-kfc-to-gazans-craving-the-world-outside.html?_r=0

The video below documents a portion of the incredible journey a bucket of chicken must make to reach a table in Gaza.

Bon appetit, Gaza.

WORLD REFUGEE DAY - June 20

June 20^th was declared World Refugee Day less than thirteen years ago. Millions of Palestinians have been refugees for five times that many years. Over a million Syrian refugees have joined their ranks only recently, and their numbers are growing daily.

The United Nations reports that more than 45.2 million people have been displaced from their homes due to conflict or violence, making it the highest number since 1994, when millions of people fled ethnic violence in former Yugoslavia and genocide in Rwanda.

And each day, another 23,000 people begin to search for safety from harm or persecution—the world has a new refugee or internally displaced person every 4.1 seconds. “Each time you blink, another person is forced to flee,” said Antonio Guterres, chief of the U.N.’s Refugee Agency, in Geneva. Earlier, he called the numbers “truly alarming.”  http://world.time.com/2013/06/20/the-worst-refugee-crisis-in/

No one wants to be a refugee. They didn't want to flee their homes, often with nothing but the clothes on their backs. They don't want to live on borrowed land, dependent on the charity of the world. No one chooses that path easily. It is chosen as a last resort—an alternative to certain death for loved ones.

Refugees love their families. They have hopes and dreams. Refugees would like nothing better than to leave their refugee status behind and live normal lives with only the ordinary problems of going to work each morning and raising their children to be good decent people...but that is not an option for them.

As UNHCR Special Envoy Angelina Jolie said in her press release today, 20 June 2013

I have met refugees around the world. They are resilient, hardworking and gracious people. They have experienced more violence and faced more fear than we will ever know. They have lost their homes, their belongings and their countries. They have often lost family and friends to horrific deaths. Faced with war and oppression they have chosen not to take up arms, but to try to find safety for their families. They deserve our respect, our acknowledgment and our support – not just today but for the duration of their ordeal. http://www.unhcr.org/51c2f7c26.html