after school today i went with a friend and a student to jenin refugee camp to see mohammad bakri in a one-man show called the opsimist, which is based on emile habiby’s novel. i have been wanting to take a field trip there with my drama class, but unfortunately they did not send the notification out until saturday so i was only able to find one student who could come at the last minute. the drive to jenin is always so beautiful because it is so green. it is the place where so much of palestine’s produce is grown. but today we also saw signs of spring on the drive there–little, lovely wildflowers growing among the olive trees. of course there were many checkpoints as well–flying and permanent. one of the flying checkpoints you can see in the photograph below. apparently there are two new flying checkpoints around nablus.
flying checkpoint outside nablus
we arrived in jenin, grabbed some quick shwarma sandwiches and then headed over to the camp. we got a little tour of the freedom theater there and its related centers–a library and a multimedia center. this area of the camp is the “new camp,” meaning rebuilt after the israeli terrorists destroyed it in 2002. but more on that in a minute. i am very interested in the work that the freedom theater is doing. apparently it is doing great work on bridging the gap between the city of jenin and the camp. around 70% of the audience now comes from the city of jenin. i’m not sure what the stats are for tonight’s performance, but the audience was enormous. as we walked inside the theater we were directed to the left side of the audience (women on left, men on right). after we filled all the chairs (perhaps 200 seats?) then people streamed in and sat on the stairs. it was amazing to see such attendance for a theatrical performance (my friend beesan says that we would never have such an audience if it were at an najah university, for example). perhaps it was because mohammad bakri is a very famous palestinian actor and director. he also has a film on emile habiby, called since you left, which i have been unable to see yet, but he promised me a copy after the show. i want to show it to my students when we read habiby’s novel later this semester.
i think the theater work they do there is great. i’ve posted before about the theatrical and therapeutic ways they use therapy at the freedom theater. but i was very turned off by some things about the director of the center, juliano mer khamis, as one can see in his film arna’s children (you can click this link to watch it on google video, but i hate this film so i will not post it here). there are elements of normalization that i don’t like in it. and there is an odd gap in the film when mer khamis leaves jenin and the film never explains why. he explained why when he first screened this film in ramallah a few years ago, though i cannot now recall the specifics. but i do recall him saying that he served in the israeli terrorist army. the absence of this context renders the film a bit more disturbing for me. i also found it disturbing that there was an israeli colonist filming the play tonight. how is it that only 7 years after the israeli terrorist massacre that he is welcomed in the camp? very disturbing.
but the theater is very cool and the performance by bakri tonight was amazing. the play excerpts certain threads of habiby’s novel and just as in the novel he plays both saeeds. the stage was very sparse–just a couple of props and a bed in the center. he also included a number of palestinian songs and encouraged the audience to sing along with him, which they did with vigor. and there was also a lovely kind of call-and-response in his play at a number of different moments when he would say something inviting the audience to respond. it was really beautiful to see not only the performance but this particular audience’s interaction with the actor. even when someone’s cell phone rang and the rest of the audience made noises of disapproval, bakri had an exchange with the young man with the phone. but he seemed to be in character the entire time, even with such disruptions.
i’m sure that having bakri in the camp had special significance for the people from the camp in the audience as he is the director of the wonderful documentary, jenin, jenin. i strongly recommend it and will insert it here for people who wish to watch it as it is an important reminder of what israeli terrorists do whether in jenin or in gaza:
However, since its initial release, “Jenin Jenin” has come under attack within the Israeli legal system. After the military invasion of Jenin, the sealing off of the city and its closure to reporters and human rights groups, the attack on this film has served as a mechanism for further silencing and delegitimizing the voices of the Palestinians of Jenin camp.
As a Palestinian Arab who holds Israeli citizenship, born and living within the areas of Palestine occupied in 1948, Bakri’s position as less than a second-class citizen living in an occupied land is visibly illustrated by the speed with which his artistic and cultural production has become subject to state censorship, control and legal attack. When first released, after only three screenings, Bakri’s film was banned by the Israeli Film Board in 2002, accused of being libelous and offensive for telling the unmediated stories of Palestinians.
When, in 2004, the Israeli High Court finally upheld its earlier overturn of the ban, it nevertheless joined the Film Board in labeling the film a “propagandistic lie,” illustrating its own basis in the racist structure of the state that is reliant on the rejection and silencing of Palestinian voices and Palestinian narrative, just as it is upon the dispossession of Palestinian people and the theft of Palestinian land, while providing the outward appearance of democracy and proper judicial process. Rather than focusing on Jenin as an internal issue to be resolved among Israeli voices – a debate among the occupiers – “Jenin Jenin” focused on the voices of Palestinians, placing itself, as an artistic creation of a Palestinian filmmaker in a state based on the denial of that very identity, outside the framework of “legitimate” expression.
anyone thinking of the massive media censorship in gaza should think about bakri’s case. it sheds so much light on why they don’t want you to know what is really going on. likewise, the lebanese army in 2007, when they invaded and destroyed nahr el bared refugee camp in lebanon is yet another stark parallel to jenin. i remember fouad siniora saying something that summer about how he wanted to re-build it as a “model camp.” at the time many palestinians from nahr el bared talked about something which seemed like a rumor or a conspiracy theory: but clearly they were right. they thought that the lebanese government was just looking for an excuse to destroy the camp so they could build a military base on its land (while 80% of the camp residents remain internally displaced and are not allowed to return home). i posted the open letter from the camp residents before, but i will link it here. and here is the map that set off the alarms:
and here is what a recent article in afp reported about this so-called “model camp”:
“The rebuilding plan is the result of a partnership between UNRWA, the Lebanese state and the Palestinian Authority,” said LPDC advisor Ziad Sayegh.
“We seek to build a model camp that would provide a minimum standard of decent living for the Palestinians under the state’s sovereignty and authority.”
UNRWA has appealed for 450 million dollars for the rebuilding, which is scheduled to be completed in around three years. So far it has raised around 120 million dollars.
“We do need more resources to rebuild the camp but that doesn’t mean we are not going ahead with it,” said Charlie Higgins, UNRWA’s project manager. “At a certain point in the middle of this year if we don’t receive any more resources or funding we will stop and the process will be delayed.”
He said UNRWA was appealing to different countries for additional funds.
“We are confident we’ll have this money but we have to show that we are actually moving ahead,” Higgins added.
A Lebanese naval base will be set up at the edge of the camp despite strong opposition from the resident refugees who view this as a “form of restriction” and point to the fact that the base would be located near schools.
“The base is necessary for monitoring all the northern coasts and combating trafficking… this is not a restriction,” said Sayegh.
He added that an army post and a police station will also be built inside the camp, along with health centres and schools.
“The police station will ensure law enforcement and protect the Palestinians,” he said “There will be no compromise on sovereign decisions.
“It will be a model camp in terms of services and quality of buildings and roads.”
when i heard siniora talk about this idea of a “model camp” two years ago it was in the context of jenin refugee camp. he said that he wanted to rebuild it like jenin was rebuilt. but i saw jenin refugee camp tonight. and it looks like a normal refugee camp with newer houses in it. the streets are still narrow. the homes are still small. and this is what the people of nahr el bared told me again and again that they want: they want to rebuild the camp exactly as it was before. but if you look at the map above clearly that is not possible. and their fear that they always talk about is the width of the streets. friends from nahr el bared want the same narrow roads because for them a wider road, for them, means easy access with army tanks. my friend beesan tonight happens to be the niece of one of the architects who rebuilt jenin refugee camp. there the families had agency and a role to play in how it was rebuilt. in nahr el bared they don’t. and it’s unclear as to what will happen when this military base is built on the ruins of peoples lives that were looted and destroyed by the lebanese army.
i’m still thinking about disappearance. i have been thinking about this since i heard esmail nashif’s really fascinating, original talk at the muwatin conference a few weeks ago. though he was speaking about a different type of disappearance: one that gives palestinians agency. a new strategy of resistance. a disappearance underground, to reorganize, to regroup, to restrategize. it really is hard not to think about disappearance in a general sense when you live in palestine because people disappear every day. palestinians are exiled, murdered jailed, dispossessed of their land, they go underground. Things disappear, too; palestinian homes are demolished, villages are destroyed. these are all kinds of disappearance.
and still other things disappear. information disappears. evidence disappears. or access to information disappears. the zionist regime commits crimes every day for decades and where does it go? where are the journalists in the west to report on it? where are the human rights workers to cover it? where is the united nations? the rest of the world. they seem to disappear, too, when it is convenient for them.
voices disappear. people’s voices get silenced. arab leaders normalize relations with the zionist state and contribute to the disappearance of liberation. a liberation movement disappears and becomes as a pseudo-state. united nations resolutions are passed and forgotten; they disappear, too. ngos subsume palestinian creativity and agency.
of course, it is that initial disappearance: that presupposes all of these aforementioned disappearances and continues the practice of disappearance. it is the disappearance of the palestinians who are refugees and the disappearance of their land. jonathan cook’s new book, disappearing palestine, which i just started reading connects past and present disapperances in crucial ways. he is a journalist i admire greatly and whose books i always get as soon as they come out. a rarity in the world of journalism: one who delves into historical context and who is committed to the struggle of all palestinians, including those living in 1948 palestine where he resides. i want to quote at length from his introduction because it gets at how these various disappearances are connected in important ways:
Israel’s enduring approach to the Palestinians–and the assumption, in Zionist thinking, of their eventual disappearance–was illuminated to me during a visit to a nature park close by the northern Jewish town of Beit Shean, built on the ruins of the Arab town Bisan after the 1948 war that established Israel. There I came across a small fortified settlement constructed entirely of wood–a replica of Tel Amal, one of the earliest frontier outposts in Zionism’s battle against the Palestinians for territory. The original enclosure and tall watchtower at its centre–known as a tower-and stockade–was built in 1936 to protect “Judaized” land in the Beit Shean valley from the Arab Revolt, a Palestinian uprising against Britain’s increasingly overt support for Jewish immigration. A militia was stationed at Tel Amal, its members taking turns in the tower to keep watch over their comrades from the neighboring kibbutz of Beit Alpha working the fields below. Once the land was secure, a new kibbutz, Nir David, was safely established next to the enclosure. The kibbutzniks then extended their reach by building a new outpost further along the valley. Within a few years there were several dozen such tower-and-stockades erected across Palestine.
Tel Amal was the physical embodiment of the Zionist philosophy of “dunam after dunam, goat after goat”: the whole of Palestine could be occupied step by step, and wrested from the natives. Moshe Sharett, one of the Jewish Agency’s leaders and a later prime minister, observed that the point of the tower-and-stockades “was to change the map of Eretz Israel by erecting new settlements, to make it as difficult as possible to solve the problems of this land by means of division or cantonization.” Compromise over territory was not part of the Zionist plan. In 1938, David Ben-Gurion, the head of the pre-state Jewish government, declared that, once his forces were strong enough, “we will abolish the partition of the country [between Jews and Palestinians] and will expand to the whole Land of Israel.”
At the end of the war of 1948, when the threat that the Palestinians might reclaim their land had been decisively thwarted, the remaining tower-and-stockades were converted into kibbutzim or moshavim. These rural cooperative communities, which for several decades attracted young people from around the world wanting to show solidarity with the new Jewish state, explicitly ban from membership the fifth of the country’s population who are Palestinian (the vestiges of the Palestinian population expelled in 1948). Today such communities control most of Israel’s usable land, holding it in trust for world Jewry rather than Israel’s citizenry.
Later, after the Six-Day War of 1967, the tower-and-stockade would become the prototype for Israel’s land-grabbing settlements in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. In the early stages, armed civilians, usually religious fanatics, were encouraged to move into hostile territory to establish settlements to surround and fragment Palestinian communities. As these settlements were secured, less ideological Israelis were tempted there with offers of financial incentives from the state, such as cheap housing and low-interest loans. Today the job of the tower-and-stockade has passed from these established colonies to what Israelis sometimes call “illegal outposts,” small satellites of the main settlements in the West Bank that the government claims to oppose but that invariably become legal over time. The outposts have proved an ideal way to extend the boundaries of the main colonies and steal yet more land from the Palestinians. Inhabited by the most fanatical and violent of the settlers, the so-called “hilltop youth,” the outposts are sometimes justified as necessary by Israeli politicians because of the “natural growth” of the main settlements’ populations. But in truth their purpose is to consume vast areas of Palestinain land, which disappears at is “redeemed,” concentrating the rural Palestinian population into ever-narrowing confined spaces or driving them into the main West Bank cities for safety.
Today, the Tel Amal museum is the destination for endless parties of schoolchildren, there as part of their Zionist education to learn about the pioneering spirit of earlier generations. The youngsters are encouraged not only to reimagine conditions in the enclosure’s spartan living quarters but also actively to re-create the period, donning the khaki shorts and denim shirts of the kibbutzniks. Scaling the watchtower, the children pretend to survey the horizon, on the lookout for the Arab “enemy.” At Tel Amal, Israeli schoolchildren have the chance to re-enact the battle of redemption and celebrate the acquisition of territory. In the process, some are doubtless persuaded not only of Israel’s glorious past but also of the need to continue the struggle to take land from the Palestinians on Israel’s new frontiers in the occupied territories.
Zionism’s need to root Jews in the “Land of Israel” has always required a corollary: the uprooting of the native population. Whether adopting the settlers’ messianic language of returning to the Promised Land, the pioneer rhetoric of “redeeming” the land, or the bureaucratic jargon of “Judaizing” land, Zionists have been encouraged to regard their national identity as intimately tied to control over territory and the displacement of non-Jews who claim rival ownership. The staking of an indisputable claim to Palestine resonates with Zionists in several interrelated ways, including in the security, imaginary, and religious-mythical realms. It promises a personal and collective safety supposedly unattainable for populations that are stateless. It reinvents the supposedly weak Diaspora Jew led to the European gas chamber; now he is liberated, casting off his wandering and compromised nature to toil the land and become a muscular “Sabra” Jew. And inevitably it feeds on ideas of chosenness and return, the Jewish people’s armour against the twin dangers of modernity–secularism and assimilation. (4-6)
the continuity between pre-state and occupied land with respect to zionist policies, as cook shows, has always been about making palestinians disappear. whether it is golda meir doing it rhetorically and stating that “there is no such thing” as palestinian people. or whether it is literally disappearing villages, like bisan, so that we have to search for the ruins of palestinian life before an nakba. the disappearing act continues when israeli schoolchildren are taught a heavily propagandized, militarized curriculum of which this field trip cook describes is just one minor example. of course, this fact also disappears, especially in the u.s. media that only focuses on the american-israeli illegal settler itamar marcus’ racist propagandist venture as in a u.s. news and world report article this week. a fellow blogger, jillian york, wrote about this on the huffington post in which she quoted me.
the reason i love cook’s writing so much is that he never disappears palestinians in his writing. instead, what disappears is the zionist propaganda that characterizes too much of the world’s english language media. i’ve posted the film on this blog before, but for people who want to understand how palestinians voices and reality get disappeared from the media you should watch the film peace, propaganda, and the promised land. i will post it again though because it is important for people to watch it:
the film is old, but unfortunately the information conveyed in it remains true. there was a perfect example of this today. this morning i read a story about israelis announcing a new public relations campaign in one of their newspapers:
The campaign is intended to create an ‘international umbrella’ of support for the intensification of military action against Hamas, and possibly prevent the passing of UN Security Council resolutions against Israel.
and just a few moments later i saw that england’s independent had already picked up the piece:
what you learn in the documentary peace, propaganda, and the promised land is that the zionist regime writes press releases for the information they want to disseminate. lazy american and european journalists reproduce that material without doing the work of investigating, finding out the context, examining its effect on palestinians. the problem is that the other side of the story always already disappears in this process. the colonists’ voice works in tandem with the international media and palestinians struggle to get heard. to not be disappeared.
what you don’t see in the western media is the daily ways that the zionist regime, through their terrorist military, works to make palestinians disappear with american-made weapons. for instance, american media did not report on the israeli terrorist forces’ attack on gaza last night:
Three Palestinians were arrested in the city of Jenin, and seven more were arrested in the city of Nablus. All were stated by Israeli Military sources as “wanted”.
Palestinian security forces said in a statement that three others, not mentioned in the Israel’s account, were taken from their homes near the Israeli annexation wall in the town of Zeita, just north of Tulkarem.
Those arrested in the town of Zeita were identified as Kifah Abu Al-Izz, age 18, Nasr Abu Al-Izz, Age 22, and Muhammad Abu Al-‘Izz, age 30.
this erasure from the media is like a triple disappearance: first palestinians disappear into israeli jails for years, decades on end, next their absence is ignored, and their context as political prisoners is erased thus branding them terrorists, yet another label that erases them once more into a subhuman category. palestinians are always painted as extremists while israelis who are racists, terrorists are branded in ways that always infers that those who engage in racist activities are extremists (read: not the norm):
The hate slogans also included “Kahane was right,” a reference to the slain Rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of the outlawed anti-Arab Kach movement, and “No peace without the House of Peace,” alluding to the Hebron structure from which dozens of far-right activists were evicted earlier this month.
but it is the norm. i have yet to see a palestinian mosque in a village that the zionists disappeared that doesn’t say precisely the same thing. same graffiti everywhere.
the disappearance here has two sides: one the refugees who are physically absent and the other is the people in 1948 palestine who are forced to disappear on a daily basis in all sorts of ways–to be rendered invisible. when they get to visible, when they are too present, various israeli terrorists–some in uniform, some not–come into suppress 1948 palestinians. it can drive one to a sense of madness as emile habiby describes in his masterful novel the secret life of saeed, the pessoptimist. in this novel there are many forms of disappearance–including actual disappearances in some magical realist chapters–but the one i am thinking of is the way that internalized colonialism disappears the “real” saeed, the protagonist, whomever he may actually be. habiby’s humor is absurdist and in this particular scene over the top as he rides in the van on his way to prison. as they drive through 1948 palestine, saeed looks out the window and comments about the palestinian villages he notices. the “big man” (the israeli disappearing saeed to jail) proceeds to correct saeed to ensure the village’s original name is disappeared in actuality, historically, and in memory:
I found that we were then at a crossroad between Nazareth and Nahal, passing the plain of Ibn Amir. the big man signalled to the policemen through the glass window separating him from “the dogs.” They led me out and stuffed me in between the big man and the driver. I made myself comfortable and sighed, breathed the fresh air deep, and remarked, “Oh, I see we’re in the plain of Ibn Amir.”
Obviously annoyed, he corrected me: “No, it’s the Yizarel plain!”
“‘What’s in a name?’ as Shakespeare put it,” I soothed him.
I spoke the line in English,causing him to murmur, “oh, so you quote Shakespeare, do you?”
I smiled, relaxing. But I noticed that the big man was growing ominously under his breath. Had I known what this implied, I’d have been better off keeping my knowledge of Shakespeare within my heart rather than quoting him by heart.
As we descended further down into the plain toward its city of Affulah, with the hills of Nazareth to our left, the big man began reciting to me the principles governing my new life in prison, the etiquette of behavior toward the jailers who were my superiors and the other inmates who were my inferiors. He promised, moreover, to get me promoted to a liaison position.
While he was going through these lessons, I became ever more certain that what is required of us inside prison is no different than what is required of us on the outside. My delight at this discovery was so great that I exclaimed joyfully, “Why, God bless you, sir!”
He went on, “If a jailer should call you, your first response must be: ‘Yes sir!’ And if he should tell you off, you must reply: ‘At your command, sir!’ And if you should hear your fellow inmates engaging in any conversation that threatens the security of the prison, even by implication, you must inform the warden. Now if he should give you a beating, then say–”
I interrupted him with the proper response, “That’s your right, sir!”
“How did you know that? Were you ever imprisoned before?”
“Oh, no. God forbid, sir, that anyone should have beaten you to this favor! I have merely noticed according to your account of prison rules of etiquette and behavior that your prisons treat inmates with great humanitarianism and compassion–just as you treat us on the outside. And we behave the same, too. But how do you punish Arabs who are criminals, sir?”
“This bothers us considerably. That’s why our minister general has said that our occupation has been the most compassionate known on earth ever since Paradise was liberated from its occupation by Adam and Eve. Among our leadership there are some who believe that we treat Arabs inside prisons even better than we treat them outside, though this latter treatment is, as you know, excellent. These same leaders are convinced that we thus encourage them to continue to resist our civilizational mission in the new territories, just like those ungrateful African cannibals who eat their benefactors.”
“How do you mean, sir?”
“Well, take for example our policy of punishing people with exile. This we award them without their going to jail. If they once entered jail, they would become as firmly established there as the British occupation was.”
“Yes, God bless you indeed, sir!”
“And we demolish their homes when they’re outside, but when they’re inside prison we let them occupy themselves building.”
“That’s really great! God bless you! But what do they build?”
“New prisons and new cells in old jails; and they plant shade trees around them too.”
“God bless you again! But why do you demolish their homes outside the prisons?”
“To exterminate the rats that build their nests in them. This way we save them from the plague.”
“God bless and save you! But could you explain that?”
“This was the justification, pure and humanitarian, made by the Ministry of Health, and quoted by the minister of defense when he explained the reasons compelling us to demolish the houses in the Jiftlick villages in the lowlands. That was the response he gave to the accusations thrown in our faces in the Knesset by that Jewish Communist congressman, that stooge of Nasser, King Husain, the Emir of Kuwait, and Shaikh Qabus!”
“And was he shut up?”
“Actually, they really screwed him.”
“How, exactly?”
“The speaker prevented him from continuing his speech. Democracy is not mere chaos, my boy. Now the Communists, as you know, are chaos mongers. Their representatives refused to obey the rules of democracy, and the speaker had him forcibly ejected from the sitting. That screwed him, alright!”
By now the police car was leaving the city of Affulah on the Bisan road, which led to my new residence. On both sides refreshing water was being sprayed on to the green vegetation, fresh in the very heart of summer. Suddenly the big man, cramped there with me and the driver in the front seat of that dogcart, was transformed into a poet.
While I sat there being my usual Pessomptimistic self, he was ecstatic: “Verdant fields! Green on your right and on your left; green everywhere! We have given life to what was dead. This is why we have named the borders of former Israel the Green Belt. For beyond them lie barren mountains and desert reaches, a wilderness calling out to us, ‘Come ye hither, tractors of civilization!'”
“If you had been with me, boy, when we crossed the Latrun road on our way to Jerusalem, you would have seen the Green Belt: the greenery of our pine-clad hills, trees everywhere hugging one another, branch intertwined with branch, while lovers embraced beneath them. Then you would have seen, facing these green-robed hills, your barren mountains devoid of any cover that could hide their naked rocks. There they remained, weeping for a quarter of a century, shedding all their earth. Let us wipe the tears dry while you weep away, building your palaces on the rock above.”
“Was this why you demolished the Latrun villages, Imwas, Yalu, and Bait Nuba, and drove the inhabitants away, master?”
“But we gave the monastery to the monks, for a tourist attraction. And we left the graveyards to those buried there, out of our faith in God. These great expanses, however, are ours, our inheritance from the war. ‘Let bygones be bygones.’ That’s an American proverb of German origin.” (123-126)
this dialogue between saeed and the “big man” comes towards the end of the novel. it is probably difficult to understand the satire and sarcasm here if you do not understand the history. but in american terms it is like an african american slave thanking his “master” for destroying his native africa, enslaving him, torturing him (in other words, what is known as an uncle tom). here we see saeed, a palestinian, ironically thanking his israeli “master” for destroying palestinian villages, forcing palestinians to flee their land and become refugees, and for imprisoning him. in other words: saeed thanks the “big man” for zionist disappearances of palestine and palestinians.
i love absurdism in most forms and the most gifted palestinian film director, elia suleiman, who comes from nasra (nazareth) as so many palestinian directors do, is especially good at it. his 1996 film, chronicle of a disappearance(which is finally out on dvd) also makes use of this theme of disappearance in an absurdist style. it has been a long time since i have seen the film. but here is a trailer of elia suleiman’s other brilliant film divine intervention, (which tam tam seems to be too stubborn to watch…still) :
and here is an interview with elia suleiman:
it is interesting that as i write this it makes me think of a friend from shatila refugee camp in lebanon who is a young, gifted filmmaker himself. suleiman is his favorite director and this young friend has the artistic vision to create the sort of cinema in this same tradition. but i learned today that he has disappeared. literally. he went to france for a conference and disappeared.
body on the line 