palestine in pieces

Can there be peace for a ‘Palestine in Pieces’?
by Susannah Tarbush
Saudi Gazette 23 November 2009

The American writer Kathleen Christison and her husband Bill have made long personal journeys over the past three decades in becoming outspoken critics of Israel and of US Middle East policy. In their youth they were political analysts in the CIA where, they recall, they failed to gain an adequate understanding of “Zionism’s true meaning or its inevitable impact on the Palestinians.” It was only after leaving the CIA and “the insular Washington bubble” in 1979 that they developed wider perspectives on US policy.

They started to question their earlier assumptions, and their views on the Palestine-Israel issue gradually changed. The latest manifestation of their concern for the Palestinians is their book “Palestine in Pieces: Graphic Perspectives on the Israeli Occupation”, published by Pluto Press of London and New York.

Kathleen is the author of two previous books. “Perceptions of Palestine: Their Influence on US Middle East Policy” (1999, updated 2001), and “The Wound of Dispossession: Telling the Palestinian Story” (2002).

The latest book was launched in London a few days ago at an event at the Kensington Hotel hosted by The Cordoba Foundation (TCF) and Middle East Monitor (MEMO). Kathleen and Bill, who had traveled from their home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, appeared on a panel of speakers along with TCF’s founder and chief executive officer Anas Al-Tikriti, MEMO’s director Dr. Daud Abdullah, the chair of Liberal Democrat Friends of Palestine, John McHugo, and the co-founder and director of Forward Thinking, Oliver McTernan.

Since 2003 the Christisons have made eight visits to the West Bank, staying three to four weeks each time. Bill said he and Kathleen wrote their book with two aims. “One was to give the best analysis we could of what was actually happening in the Israeli occupation. The other was to tell as many individual stories of people who live in the West Bank and Gaza as we could.”
The 212-page book includes 52 full-page black and white photographs with detailed captions, and a number of maps. The photographs present a generally grim picture of checkpoints, destruction, house demolitions (a form of “slow ethnic cleansing”), the ugly eight-meter high separation Wall, military harassment, suppression of demonstrations, economic deprivation and the humiliations of Palestinian daily life.

The few shots of the Palestinian countryside show the beauty of the terraces and olive trees – but a caption states that this landscape is fated to be the site of a segment of the separation Wall, and that sewage from Israeli settlements is being dumped on Palestinian farmers’ fields.

The maps show how from 1948 Israel has “squeezed Palestinians into ever smaller, more disconnected cantons with little possibility for political or economic viability and virtually no hope of true national independence and sovereignty.” The “Israeli-only” road network for Israeli settlers covers more than 1,000 miles.

The Christisons write: “You cannot, in fact, possibly come away from even a single trip to the West Bank without realizing that Zionism is no mere abstract political philosophy but is an aggressive, exclusivist movement of Jewish redemption intended from the beginning to sweep everything non-Jewish from its path.”

With the invaluable assistance of their driver and guide Ahmed, the Christisons travelled widely in the West Bank. One place they visited was the Bedouin village of Numan, cut off by the Wall from Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Israel wants the land for the settlement of Har Homa and has declared the village’s houses illegal. Virtually every house has been demolished by Israeli bulldozers or issued with a demolition order.

“All Israeli actions against the village and its residents – the restrictions on entry to Jerusalem, the cutoff of water and electricity, the demolitions, the Wall and the system of closures, the land confiscations, the settlement construction – are illegal under international law,” the authors write. “Numan’s horror story represents the Israeli occupation in microcosm. Hundreds of other villages are experiencing similar fates.”

The Wall was built not only for Israeli security, but for political objectives too, and it is a sign that Israel always intended to retain control over almost all of the West Bank. The building of the wall has led to the confiscation of Palestinian fertile agricultural land and freshwater wells, and has had a disastrous effect on the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
There are photographs from the regular protests against the Wall in the village of Bil’in, against which the Israeli military retaliate. The Bil’in demonstrations are the most prominent and prolonged of the protests that have taken place in villages near the Green Line whose lands have been expropriated, or in some way separated, by the Wall.

The authors do not gloss over the split between Fatah and Hamas and the damaging divisions among the Palestinians. Many Palestinians are disillusioned with their leadership.
The conclusions of the book are not wholly pessimistic. The Christisons state: “The Palestinians know that justice is one their side.” Civil society has been gaining a voice: for example the Palestine Strategic Study Group paper of August 2008, published by 45 civil society activists and others, challenged not only the usual Israeli-US discourse but also the Palestinian leadership.

Bill says he and Kathleen believe that everything that happens in the Middle East is related to “almost everything else” in the region. “What goes on in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq – all of these things are related in some way, and all taken together are also related to the Palestine issue.”

As long as the US and Israel retain their “excessively close partnership” there will be no end to warfare and terror. “We are not going to have peace in any way, shape or manner in the Middle East or Central Asia until there are massive changes in US foreign policy in the entire area.”
The authors quote the prominent New York-based commentator and TIME.com journalist Tony Karon, who asked in an article written in February this year: “Will Obama, too, indulge Israeli rejectionism?” The need for an answer to this question becomes more urgent with each day that passes.

shlomo sand book launch at borders

Jewish historian’s book makes waves in London
by Susannah Tarbush
Saudi Gazette 16 November 2009

Borders bookshop in Charing Cross Road, central London, is normally a tranquil haven where book lovers can browse the shelves at leisure and perhaps refresh themselves at the in-house café.

But last week the shop’s calm was shattered by the uproar that erupted during the launch of one of the most controversial books to have been published in London this year: the English-language version of Israeli historian Shlomo Sand’s “The Invention of the Jewish People.”

During the launch certain hard-line supporters of Israel in the audience shouted hostile remarks at the author to the annoyance of other attendees. The vocal pro-Israel faction included Jonathan Hoffman, co-vice chair of the Zionist Federation in Britain, who declared: “Why, Shlomo Sand, have you chosen to write an anti-Semitic book: was it because of the fame, or was it because of the money?” Sand vigorously denied that his book was anti-Semitic and answered his critics’ various points robustly.

“The Invention of the Jewish People” runs to a densely-packed 332 pages, full of references and footnotes. Sand deconstructs the national myths of Israel and asserts there is no”Jewish people”. He argues that there is no evidence for an expulsion and exile of the Jews by the Romans in 70AD, and without exile there is no right to “return”. The “Jewish people” is a construct of Zionist scholars from the 19th century onwards, and most Jews are the descendents of converts to Judaism from early times when it was a proselytizing religion, rather than being descended from Jews of ancient Israel. Four kingdoms saw large-scale conversions to Judaism: the Kingdom of Babylon, the Himyar kingdom in Yemen, a Berber kingdom in North Africa and the Khazar kingdom in the northern Caucasus.

The book has been published simultaneously in the US and UK by the radical publisher Verso. Before his visit to London last week, Sand was in New York to promote the US edition. The original in Hebrew caused enormous controversy in Israel when it was published there last year. It triggered much debate, was widely discussed on TV and in the written media, and became a bestseller.

The French translation, published by Layard, was a bestseller and won this year’s Prix Aujourd’hui, the prize that goes to the best work on contemporary politics or history. The book is set to be available in more languages than any other Israeli history work, with translations under way into eight languages including Arabic, Turkish, Japanese and Indonesian.

The launch at Borders was billed as a ‘Conversation with the New Statesman’ and was chaired by the cultural editor of the New Statesman magazine, Jonathan Derbyshire. Appearing alongside Sand was Labour MP Denis MacShane. MacShane, a former Foreign Office Minister, is chairman of The European Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism. He spent most of his allotted time talking about Antisemitism in the Middle East rather than discussing Sand’s book, and was interrupted by a couple of members of the audience who reminded him he was there to speak about the book. MacShane responded: “I assume I’m here because I do a lot of work on Antisemitism. I really am not an expert on Shlomo’s thesis at all – I heard him on Start the Week this morning and I thought it was very interesting and convincing.”

Sand is a professor of contemporary history at Tel Aviv University, and his books include volumes on Georges Sorel and on Israeli intellectuals. He explained at the launch that Jewish history is not his field, and that the subject is only supposed to be dealt with the Jewish history departments of Israeli universities. These are quite separate from other history departments because the history of the Jewish people is regarded as “something exceptional”. He noted that the harshest criticisms of his book in Israel came from departments of Jewish history.

As a historian he helps construct the collective memory of his students and readers, and as he grew older he felt it was no longer enough to occupy himself with French or European history and not to touch the history of the Jews and of Zionism.
He writes in his book’s introduction: “I could not have gone on living in Israel without writing this book. I don’t think books can change the world – but when the world beings to change, it searches for different books.”


His visit to London last week attracted a great deal of media attention. He appeared on Start the Week, the one of BBC-Radio 4’s most popular programs, on Monday morning. He was also invited to be interviewed on BBC TV’s World News Today on the basis that the controversy over his book is “an international news story”.
Following the book launch at Borders on Monday he gave a lecture at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London University Wednesday and on Thursday was in conversation at the Frontline Club with another of the revisionist or new Israeli historians, Avi Shlaim, Professor of International Relations at Oxford University. Shlaim’s latest book “Israel and Palestine: Reappraisals, Revisions, Refutations” was published recently by Verso. The event was chaired by Professor Jacqueline Rose.

Sand marries his critique of Zionist historiographers with severe criticism of Israel. “I think the future of Israel is very dangerous because it defines itself as a Jewish state,” he says. Israel cannot be described as a democratic state while it sees itself as the state of the “Jewish people” rather than as a body representing all its citizens, including the 20 percent of the population which is Arab and a further five per cent also regarded as non-Jewish. Israel defines itself not as a state that belongs to all Israeli citizens but as a state that belongs to all the Jews of the world.

Sand acknowledges that there is rising antisemitism in the Arab world, but says “Israel is giving good reason to hate her. The last Gaza war was proof of our cynicism.” He notes that the 2002 Arab League summit decided to recognize Israel in return for a complete withdrawal from the occupied territories. “What was the response of Israel to this? Everybody knows today that the Arabs will accept – and I am happy they accept – the Israeli state within its 1967 borders but the Israelis insist they want all Jerusalem for themselves.”
He said he was “very pessimistic, and I will continue to write and to fight.”

portrayals of british muslims on stage

Dramas on British Muslim life grab theater audiences
by Susannah Tarbush
Saudi Gazette 9 November 2009

The play “What Fatima Did...”, which ended its two-week premier run at the Hampstead theater in North London last Saturday, is the latest example of a British Muslim-related play to have gained favorable attention from critics and theater goers alike.

The author of the play, 21-year-old Atiha Sen Gupta, is the youngest playwright ever to have had a work staged in Hampstead theater’s main auditorium. Her play deals with the fallout of the decision of a British Muslim, on the eve of her 18th birthday, to start wearing the hijab. Up to then, Fatima had behaved like a typical British girl of her age – drinking, smoking, and partying – and had a white Irish boyfriend, George (Gethin Anthony). But after donning the hijab she turns her back on her former way of life.

Atiha Sen Gupta is not herself a Muslim, but as a young Asian Briton growing up a multicultural environment she is close to Muslim issues. She is the daughter of a Sri Lankan father, and an Indian-born mother, Rahil Gupta, who is a writer and an activist with Southall Black Sisters.

The play, directed by Kelly Wilkinson, is set in and around Fatima’s multicultural secondary school. The performances are full of vitality and humor, and the engaging characters include Fatima’s classmate Craig, played by Simon Coombs [pictured top with Farzaba Dua Elahi, credit Alex Rumford].

Fatima’s twin brother Mohammed (Arsher Ali) tries to defend her against the reactions to her decision to take the veil. Her mother, played by Shobu Kapoor, who had fought with her ex-husband for the right to wear Western dress, is angry with Fatima. George finds it near-impossible to come to terms with Fatima’s decision, and her feisty best friend Aisha (Farzana Dua Elahi) is also perplexed. But others, including her teacher, defend Fatima’s right to have made what she considers the right choice.

“What Fatima Did...” received generally high praise from the critics. Charles Spencer of the Telegraph, for instance, found it “entertaining, thought-provoking and topical, giving a vivid impression of what it is like to be young and growing up in multicultural Britain.”

Fatima herself never appears on stage. This in a way reflects the reality that the veil is frequently talked about by British commentators, but much less is heard publicly from the women who wear the hijab themselves. Cabinet Minister Jack Straw started the debate on the veil when in October 2006 he said he had been asking women wearing the niqab to remove it when they came to consult him, as he felt it impeded communication.

Straw’s comments paved the way for a tougher and more confrontational government attitude towards the Muslim community, partly because of anxieties that there would be further terror attacks following the suicide attacks of the July 7, 2005 attacks on the London transport system.
This has been a fruitful year for Muslim-related theater in London. It got off to a memorable start in February with the staging by the Royal Court theater of Alia Bano’s “Shades” as part of the theater’s Young Writers’ Festival. The Royal Court is encouraging writing by young Muslims through its annual 11-week playwriting course ‘Unheard Voices’. The 26-year-old Bano took part in the first ‘Unheard Voices’, in 2008.
The central character of “Shades”, Sabrina (Stephanie Street), is a British Muslim eager to find a good husband. She goes to a Muslim speed-dating evening and gets to know two potential marriage partners: charming but flashy Ali (Elyes Gabel) and the more religious and traditional Reza (Amit Shah). Her flatmate Zain (Navin Chowdhry) provides her with pithy comments and advice. Matt Wolf of the New York Times wrote of “Shades” that his excitement in finding fine new writing was “matched by my delight in an ensemble packed with talent but, as yet, no well-known names.”

The most high profile work by a writer of Muslim background to be staged so far this year has been “The Black Album” by the acclaimed Pakistani-British writer Hanif Kureishi. “The Black Album”, Kureishi’s second novel, was published in 1995 and is set in 1988/89, in a period marked by furor over Salman Rushdie’s novel “The Satanic Verses”.

To mark the 20th anniversary of the issuing of Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa calling for Rushdie’s death, Kureishi transformed the novel into a play which was staged at the Cottesloe theater, part of the National theater in London’s South Bank complex, in July-October. Following its London run the play embarked on a tour of English cities, which ends with a run at the Oxford Playhouse from Nov. 10-14. “The Black Album” is a joint production of the pioneering cross-cultural theater company Tara Arts and the National theater, and is directed by Tara’s artistic director and co-founder Jatinder Verma.

Shahid (Jonathan Bonnici) is a young student newly arrived in London from a provincial town. He is torn between a group of brotherly Muslim students, led by the charismatic activist Riaz (Alexander Andreou), and his attractive hedonistic lecturer Deedee Osgood (Tanya Franks).

The play is energetic, funny, and delivered at a fast pace, but there was some disappointment that it failed to transfer the full richness of the novel to the stage. Although the play generally sticks closely to the novel, there is an allusion to the 7/7 attacks.
In the novel, impressionable hothead Hat is fatally injured while trying to firebomb a bookshop. In the play he picks up a rucksack (similar to those used by the 7/7 suicide bombers) and the play ends with a massive explosion.

Theatrical activity around Muslim themes is taking place not only in mainstream venues, but also at a community level. After 7/7, the government was keen to increase community cohesion as a way of fighting extremism, and saw grassroots theater as having a role in this. It has funded some theater projects through the Community Leadership Fund (CLF) of its Preventing Violent Extremism program.

One beneficiary of CLF funding has been the Khayaal theater Company founded in 1997 by the black American Muslim writer and director Luqman Ali. Khayaal has received CLF funding of nearly 130,000 pounds Sterling to deliver 200 to 250 performances of two plays – “Hearts and Minds” and “Sun and Wind” – in schools across the UK over three years. Both plays address issues of radicalization and extremism at family and community level.

GW Theatre Company’s play “One Extreme to the Other” tackles both right-wing and Islamist extremism. A Muslim youth, Ali, has become entangled with an Islamist extremist, while his former friend Tony is flirting with the racist far right.

The play is primarily aimed at youth audiences aged from 14-25. GW Theatre received a grant of 95,000 pounds to deliver a national tour of the play, around 110 performances over three years, in schools, colleges, youth clubs, community venues and arts centers.

caine prize for african writing 10th anniversary tour

Tenth birthday tour of the Caine Prize for African Writing gets on the road
by Susannah Tarbush
Saudi Gazette, 2 November 2009

All too often Africa only receives coverage in the Western media when bemoaning issues of violence, disease, famine or corruption. But in the cultural field there is better news, and African literature is attracting growing international attention. An important engine of the African literary renaissance has been the Caine Prize for African Writing, and to celebrate the prize’s 10th anniversary, a 10-day tour of England took place in the latter half of October.

The tour featured the 2002 winner of the prize, Binyavanga Wainaina of Kenya, the 2004 winner Brian Chikwava of Zimbabwe, and two Nigerians: this year’s winner E.C. Osondu, and Chika Unigwe, who was shortlisted in 2004.

The Caine Prize is for a short story of between 3,000 and 10,000 words. It is worth 10,000 pounds to the winner, plus a month as a writer in residence at Georgetown University, Washington DC. Each summer the five writers shortlisted for the prize are brought to Britain for the prize-giving dinner at the Bodleian library in Oxford University and for a busy week of book readings, signings, media opportunities and meetings with publishers and literary agents.

The anniversary tour began with a packed event at the British Library in London, introduced by the Nigerian novelist and poet Ben Okri [pictured top signing books after the event]. Okri, who has lived in Britain for many years, was chairman of the judges of the prize in its first year, and is a patron of the prize. In 1991 he won Britain’s most prestigious literary prize, the Booker, for his novel “The Famished Road.”

Okri described the Caine Prize as being “the result of a love story: Baroness Emma Nicholson’s love for Michael Caine, and Michael Caine’s love for Africa.”

The late Sir Michael Caine was the former chairman of Booker plc and for nearly 25 years chairman of the Booker Prize management committee. After his death, his widow Baroness Nicholson, a Liberal Democrat member of the European Parliament, launched the Caine prize in his memory. The prize represents “the translation of grief into dream, and of the dream into reality,” Okri said.

Okri recalled that when the prize was first launched “we didn’t know how it was going to turn out; it had never been done before. I thought it was an extraordinary adventure: submissions were invited and suddenly from all over the continent these entries started coming in. We read our way through hundreds of stories.”
The inaugural prize in 2000 went to the Sudanese-Egyptian writer Leila Aboulela for her story “The Museum.” Okri noted that the prize has so far been won by five women and five men: “there has been no gender bias.”

Okri said he warmed to the Caine Prize because it was for a short story. “I have always felt that the short story is, apart from the sonnet, the most difficult literary form,” he said. “I think what defines it is some mysterious element of inner completion in a small space.

"What the Caine Prize has done in these 10 years is the enabling of a new generation of African writers scattered all over the globe. This has been accomplished under the wise and watchful eye of Nick Elam [administrator of the prize] and Jonathan Taylor [chairman of the Caine Prize Council].”

All four writers on the tour currently live outside Africa. Binyavanga Wainaina is the newly appointed director of the Chinua Achebe Center for African Literature and Languages at Bard College, New York. He used his 2002 Caine Prize money to launch the literary journal Kwani? in Kenya, and is finishing his first novel.


Chikwava’s first novel “Harare North” was published by Jonathan Cape to critical acclaim in April this year. He was a Charles Pick fellow at the University of East Anglia, and his work has been published in several short story collections and magazines. “Harare North” is the term by which London is often known among Zimbabweans.
Chikawava amused the audience with a reading from his novel, in which the first person narrator arrives in Britain as an asylum seeker.

Chika Unigwe
lives in Belgium. Her second novel “On Black Sisters’ Street”, set in the red light district of Antwerp, appeared in Dutch last year and was well received when it was published in English this year. E.C .Osondu is teaching at Providence University on Rhode Island. A collection of his short stories is to be published by Harper Collins next year.

The British Library event was chaired by the distinguished writer and memoirist Aminatta Forna, daughter of a Sierra Leonean father and Scottish mother. She is on the Caine advisory committee and has twice judged the prize. In April this year she was a facilitator at a Caine writing workshop in Ghana.

During a lively discussion between Forna and the writers, she said she was “surprised how few African writers do non-fiction memoir”. She would like to see more travel writing by Africans.

After the British Library event, the Caine tour took in the Cheltenham Literature Festival, the University of Kent, the University of East Anglia in Norwich, Ilkely Literature Festival in Yorkshire, Newcastle University and Lancaster Literature Festival. The tour’s Facebook page includes a separate event held at the Book Lounge in Cape Town, South Africa, on 28 October. Caine Prize winners Henrietta Rose-Innes (2008) and Mary Watson (2006) were in discussion with novelist Imraan Coovadia, who teaches at Cape Town University.

The Facebook page also links to a video blog by Oprah Winfrey, who has chosen the short story collection “Say You’re One of Them” by Nigerian writer Uwem Akpan as a pick for her hugely influential Book Club. Akpan was shortlisted for the Caine Prize in 2007 with the story “My Parents Bedroom”, one of the five stories in the collection. In the video Oprah talks about the “stunning” impact of another story from the collection, “Luxurious Hearses”.

A discussion with Akpan will be the focus on Nov.9 of the biggest-ever Oprah Book Club meeting online, in which CNN.com and Facebook will also participate.

In addition to the tour, the Caine 10th anniversary has been marked by the publishing by the New Internationalist of the anthology “Ten years of the Caine Prize for African Writing”, which includes all ten stories to have won the prize. There is an introduction by Ben Okri, and stories by two African winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Nadine Gordimer and J.M. Coetzee.

rachel shabi's book 'not the enemy: israel's jews from arab lands'

A few days after US President Barack Obama addressed the world’s Muslims in his historic 4 June speech in Cairo, 27 Israeli Mizrahi Jews issued an open letter entitled “A New Spirit – A Letter from the [Jewish] Descendants of the Countries of Islam.”

The open letter supported “the new spirit that president Obama has expressed in his speech in Cairo”. The signatories to the letter said they were born in Israel, and are Israelis, but the culture of the Middle East and the Arabic culture are “part of our identity, a part that we cannot sever and wouldn’t wish to sever even if we could”.

The letter added that despite some tough moments in the history of Jews in the lands of Islam, there was “a magnificent history of shared life” It called for Mizrahi Jewry – “which today constitutes 50 per cent of the Jewish population in Israel!” – to “embody a living bridge of remembrance, healing and partnership” between Judaism and Islam.”

In October the online newspaper “Palestine Chronicle” carried a lengthy interview with one of the signatories, journalist, poet and activist Mati Shemoelof (37) whose ancestors lived in Syria, Iran and Iraq.

Shemoelof is a member of the Mizrahi organisation Mimizrach Shemesh, ie the Jewish Social Leadership Centre. He said the letter was “a call to the Arab World to show that the Israeli government and policy makers don’t speak in our language.” He said the first reaction to the open letter in Israel had been that it was racist because it did not include European Jews.

The sentiments expressed in the letter are undoubtedly genuinely felt, but a recently-published book on Israeli Mizarhi Jews by the journalist Rachel Shabi gives little hope that they can in current circumstances play the role of a “living bridge” as described in the letter.

Shabi’s book is published by Yale University Press under the title “Not the Enemy: Israel’s Jews from Arab Lands”. It reminds readers that the idea of the Mizrahis becoming a “bridge” to peace with the Palestinians has been around for a long time.

Back in 1971 the Mizrahi activists known as the Black Panthers were the first Israeli group to make contact with members of the PLO. They recognized the Palestinian right to self-determination, and they linked this with the Mizrahi cause.

But by the time of the 1973 war the Black Panthers had lost public support. The political grievances that they expressed, and their disillusionment with the Labour Party, were instead channelled into support for the right wing of Israeli politics. The Mizrahi vote helped Likud win the 1977 and 1981 elections.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of another attempt at Mizrahi bridge building: a meeting in Toledo, Spain, attended by Palestinian and Mizrahi politicians, writers and academics. The Palestinian participants included the poet Mahmoud Darwish and future president Mahmoud Abbas.

There was a furious reaction to the meeting within sectors of Israeli society which rejected any suggestion that the Mizrahi Jews were in any way victims of the Jewish state, and that this might in any way be linked to any victimhood suffered by the Palestinians.

Shabi writes: “Attempts by Mizrahi activists to act as political bridges between Israelis and Palestinians collapse under the weight of improbability, vilified on both sides, occupying a narrow strip of dialogue in the middle of two polar-opposite forces that squeeze it off the spectrum.” Once the Second intifada had broken out in 2000, talks of bridges seemed irrelevant, and even some of those who had once been “bridge activists “abandoned the idea.

In Shabi’s view, “bridges don’t build a way out of a territorial war – they might only evolve after that war is over, and that’s assuming it ends fairly.”

Shabi’s book is a rich, thoroughly researched and well written account of the history and current situation of Israel’s Mizrahi Jews. Many Israelis claim that over the decades the divisions between European Ashkenazi and Oriental Mizrahi Jews have been vastly reduced. Shabi’s book contains much evidence to the contrary.

Shabi is herself a Mizrahi, born to a father from Basra and a Baghdad-born mother who lived in Kirkuk. When her parents left Iraq they first lived in Israel, where Rachel was born, but they then left Israel to settle in London. To this day, when her father is asked to which country he most belongs, he replies: “Iraq! Of course, I am an Iraqi!”

Shabi uses the term “Mizrahi” to cover both the Sephardi Jews who were expelled from Spain in 1492, and those such as the Iraqi Jews who were already living in the Middle East. At one point Mizrahis were the majority of Israeli Jews, around 70 per cent, but the mass influx of 800,000 or more Jews from the former Soviet Union reduced this to 40-50 per cent. Shabi notes that if we add together the number of Mizrahi Jews, and Arabs in Israel then two thirds of the Israeli population is of Middle Eastern origin.

She told Al-Hayat that her book has been received very well. “It has had positive reviews and people write to tell me they found it really eye-opening. It has been wonderful to hear these responses and reaffirms why I thought it important to write the book, because it is not really known that at least half of the Jewish population of Israel come from Arab or Muslim lands..”
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She adds: “I don’t think you can really understand Israel’s relationship to its neighbours in the Middle East unless you can see and understand the fraught relations it has with its own Middle Eastern self. There have been criticisms too, from people who think that the book is somehow an attack on Israel. But, like many others, I do not accept that any criticism of Israel is, by definition, anti-Israeli.”

A German translation of the book has been published by Berlin Verlag, and Shabi hopes the book will also be published in Arabic and Hebrew.

Shabi writes in the book: “If there is a set attitude to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict among Mizrahis, it is that the Ashkenazi elite is not capable of solving it.” Time and again Mizrahis insist they could have done a better job, given the chance. But this is not the perspective of Palestinians involved in the negotiation process, who point out that the Mizrahis were not excluded or absent from such negotiations.

Shabi quotes the chief negotiator for the Palestinian authority, Saeb Erekat, as saying: “I’ve seen Iraqi Jews sitting at the negotiating table. I’ve seen Yemeni Jews, Moroccans, Iranians, in the highest echelons of power and decision-making. Tell your Iraqi cousins and friends. Tell them that [I say] no, you were at the negotiating table and you screwed.”

Ashkenazi Jews started to settle in Palestine in the 1880s and it was they who established and controlled all official bodies before and after the foundation of Israel in1948. After the killing of millions of Jews in the Holocaust “only then did Zionism remember the Middle Eastern Jews” and the Jewish Agency had the job of locating and absorbing Jewish immigrants.

David Ben Gurion, who became Israel’s first prime minister, insisted: “We do not wants Israelis to become Arabs.” Shabi gives many examples of discriminatory anti-Mizrahi attitudes and remarks from made by politicians, journalists, scholars and others over the years. The low Mizrahi attainment in for example education was often attributed to the backward conditions in the Arab world from which they had come to Israel. Mizrahi culture was seen as inferior and only to be enjoyed in private.

She examines in detail, and with balance, the reasons why Jews left Arab countries, and examines the role Zionist underground agents may have played in Iraq, for example in planting bombs at Jewish targets so as to encourage an exodus to Israel. Yemenis who migrated to Israel had many things permanently taken away from them on the journey including handwritten manuscripts hundreds of years old.

Newly-arrived Mizrahi immigrants were often transported in cattle trucks, sprayed with disinfectant, and dumped for years in transit camps in dreadful conditions. They were then frequently sent to development towns on the margins of Israel such as Sderot, which is 70 per cent Moroccan. These deprived towns have a low socio-economic status and are full of resentment.

In one development town, Ofakim, Shabi meets a 36-year-old Moroccan Jew who is so bitter at the treatment of his community that he declares “my children will never raise the Israeli flag, never!” He describes anti-Mizrahi discrimination in schools and the Army, and even blames Jews themselves for the Holocaust.

Shabi argues that the Babylonian Jewry Heritage Centre in the town of Or Yehuda (which is known as “little Iraq”) presents a distorted version of the history of Jews in Iraq: for example the centre makes out that Jews were more isolated within Iraqi society than was actually the case.

Shabi gives many examples of the persistent discrimination against Mizrahis in Israeli society. On Israeli TV, presenters of serious programmes rarely have Mizrahi accents, but buffoon characters on TV often are Mizrahi. The majority of university professors and students and Supreme Court judges have Ashkenazi surnames, while the overwhelming majority of university cleaners, market stall traders, and working-class criminals are Mizrahi in origin.

The majority of residents of high-status city areas are Ashkenazi, while Mizrahis often live in slums and other poor quality housing. Ashkenazi students are about three times as likely to hold university degrees as their Mizrahi equivalents. By the late 1990s 88 per cent of upper income families were Ashkenazi, while 60 per cent of low income families were Mizrahi.

The Mizrahi Hebrew accent, with guttural sounds like those of Arabic, was historically regarded as the “correct” spoken Hebrew. But spoken Hebrew is changing and losing its guttural sounds.

Many Mizrahi Jews took with them to Israel a love of Arabic music and of the great Arab singers, but found this was looked down on in Israel. In Iraq, 90 per cent of musicians had been Jewish, but they found their Arabic music had little place in Israel. The brothers Saleh and Daoud al-Kuwaity had been stars back in Iraq, and Saleh had composed much of the musical repertoire in Iraq and beyond, but the brothers had a difficult time finding new audiences in Israel. [picture shows Saleh al-Kuwaity's orchestra in Iraq, with the famous Iraqi singer Muhammad al-Qabanji]

Music and song had a role in creating a new Israeli culture, “but it was a national culture set to the tastes of the ones in power. And the soundtrack was Eastern European – comprising old Russian, Polish and Yiddish tunes.”

Some Israelis claim the growing prominence of Mizrahi music is the community’s biggest breakthrough into the mainstream culture. For example, the singing star Moshe Peretz is of Moroccan origin. But one of the biggest complaints of the Mizarhi music industry is that Mizrahi music is not classified as Israeli music but as “ethnic” or “world” music.

The concluding chapter of the book is entitled “We are not Arabs!” In it Shabi explores the complexity of reasons why many Mizrahi Jews do hate Arabs, even if at the same time some of them love the Arabic language, culture and music and are avid watchers of Arabic satellite TV.
Susannah Tarbush
[original of article published in Arabic in Al-Hayat on 31 October 2009]

prof avi shlaim's economist interview & review

the Economist website's intro to the audio interview with Prof Avi Shlaim of St Antony's College, Oxford:
Avi Shlaim on Israel and Palestine
Allocating responsibility
A noted Israeli revisionist historian calls Israel the stumbling block to peace since 1967.

In addition Prof Shlaim's latest book, 'Israel and Palestine: Reappraisals, Revisions, Refutations', published by Verso, is reviewed in the Economist.

arab women's association (awa) gaza fundraiser

British artists join the call to ‘Let Gaza Live!’
by
Susannah Tarbush

The ‘Let Gaza Live!’ cultural evening held in London at the Royal Geographical Society’s Ondaatje Theatre last week, was an opportunity for musicians, actors and authors to express their solidarity with the people of Gaza.

The fundraiser, organized by the Arab Women’s Association (AWA) with the support of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), was attended by several hundred people. All proceeds went to the Red Crescent Society for the Gaza Strip and the AWA Fund for Gaza.

Dr Mona el-Farra, deputy director of the Red Crescent Society for the Gaza Strip, was to have been the special guest. But the continuing Israeli sealing off of Gaza prevented her from traveling, and her daughter Basma Ghalayini read the speech on her behalf.

In her speech Dr el-Farra stated: “Israel’s massive onslaught on the people of the Gaza Strip in December 2008 and January 2009 and its subsequent tightening of its blockade have rendered us unable to trade and unable to move.”

Reconstruction is impossible without the basic building materials that Israel refuses to allow in, and the closures are “pushing life in Gaza to the point of collapse”. She spoke of the “daily pain, grief and deprivation of 1.5 million people living under total siege.”

There is a lack of electricity and safe drinking water, and “our health system is breaking down at a time when we have greatest need of it.” More than 45 percent of children under the age of five suffer from iron deficiency anemia

More optimistically, Dr el-Farra observed that “people are also determined to overcome their pain and to rebuild their lives. Every day I see the extraordinary determination of people to survive, against all the odds.”

The compere of the evening was the writer, journalist and activist Victoria Brittain. Introductory words came from the AWA Vice-Chair Pauline Khazen, who said: “We are here to support Gaza. Do I need to tell you about the Gaza Strip, which Israel has turned into an outdoor detention center?”

The evening’s cultural program was organized and produced by the Palestinian singer, musician and broadcaster Reem Kelani [pictured top]. Accompanied by David Beebee on piano, Ryan Trebilcock on double bass and Milo Fell on drums, Reem gave a searing performance of her setting to music of “Mawwaal” by the late Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish who died last August. At the end of the evening she sang with much spirit, and audience participation, the Palestinian national anthem “Mawtini”.

Brittain read the lyrics of “Mawwaal” in English translation. She also read the poem “I was already dead” by another outstanding Palestinian poet – the late Mu’in Bseiso, whom she described as “a great child of Gaza”.

A recording of singer-songwriter Reverend Garth Hewitt, a PSC patron, performing “From The Broken Heart of Gaza (Father Musallam’s letter)”, was played to a slide show of images from Gaza. Hewitt was inspired to write the song by an open letter that Father Manuel Musallam, the Parish priest of Gaza, wrote to the to the wider Church last January.

The renowned Jewish musician and protest song writer Leon Rosselson performed “Song of the Olive Tree”. The song was written after “I saw in the main street of the very large settlement of Maale Adumim east of Jerusalem a row of ancient olive trees. All of them had been uprooted from Palestinian land and replanted there.”

The musician, composer and improviser Camilla Saunders played her piano composition “Unbinding”, dedicated “to all those who are oppressed and dispossessed, especially the Palestinians.” She has given music workshops to schoolchildren in West Bank refugee camps.

Father and son Bill and Alfie Horrocks sang unaccompanied “Iman”, their tribute to Iman Darwish Al-Hams a 13-year-old girl killed in Gaza in 2004 by an Israeli soldier who allegedly continued to fire at her as she lay wounded on the ground.

The actors Corin Redgrave and his wife Kika Markham [pictured below], with David Beebee on piano, read “Letter from Gaza” by Ghassan Kanafani. Kanafani, along with his young niece, was killed in Beirut in 1972 when Israeli intelligence agency Mossad planted a bomb in his car.

Dr Shelagh Weir gave an informative and evocative presentation on “Textiles, Costumes and Embroidery of the Gaza area.” Weir, a former curator at the British Museum, has organized three exhibitions and written several books on Palestine textiles and costume.

She said: “I want to remember some positive and beautiful things about the Gaza area,” and pointed out that before the 1948 nakba, textile production was one of the most important handicrafts in Palestine. The largest weaving center was Majdal, just north of Gaza. Most of the population fled to Gaza, and Majdal became the Israeli city of Ashkelon.

Dr Weir showed examples of the beautiful fabrics produced by weavers of Gaza and south-west Palestine. The fabrics and embroidery used for wedding trousseaux are particularly splendid.

She stressed: “Costume, textiles and embroidery have always been incredibly important in Palestine for symbolizing not only your regional and your village identity but also, as politics came more to the fore, your Palestinian identity” Despite the destruction of villages, their former inhabitants and their descendants continued to wear and produce their local village costumes, even after decades living in refugee camps.

The evening included a talk by investigative food journalist Joanna Blythman, the author of several prizewinning books. Blythman argues that “boycotting Israeli produce gives us all a way in our daily lives to register our ongoing disapproval of Israel’s behavior in Gaza and treatment of the Palestinian people in general.”

She highlighted one of the main concerns over Israeli food exports: that Israel is labeling the produce of illegal Israeli settlements as “West Bank”. This “deliberate deception” misleads those UK consumers who wish to support the Palestinians into thinking the produce is Palestinian. “To put it at its most pejorative, the fertile Jordan valley is land stolen by Israel from Palestine, so arguably its agricultural products are stolen goods.”

In July Blythman traveled to the West Bank with a Fairtrade Foundation delegation to meet Palestinians farmers and research an article for Observer Food Monthly. “I came back gripped by a burning sense of injustice at the Israeli treatment of the Palestinians ... It became clear to me that Palestine is a beautifully and deeply productive land with a highly skilled farming tradition,” she said.

Blythman called on consumers to stop buying Israeli produce, to put pressure on supermarkets to stop stocking Israeli produce, and to “buy as much Palestinian olive oil and as many Palestinian foods as you can possibly eat.”
Saudi Gazette
October 19 2009

demo over israeli settlement produce in sainsbury's

From International Solidarity Movement:
Activists occupy British supermarket in opposition to the sale of settlement produce
Posted on: October 14, 2009 ShareThis
ISM London

11 October 2009

On 11th October 2009, a swarm of activists descended upon Sainsbury’s on Cromwell Street, West London to highlight the sale of Israeli and illegal Settlement produce by both Sainsbury’s and other major supermarket chains. Coming from a diverse range of campaign organisations, around 40 activists stood in solidarity with the Palestinian call for a global boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign.

Entering the store, protestors held up an array of settlement and Israeli produce demanding that the supermarkets put a halt to their sale and reminding consumers of their capacity to effect change by not buying these goods.

Popping up a tent and claiming it to be an “Israeli Settlement”, the actions demonstrated the ridiculous ease at which Israeli Settlements pop up around the West Bank, protected by the military and evicting Palestinians from their land and homes.

They proceded to chant against the occupation and the sale of Israeli goods, following this they went on a tour of the store so that all staff and customers were made aware of Sainsbury’s role in supporting illegal settlements. Handing out leaflets and engaging with customers, many of which were supportive, the actions communicated the need for greater citizen action.

Management and security were keen to encourage the protestors to leave but with no success. After twenty minutes within the store, demonstrators left of their own accord, clapping hands and chanting “Free Free Palestine”, feeling that their efforts had been succesful in communicating to the store and the general public.

Police arrived soon after and despite a brief interaction with protestors there were no arrests and no signs of aggression.

Activists then left the scene and were followed for some time afterwards, however no further action by the police was taken.

———————–

This non-violent initiative seeks to challenge the economic and political infrastructure that supports the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Similar to the efforts against Apartheid South Africa, the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Campaign hopes to undermine the apartheid in the West Bank and Gaza whereby checkpoints, Israel only roads and the Apartheid all segregate and impoverish Palestinians. According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, over 60% of Palestinians live below the poverty line, and in Gaza the figure sits at 70%.

Illegal Israeli Settlement produce is on sale in most of the high street supermarket chains, including Tesco’s, Morrisons, Waitrose, Marks and Spencers, and Asda as well as Sainsbury’s. According to the 2004 judgement by the International Court of Justice, Settlements are illegal and in violation of the Fourth Geneva Conventions. Sale of produce from these Settlements reinforce their existence and financially contribute to Israel’s theft of Palestinian land and violent oppression of Palestinians themselves.

This mass action follows a number of smaller protests that have taken place across in London and across the UK which make explicit public opposition to the sale of Settlement goods in British stores. It also follows the September 2009 decision by the Trade Union Congress to commit to building a mass boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign.

iraqi author hassan blasim's book of stories launched in london 23 oct

Comma Press launches
The Madman of Freedom Square
by Hassan Blasim

Friday 23rd October 7pm
Calder Bookshop.
51 The Cut,
London SE1 8LF

Admission Free. All Welcome


Celebrating a unique short story collection from a young filmmaker, writer and refugee of the Iraq War. Hassan's debut collection is a dark excursion into the chaos of contemporary Baghdad, an allegorical snapshot of recent Iraqi history (spanning over twenty years from the Iran-Iraq War through to the Occupation), and a rare critique of the refugee experience in Europe.

"At first you receive it with the kind of shocked applause you’d award a fairly transgressive stand-up. You’re quite elated. Then you stop reading it at bedtime. At his best Blasim produces a corrosive mixture of broken lyricism, bitter irony & hyper-realism which topples into the fantastic & the quotidian in the same reading moment." - M John Harrison

'The Madman of Freedom Square' has been selected to receive financial assistance from English PEN's Writers in Translation programme, supported by Bloomberg.

Comma Press
www.commapress.co.uk
http://www.versionfestival.co.uk/

Comma's previous titles include 'Madinah: City Stories from the Middle East' edited by the Lebanese poet, translator and journalist Joumana Haddad.

bloomsbury qatar foundation publishing

British-Qatari publishing venture gathers pace
by
Susannah Tarbush

A year after independent London publisher Bloomsbury and the Qatar Foundation signed an agreement to set up Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing (BQFP), the joint venture is gathering momentum. A few days ago BQFP published its first catalogue, with a strong list of books in Arabic and English.

BQFP’s Consultant Publisher Andy Smart told Saudi Gazette that the joint venture has so far focused mainly on fiction for adults and children. By the end of the year its list will expand to include adult non-fiction, monographs and academic books; further down the line it is to add school and university textbooks.

Bloomsbury’s highest-profile activity in Qatar so far was the launch on 1 October, in partnership with the Qatar Financial Centre, of the free access online financial resource QFINANCE.com. It includes contributions from 300 of the world’s leading financial practitioners and others on the crucial issues facing finance managers and executives. QFINANCE is also available as an annually-updated reference book, which BQFP will publish in the Middle East.

Bloomsbury has enjoyed much success in its 23-year history, especially with J K Rowling’s extraordinarily lucrative Harry Potter series. But the ending of the Harry Potter series has been one reason for a decline in Bloomsbury’s profit, which in the first half of this year were down to £1.8 million, from £3.5 million in the same period of 2008.

Bloomsbury has sought to diversify into more stable sources of profit, and it described the formation of BQFP as “an important strategic partnership”. The BQFP agreement initially operates from October 2008 to June 2014, with a contract value of £7.55mn.

Smart says that BQFP is “unique in lots of ways”. It is a publisher that publishes in both Arabic and English equally, and it has the advantage of being a joint venture involving a very well-established publisher in London.

Another special feature is that it has two budget lines: the publishing side, and the “community development” side. An early appointment by BQFP was that of its reading and writing development director, Mohana Rajakumar.

BQFP’s first step in encouraging young readers and writers was organizing the first World Book Day Qatar on April 23 this year, in collaboration with Qatar University and UK World Book Day. To mark the day BQFP published its first book: a dual Arabic-English edition of Bloomsbury’s best-selling children’s picture book “The Selfish Crocodile” by Faustin Charles, illustrated by Michael Terry. There were readings from the book at events in local schools, and children were able to take copies home with them.

One way in which BQFP is nurturing new writing in Qatar and the region is by holding writing workshops in Arabic and English. “We hope to have an interactive BQFP website up and running by the end of the year” says Smart. As well as articles and coverage of events, it will include forums and blogs.

At the forthcoming Qatar Book Fair from 30 December to 9 January, BQFP is planning a venue known as “The Tent”, where kids will work with writers and illustrators to create their own books in English and Arabic. BQFP will also organize activities in poetry for young people at the Fair.


The Bloomsbury Qatar Literary Salon founded by BQFP in London and Qatar has proved to be a hit with attendees. The salon’s inaugural meeting was held in London on 30 July with Egyptian-British novelist Ahdaf Soueif, a Bloomsbury author, as the guest interviewee.

The second salon took place in Doha on 9 September at the BQFP villa in Education City. It took the form of an iftar with readings in Arabic and English by three local poets: Abdullah Salem, Maryam al-Subaiey and Rana al-Tonsi.

Last Wednesday the third salon, featuring the Lebanese novelist, short story writer and dramatist Hanan Al-Shaykh [pictured], was held at the House of St Barnabus in Soho, central London. Bloomsbury has published several of Al-Shaykh’s novels and recently issued her frank and moving memoir “The Locust and the Bird: My Mother’s Story”.

Al-Shaykh has clearly inherited the storytelling gifts of her late mother Kamila, and she captivated the audience with her perceptiveness and humor. As at the inaugural salon, the interviewer was Peter Florence, director of the Hay Festival of Literature and Arts.

Bloomsbury founder and chief executive Nigel Newton introduced the salon, and Andy Smart gave a welcoming address in fluent Arabic. Bloomsbury's editor-in-chief Alexandra Pringle was also present.

A major highlight of the newly-published BQPF catalogue is the anthology “Beirut 39: New Writing from the Arab World”, in English and Arabic editions. The book is edited by Iraqi writer Samuel Shimon, deputy editor of Banipal magazine, and has an introduction by the acclaimed Lebanese author Amin Maalouf.

The anthology is published in association with Beirut World Book Capital and the Hay Festival. The Beirut 39 project involves a panel of judges selecting the 39 most interesting Arab writers aged 39 or less from more than 350 submissions.


Another BQFP title that is bound to arouse much interest is the English translation of “The American Granddaughter” by the Baghdad-born writer and journalist Inaam Kachachi [pictured], who now lives in Paris. The novel was one of the six novels shortlisted for the 2009 International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF), known as the Arabic Booker

“Murad Murad” by Palestinian Suad Amiry, author of “Sharon and My Mother –in-Law: Ramallah Diaries”, is an intriguing-sounding true account of how Amiry disguised herself as a man and illegally crossed the border into Israel to seek work in Tel Aviv.

BQFP’s children’s titles include three books in English from the “Hey Fafa!” series, written by Egyptian Rania Amin and illustrated by Mohamed Sayed. Among the Arabic children’s titles is a translation of “Eliza and the Moonchild” written and illustrated by Emma Chichester Clark and translated by Mahmoud Gaafar.

For Arabic-reading young adults there is a translation of “Where the Streets Had a Name” by lawyer Randa Abdel-Fattah [pictured] born in Australia to Egyptian-Palestinian parents. This book is highly topical given recent events: a 13-year-old Palestinian girl believes a handful of earth from her grandmother’s ancestral home in Jerusalem will save the grandmother’s life, and she is determined to get there despite the wall, checkpoints and other hazards of West Bank life..

arto tunçboyacıyan - zetuni zar

Zetuni Zar: composed by the great Armenian composer and percussionist, Arto Tuncboyaciyan - from the soundtrack of the film ‘Voyage en Armenie’.

hanan al-shaykh guests at bloomsbury qatar literary salon

Hanan Al-Shaykh

L to R: back - Alexandra Pringle, Hanan Al-Shaykh; front - Andy Smart, Nigel Newton

The third Bloomsbury Qatar Literary Salon - which featured Lebanese novelist, short story writers and dramatist Hanan Al-Shaykh - held at the House of St Barnabus at 1 Greek Street in Soho, central London.As at the inaugural meeting of the salon held in the same venue on 30th July, at which the guest interviewee was Egyptian-British novelist Ahdaf Soueif, the interviewer was Peter Florence, director of the Hay Festival of Literature and Arts.

The salon was established by Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing (BQFP),which was launched at last year's Frankfurt Book Fair as a partnership between Bloomsbury Publishing and the Qatar Foundation.

The evening was introduced by Bloomsbury founder and chief executive Nigel Newton. BQFP's consultant publisher Andy Smith then surprised the audience by giving a welcoming address in Arabic. Bloomsbury's editor-in-chief Alexandra Pringle, one of the legends of British publishing (her career started at women's publisher Virago in 1978), was also present.

The second salon was held in Doha on 9th September at the BQFP villa at Education City. It took the form of an iftar and a reading by local Arabic poets.

[more to follow...]

awa's gaza fundraiser in London 9 October

from the Arab Women's Association:

“Thousands of families across the Gaza Strip lack food and shelter; schools and hospitals have been destroyed; children are suffering from malnutrition and have been scarred psychologically, if not wounded physically. The AWA has long supported us in Gaza; I hope that the British public will help them to help us in our hour of need.” Dr. Mona el-Farra, public health physician from Gaza.

The evening’s varied programme will focus on the indigenous culture in Gaza, with contributions by Corin Redgrave and Kika Markham, eye-witness accounts by Dr. el-Farra and moving songs by Leon Rosselson, Garth Hewitt and Reem Kelani".

PLEASE MAKE A SPECIAL EFFORT TO ATTEND AND TO SHOW YOUR SUPPORT, IF YOU HAPPEN TO BE IN LONDON ON 9TH OCTOBER.

THANK YOU!

***********

Let Gaza Live
An evening of culture in support of Gaza Friday 9th October 2009.
Venue: Royal Geographical Society, 1 Kensington Gore, London SW7 2AR.

Tickets £35 & £50 - For reserved front row seats £80. Cash bar is available. All proceeds will be donated to the Red Crescent Society for the Gaza Strip and the Arab Women’s Association Fund for Gaza..

PLEASE NOTE THAT DOORS OPEN AT 7PM, AND THE CULTURAL PROGRAMME WILL BEGIN AT 8PM AND WILL LAST APPROXIMATELY 2 HOURS.

The programme:

- Report from Gaza: Dr. Mona Al-Farra
- Special Guests: Corin Redgrave & Kika Markham, Ghassan Kanafani’s Letter from Gaza
- Compère: Victoria Brittain

- Shelagh Weir, Textiles, Costumes & Embroidery of the Gaza area
- Joanna Blythman, Food & Palestine
- Garth Hewitt, The Broken Heart of Gaza
- Leon Rosselson, Song of the Olive Tree
- Camilla Saunders, “Unbinding” - Piano for Gaza
- Bill & Alfie Horrocks, In Memory of Iman from Gaza
- Reem Kelani, Songs from Palestine


For details and bookings, please contact:
Ms. Shereen Nannis on 07977 146 349 or Shereen@awa-london.org.
We kindly urge our close members & friends to support us in part sponsoring this event and/or to purchase the £80 tickets to help us maximise fundraising.

This event is supported by Palestine Solidarity Campaign

AWA is a UK registered charity number 29 22 72 Registered Address: 515 Linen Hall, 162-168 Regent Street, London W1B 5TF

Shereen Nannis
AWA
515 Linen Hall
162-168 Regent Street
London W1B 5TF
Tel: 020 7039 0182
Fax: 020 7039 0183


cover of Shelagh Weir's latest book on Palestinian embroidery

lse's 'transit tehran'

LSE (London School of Economics & Political Science) Arts has launched a Transit Tehran: Art and Documentary from Iran programme of events, running from 28 September to 6 November.

On Wednesday 7th Oct there is a reception hosted by Prof Sarah Worthington with a talk by the exhibition's curator, Middle Eastern culture dynamo Malu Halasa. Halasa is co-editor, with Maziar Bahari, of the handsome pictures and text book "Transit Tehran: Young Iran and Its Inspirations" (pictured above) published in the UK earlier this year by Garnet Publishing.

The Transit Tehran events include the film "Tehran Has No More Pomegranates" (14th Oct), a lecture by Halasa on Young Iran: Pictures, politics and stories (19th Oct) and the documentaries "Online Ayatollah" and "Countdown" (21st Oct). Details are in the calendar on the LSE arts website.

nabil saleh's novel 'the curse of ezekiel'

Lebanese novelist recreates Alexander the Great’s siege of Tyre
by Susannah Tarbush

In his new novel “The Curse of Ezekiel,” published by Quartet Books of London, the Lebanese novelist and lawyer Nabil Saleh transports the reader to Alexander the Great’s siege of the Phoenician coastal city of Tyre in 332 BC.

At that time, Tyre was the largest and most prominent Phoenician city-state. Much of its wealth was derived from the purple dye produced from the shell of the Murex sea snail. Today, Tyre – or Sour – is a city on the southern coast of Lebanon, rich in archeological remains.

Alexander’s seven-month siege of Tyre took place in the context of his campaigns against the Persians. Sidon surrendered to Alexander, but its rival neighbor Tyre held out. Tyre was located on an island opposite the abandoned mainland city of Old Tyre, and was defended by high walls. Alexander faced the problem that he had no fleet to call on, while Tyre had ships. Unable to attack by sea he drew up an audacious plan to build a causeway from the mainland.

The Tyrians attacked Alexander’s forces repeatedly during the siege, but were finally overcome. Alexander by now had backing from ships from Cyprus, and from Sidon and other Phoenician cities that had switched allegiance from the Persians.

“The Curse of Ezekiel” is Saleh’s fifth novel to explore Lebanese history. Saleh told Saudi Gazette that one reason for choosing to write about Alexander’s siege is that although it is “a very interesting period, very little has been written on it, even in Lebanon.”

In addition, the Phoenicians have tended to get a “bad press” in Lebanon, but this has now changed. Saleh explains that during the French mandate imposed on Lebanon after the First World War, the French encouraged the idea that Lebanese Christians had Phoenician rather than Arab roots. This was part of the colonizing power’s ploy to divide and rule the population, and to counter ideas of Arab unity. In recent years however there has been a growing appreciation of Lebanon’s Phoenician past.

Saleh sees something “fantastic” in the Phoenicians’ ability to create a kind of commercial empire by founding trading posts and settlements throughout the Mediterranean world. The civilization of the Phoenicians endured for hundreds of years because “they created mutual interests in trade, exchange and barter with the inhabitants of their settlements and trading posts.”
He contrasts this with “an empire that works to enforce its will by force. When there is a one-way interest only, it doesn’t last.”

Saleh has lived since 1977 in London, where he works as a lawyer, arbitrator and writer. His first two books were not novels. “The General Principles of Saudi Arabian and Omani Company Laws (statutes and shari’a)” was published by Namara in 1981. It was followed in 1986 by “Unlawful Gain and Legitimate Profit in Islamic Law: Riba, Gharar and Islamic Banking” (Cambridge University Press, re-published by Graham and Trotman in 1992).

Saleh intended his third book to be another factual work on law, but instead found himself writing his first novel “The Qadi and the Fortune Teller” (Quartet, 1996). The novel takes the form of the diary of a Muslim judge in Ottoman Beirut in 1843. It was re-published in 2008 by American publisher Interlink.

Once Saleh had started writing historical fiction set in Lebanon, there was no stopping him.
His second novel “Outremer” (1999) portrays the Levant in the 13th century, when it was under European control. The action of “Open House” (2001) takes place in Second World War Beirut. “Red Anemone” (Tamyras 2004), set in the city of Byblos in 1935, is based on the legend of Venus and Adonis.

The central character of “The Curse of Ezekiel” is a wealthy young Tyrian, Bomilcar, who leads a pleasure-filled life following the death of his father. He is an insider of the circles around Azemilk, King of Tyre.

When news reaches Tyre that Alexander has defeated the Persian King Darius at the Battle of Issus in southern Anatolia, the city’s elite has to decide how to react, especially given Alexander’s reputation for extracting bloody retribution. A wealthy ship-owner, Chelbes, advocates a simple switch from paying tribute to the Persians to paying it to Alexander, but others oppose such appeasement and are in favor of resistance.

The rivalry between Tyre and Sidon is an axis of the novel. After Alexander subdues Sidon, he allows his general Hephaestion to choose who should be crowned King of Sidon. Hephaestion selects a noble-blooded farmer, Abdalonymus.

Abdalonymus’s daughter Chiboulet is a beautiful young widow with whom Bomilcar falls in love when he meets her at the healing temple of Eshmun near Sidon. Bomilcar rescues Chiboulet from the evil designs of a priest at the temple, but the priest is killed in the struggle and Bomilcar and his new love must flee.

Bomilcar’s mother Inat at first opposes a union between her son and Chiboulet on the grounds that the young woman’s father is a mere farmer. But after Abdalonymus is crowned King of Sidon, he considers Bomilcar an unsuitable suitor for his daughter. It seems that the personal and political pressures on the couple will drive them apart.

Saleh is an unpretentious writer, with an emphasis on the story rather than on literary style, and the novel is lively and entertaining. He recreates a fascinating period of history, and furnishes the narrative with much authentic detail.

He describes how Alexander’s forces built the causeway from stones ripped from the buildings of Old Tyre, and wood from the forests of Mount Libanus. The Tyrians constructed skiffs and attacked the construction workers with arrows and javelins.

The workers were unable to build the causeway right up the walls of Tyre, as there the waters plunge to a depth of 600 feet. To overcome this problem Alexander ordered two siege towers to be taken to the causeway. When completed, they were taller than the city walls, and the range of their artillery had been doubled through the use of springs made of twisted animal tendons.

Saleh is now working on his sixth novel, and has moved beyond Lebanon to Baghdad in the ninth century AD when it was capital of Abbasid Empire under the Caliph Al-Ma’mun.
Al-Ma’mun encouraged scholarship, initiating a drive to translate works of knowledge into Arabic and founding the “Bayt al-Hikma” (House of Wisdom).

Saudi Gazette 25 October 2009

youssef ziedan's ipaf winner 'azazel' in translation deals

Further evidence of the role of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF) in stimulating translation of Arabic fiction into other languages comes with a report from the Emirates News Agency WAM that translations of this year's winner "Azazel" (Beelzebub) by Egyptian novelist Youssef Ziedan are to be published in the UK and five other European countries, plus Indonesia, next year. IPAF is a prestigous literary prize, worth a total of $60,000 to the winner.

The foreign publication rights are handled by London-based literary agent Andrew Nurnberg Associates (ANA) International. ANA also handles foreign rights for Ziedan's fellow Egyptian author Bahaa Taher who won IPAF in 2008, its inaugural year, for his novel "Sunset Oasis". Sceptre, the literary imprint of Hodder & Stoughton, published the book in the UK last month in translation by Humphrey Davies. Taher recently made a joint appearance at the Frontline Club in London with Lebanese novelist Elias Khoury to discuss "Sunset Oasis" and Khoury's novel "Yalo".

The English translation of "Azazel", being done by Jonathan Wright, is to be published by Atlantic Books. The other European publishing deals for the book are in Germany (Luchterhand), Italy (Neri Pozza), Greece (Livanis), Bosnia and Croatia (Ljevak) and Romania (Trei). In Indonesia the novel will be published by Serambi.

IPAF, launched by the Emirates Foundation in association with the Booker Prize Foundation of London, has the sobriquet "the Arab Booker". The longlist for the 2010 award is due to be announced on November 17, and the shortlist on December 15. The winner will be announced in Abu Dhabi on March 2. The judging process has stirred up considerable controversy in the first two years of IPAF, and the same is likely to be true in the current round of assessment. In the previous two years the identity of the judges was not revealed until the shortlist was announced, so as to avoid any attempts at external pressurisation of the judges. The previous two shortlists confirmed the strong position of Lebanon in publishing fiction, and of Egypt in fiction writing.

raja shehadeh and kamila shamsie at the tabernacle in london

The Palestinian writer and lawyer Raja Shehadeh leapt to fame in Britain when his book “Palestinian Walks: Notes on a Vanishing Landscape” won the 2008 Orwell Prize, Britain’s pre-eminent award for political writing.

In his prizewinning book Shehadeh recounts a series of walks he made over 27 years in the hills of the West Bank, where he lives in the town of Ramallah. His walks reveal the devastation visited on the landscape treasures of Palestine by Israeli occupation and settlement building.

And yet when Shehadeh appeared onstage at the Tabernacle cultural center in West London last Wednesday evening, in conversation with the Pakistani novelist Kamila Shamsie [pictured], he began by reading an account of hillwalking not in the West Bank but in the Scottish Highlands.

Shehadeh first walked in the Highlands of Scotland in 1992. His essay on that walk, entitled “Echoing Lands”, starts: “I come from a land of hills full of stories that the lingering ghosts of those who once lived there want to tell. I did not know the same was true of the Scottish Highlands.”

Shehadeh has done much walking in the Scottish Highlands in the nearly two decades since that first walk. “I welcomed the opportunity to write about that part of the world and found that there are so many echoes with Palestine. Palestine is not an isolated issue: it’s important to see it in wider context.”


“Echoing Lands” appears in the anthology “In a Wilder Vein”, newly published by Two Ravens Press, which focuses on the relationship between people and the wild places of Britain and Ireland.

The evening at the Tabernacle was organized on behalf of the Palestine Festival of Literature (PalFest). It gave the audience a chance to interact with a spellbinding writer who combines a passion for justice with sharp perceptions and gentle humor. His writing goes far beyond mere reportage and is permeated by a deep humanity.

In 1979 Shehadeh co-founded the human rights group Al Haq to defend human rights in the occupied territories. Although he is no longer working directly with Al Haq, he considers that through his writing he continues to serve the cause of human rights. Books, whether fiction or non-fiction, are able to touch readers and enable them to understand a situation through experiencing emotion in a way that reports, information or statistics alone cannot do.

Two of Shehadeh’s books, both published by Profile Books of London, were on display for sale and signing at the event. One of the books was the recently-published paperback edition of his 2002 family memoir “Strangers in the House”. The new edition has an afterword by Shehadeh entitled: “A Palestinian Son’s Search for Justice”.

Raja’s prominent lawyer father Aziz Shehadeh was murdered in 1985, and it took Raja years to reach at least the partial truth, with the Israelis laying false trails thereby causing the family much anguish. In his afterword he explains how only in 2006 was he finally able to piece together the story and identify the culprit, by then dead, who had enjoyed Israeli protection as a collaborator.

The other book on display was the 2008 paperback edition of “Palestinian Walks”. The first edition of the book included six walks, but for the paperback edition Shehadeh has added a seventh. During this walk, in August 2007, he and a woman volunteer he had first met in Scotland were menaced by two teenage Palestinians carrying clubs, their faces masked by kufiehs. Shehadeh feared that the situation would turn ugly at any moment. The incident left him feeling “the hills were not mine any more. I am no longer free to come and walk.”

Kamila Shamsie said she had read “Palestinian Walks” and “Strangers in the House” separately, and then together. “The way they interweave with each other is really very moving. They are both books which go right to the heart of how the personal and political are indivisible, and how the land and the people of the land are indivisible.”


When Shehadeh returned to Ramallah from his law studies in London, he was the first Western-educated lawyer to return to the West Bank since 1948. He was determined not only to practice law but to become a writer. His books draw on his own experiences to illuminate the wider human predicament of the Palestinians. His first book, “The Third Way: Journal of the Life in the West Bank”, was published in 1982. “When the Bulbul Stopped Singing: A Dairy of Ramallah Under Siege”, was published by Profile in 2003.

Shehade recently finished writing his latest book. It is based on his great great uncle Najib Nassar, originally from a Lebanese village, who lived in Haifa where he was the editor of Al Karmil newspaper. In 1908 he wrote a book on the dangers of Zionism to Palestine and Palestinian life.


During the First World War Nassar thought that it was a mistake for the Ottomans to enter the war, and to do so on the German side. The Germans and Ottomans tried to use him as a propagandist for their cause; when he refused to comply, a warrant was issued for his arrest. So as to avoid the risk of being hanged (as many others were) in what became Martyrs Square in Beirut, Nassar went on the run for the three years 1915-18. He first hid with Bedouin, travelling with them in Galilee, and then crossed the River Jordan to take refuge in the wilderness of the East Bank.

Nassar wrote in detail about his travels, and in his latest book Shehadeh traces his route, as well as visiting Nassar’s Lebanese village of origin. “I have tried to write about how things are today – all the borders, the fragmentation, and the difficulties – and the change that has occurred in the land from the way it was 100 years ago. And then I end the book by going into the future 50 years from today to see how things might look: so it’s the past, the present and the future.”

Shehadeh does not thinks that in 50 years the situation will be as it is now, with an ideological Israeli state believing it can survive through military power in a region that does not accept it. “They will have to make peace with the region, and peace must mean breaking the walls that they have put in place – ideological walls, and walls built by fear and insecurity.” He stressed the interdependence of states in the area. In 50 years there will be “either utter destruction, or peace built on more rational reasoning.”
Susannah Tarbush