This is who I am

While I was looking around my room for the best things that represent me to bring to class I was able to find many things and became confused on what to bring. The first thing that I thought about is My Hatta (Keffiyeh) which I have on my shoulders and with me almost everywhere I go at all times. The Hatta represents Palestinians and is very important thing in Palestinian peoples lives and culture. It is originally to be worn by the men on their heads. Today, only old men wear it as it is supposed to be worn and the rest of the people put it on their shoulders. The best thing I like about the Black and White Hatta is that is a symbol for Palestinians recognized by most people all over the world. In America, i get different impressions by people when they see me wearing it. Some people just simply walk away and think that it is something that terrorists wear. Many others like it and even wear it. Many people link the Hatta with Yasser Arafat because of the way he wore it and always had it on. This made me even more attached to it due to the respect and appreciation I have for this great leader. The Hatta has a great value in the Palestinian peoples lives. It represents us, represents our culture and struggle for freedom, protects us from the gas bombs thrown at us in our demonstrations and keeps us worm all the time.
Another very important piece of art that basically explains the entire Palestinian story and struggle would be Handala. But I decided not to discuss much about him because Amer will explain more about it. So I'm still not sure what else I will choose from many options I have in front of me, but definitely it will be something valuable and has a very important role in my life and in representing my identity.

Final project and questions for Yonatan Gher

Final Project:

I have decided to continue with my initial plan about my final project. I will focus on the Palestinian culture and its role in the Palestinian fight and resistance against occupation. First I will define the Palestinian culture and explain more details about the most important features and examples from the culture. I will speak about the Palestinian traditional dresses, popular songs, paintings (Handala) and the Palestinian traditional dance (Dabkeh).

I will speak about Cultural institutions and mainly (Al-Founoun) and then the newly established group in OSU (Art of Freedom). Then, I will discuss the role of culture in the daily lives of the Palestinian people in the present and the importance of preserving it.

Questions for Yonatan Gher:

1. What is the role of the Gay Rights movements in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict?

2. How do you view the reactions of the Palestinian and Israeli societies towards the movement?

This is how we face oppression and occupation

I really enjoyed today’s readings, especially Saud Amery’s writings. Both stories from Sharon and My Mother-in-Law were very interesting and described issues facing Palestinians in their daily lives. “The Promised Gas Masks” reminded me in the years 2002-2004 during the curfews and siege of Ramallah. The longest curfew I remember was in 2002 and was imposed for over 35 days straight. We did not go to school, no cars were moving, no stores were open, the phones were cut off, and most people did not have electricity for over 20 days.

But still, people did not give up or surrender. The same kind of humor in “The Promised Gas Masks” was found in every house. People were not scared from the military tanks or helicopters or the armed soldiers, in fact, although they were highly armed, they were frightened even from the young children. We disregarded the curfew almost every night and walked to my grandmother’s house were all the neighbors met and discussed the situations and exchanged whatever they had from food to candles to even note books and pens.

I remember the first days of the Intifada I was 10 years old, I used to get frightened when I heard the shooting and the helicopters and the bombings. The tanks went back and forth between the houses and every time it would shake the house as if there was an earthquake. My father and mother were always smiling and never showed us that they are afraid, whenever they saw me or my sister scared, they simply told us what do you think they can do to us? Is there anything worse than this? No there isn’t so what are you afraid of happening? And my mother always reminded us that we are in much better situation than most of the other people and should not be scared and should be brave.

The disrespectful and humiliating treatment by the solders on checkpoints and the bridge with Jordan is even much worse than what Suad described. But again, people do not have any respect and do not fear at all the occupying solders. That’s why even the young children make fun of the solders and try to get out of the humiliation they are in by laughing and being sarcastic.

I’m not sure about Galit Hasan-Rokem’s article and did not understand her point behind it. I felt that she did not like the fact that people speak about Jerusalem and describe it in a female status such as mother or daughter or sister. I personally feel that because people value Jerusalem so much, they give it the same status as the most valuable things or people in their lives such as a person’s mother or daughter or wife…

Questions for Galit Hasan-Rokem’s:

1. How do you vision the future of Jerusalem?

2. Do you think that the Peace Process was able to achieve anything for the people or made us closer to reaching a just and fair solution?

3. What is your opinion about the settlements and the Wall in Jerusalem and the West Bank and how do you think Palestinians should fight these policies and stop them?

The Art of Freedom

Sabreen is one of the most popular Palestinian cultural institutes and has represented the Palestinian people all around the world. The different fields of art they work with always carry a political or social message from the Palestinian people. They have succeeded in blending the Palestinian culture and Folklore with modern arts which helped them increase their popularity and attract people from different cultures and backgrounds. Hip-hop for example, was introduced to the Palestinian people recently and became accepted within the community. I personally view it as a very powerful way to raise the Palestinian message and present the Palestinian struggle to western communities and in especially the youth who have minimal if any knowledge about the Palestinian ongoing struggle. Sabreen was one of the groups that introduced this kind of art, but also, the credit should also go to many young Palestinian youth who were able with very minimal resources to improve themselves and their art and become internationally known. One of the most famous groups which I think should be recognized is Dam hip-hop group. I’ve attached some of their work to this post.

On the other hand, reading about The Jerusalem Music Center and The Heartbeat Project was interesting to learn about. Putting politics aside, I felt that these musical institutions and projects have an important role in constructing the lives of the people in Jerusalem as well as in any community. Music teaches people how to behave and accept others. It is a language of peace and encourages people to respect and accept the others.

Although the Jerusalem Music Center is just an Israeli center and is not involved in politics, I usually like to read and look for the political views of the people I read about and deal with. It was interesting to read about the chairman of the Jerusalem Music Center’s executive committee Prof. Menahem Yaari. I found that he was one of the 300 cultural leaders and academics who signed a petition a couple weeks ago calling for the establishment of a Palestinian state within the borders that existed before Israel occupied the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem during the 1967 Six Day War.

More about the petition:

http://morallowground.com/2011/04/22/the-moral-high-ground-leading-israelis-rally-to-support-palestinian-statehood/

Dam Hip-Hop:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgSVXjNLFgo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIo6lyP9tTE&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rdS8zNp3ow&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUS_JuHSAE8&feature=related

Final Project

I'm still not sure about my final project. The main idea I have is to make my project about the Palestinian culture and its role in the Palestinian struggle. A group of students, including myself, just created a Palestinian cultural dance group (Dabkeh Group) and will preform soon in the freedom festival on 5/4 and later on this month in OSU. My plane is to work on a short film or documentary about our group and its goals in addition to introducing the class to the Palestinian culture and different groups and centers around the world.
The group was originally created to preform at the Nakbah commemoration event, but the plan has expanded and we hope to create a cultural group in OSU and hopefully work on it to include different aspects of the Palestinian folklore and culture.
Nakbah in 1948 is a very sad memory in the Palestinian peoples history from which Palestinians have been suffering up to this day. We chose to remember this day by dancing our traditional dance to preserve our culture and identity as a nation.

Palestinian Culture

Culture is a very important aspect of any nation’s identity and history. It connects people to their land and history and beliefs and shapes their image to other nations. Palestinian culture is a very rich culture that identifies Palestinians all over the world. As a Palestinian, I believe that preserving our culture is a very important thing to preserve our rights and to resist against displacement and colonization. 63 years ago after the Palestinian Catastrophe (Nakbah) Israeli leaders believed that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict will end once the elder generations die (as refugees) and the new generations will forget and adapt wherever they are. But Palestinians in refugee camps as well as those in Palestine where able to strengthen the connection between their children and their land (although most of them where born as refugees) by preserving their culture and teaching different aspects of the culture to them.

Khalil al Sakakini's center in Ramallah is one of many centers that teach young Palestinians their culture and allow them to improve different aspects of it as well as to expand it. I have attended many events in the center and was really amazed on how these young children and Palestinian youth were able to perform different cultural shows in skilled and modern ways. Another cultural center was the popular arts center (Al-Fanoun) was able to blend modern dance with the Palestinian Dabkeh cultural dance. They were able to improve themselves and perform all around the world including many American cities.

Palestinian culture and art has shown many people around the world different aspects about the Palestinian people other than the wrong image that is usually shown by the western media. The Palestinian culture is full of life, happiness and seeking freedom and liberty.

Questions to Mr.Salim Tamari:
What do you think the best solution will be that will benefit the Palestinian people?
Do you think since you are a sociologist, that the Palestinian or Israeli youth thoughts and ideas had changed since 63 years or is it still the same?

Is there Justice in the world?

If I would’ve thought about a possible solution for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict 10 years ago or before 2000, a two state solution based on prior to 1967 borders with the right to return based on UN resolutions would’ve possibly been my answer. Today, a solution for the conflict is very hard to vision. The facts that Israel has worked intensively on implementing the past decade destroyed almost any possibility to resolve the conflict through negotiations and based on previous agreements.

Almost 20 years of negotiations between the Palestinian leadership and the Israeli government did not lead us to become even near reaching a peace agreement. Unfortunately, Palestinian leaderships were willing to give up more and more of the Palestinian people’s rights in order to achieve a peace agreement and resolve the conflict. Today, the Palestinian people realized that the Israeli governments have no intention and never even had one before to reach any agreement or recognize the Palestinian people’s rights.

Negotiations between an occupier who has all the military and financial power and leadership under occupation with no power with the mediation of an unfair and bias third party will definitely result in failure and oppressing the occupied group’s rights.

When I look at the situation we are in today, I realize that negations will not lead us anywhere. Instead mass popular resistance against occupation and colonization and the apartheid policies of Israel is the best path to follow by the Palestinian people to gain their rights back. Nonviolence resistance similar to that approached in South Africa against the apartheid regime has been introduced and increasingly approached by the Palestinian people in the occupied land and around the world. This will pressure Israel and the Western governments that blindly support it to recognize that oppressed people must gain their rights back and no military power could stop these people from resisting.

Resistance against occupation and oppression is a right granted to each human being in the Declaration of Human Rights. One must remember when judging on any type of resistance that it is a result of the occupation. I personally may not agree with armed resistance against civilians or the use of force against any human being, but let’s look at the factors behind some peoples approach to use these methods and resolve these factors which will definitely end all kinds of violence.

A two state solution based on UN resolutions and international law may still have a chance to bring peace to the region, but the main issue here is that from the actions we witness today by Israel there is no intention to reach such an agreement. Looking towards the future, I personally feel that the two state solution will soon no longer be an option and Palestinians as well as Israeli who believe in peace and want to end this ongoing conflict should work together and approach a one state solution for everyone. Palestinians and Israelis, Muslims, Christians and Jews could live together under one secular democratic state where each person is granted right to vote and live as equal with one another. The reminder would be the right to return which is non-negotiable only the refugees have the right to choose their destinies and future.

This map is self explanatory and I would like to leave it to you decide on the future of this land should be!! Does this map bring any hope for peace?