An Evening with Sayed Kashua May 17, 2008

On Friday night, The New Israel Fund hosted a shabbat dinner with Israeli-Arab journalist and writer Sayed Kashua.

A few months ago I went to a screening of Kashua’s television show Avoda Aravit or ’Arab Labor’ in English. It was an event hosted by The Jewish Community Center in Manhattan for their ‘Other Israel’ series. Other Israel meaning the often forgotten Israeli-Arabs, Arabs who hold Israeli citizenship and live within the 1948 borders. Sayed Kashua is one of these citizens and an outspoken one at that.

Sayed is known for his weekly columns in Ha’Artez newspaper, the popular leftist newspaper in Israel. I must admit, I have only read a few since I do not read or speak Hebrew, the language in which they are written, and have only found a few of the English translations online. But, from what I understand, he is the voice of the Israel-Arab situation. A citizen of Israel yet as a Muslim, a minority in a Jewish state and as an Arab, an often persecuted minority.

When I saw ‘Arab Labor’ I found it clever and funny. There were many times when I laughed out loud but true to my education in Womens Studies, I couldn’t help analyzing the story and characters. The story of an Israeli-Arab deperately wanting to fit in with the Jewish majority, squelching his Arabness in the process, at first reminded me of black shows that came out in America during the 80’s. After some thought though, I realized the analogy was inaccurate. While speaking with the man who sat across from me at the dinner, a better comparison was made. Kashua, with his self-depreciating humor and sarcasm, is a Jewish comedian not unlike Woody Allen.

In the same way that Woody Allen makes fun of Jews to poke fun at non-Jews for their prejudices, Sayed Kashua makes fun of Arabs to poke fun at Israeli-Jews for their misconceptions.  During the Q&A, Kashua put his humor into context. “It wasn’t necessarily ‘Jewish” humor’”, he said, but “minority humor.” What Sayed does in his articles, in his show, is an attempt to humanize the threatened minority, Israeli-Arabs, quite like how European and American Jews use humor to make themselves ’likeable’ to the Christian majorities of those nations.  

As Israeli Independence Day, or to the Palestinian and wider Arab community The Nakba (catastrophe), wraps up there are many in the media who have left behind a wake of articles and interviews discussing the state of Arabs living within the 1948 borders of Israel. With the separation wall growing everyday, cutting off those in the West Bank from their neighbors in the pre-1967 land, it will be up to the Jewish and Arab Israelis to continue their work in trying to sort out the situation, to try and understand each others narratives. Those on the outside of those walls are out of reach and increasingly being pushed out of the conversation.

West Bank Story: Love Amidst Dueling Falafel Stands April 12, 2008

The short film, WEST BANK STORY, may not solve the Israeli-Palestinian issue but it will make you laugh, which is more than most can say for Olmert and Abbas.

West Bank Story first came into the limelight when it walked away from the 2006 Academy Awards as the winner of “The Best Live Action Short Film.” Since that time, the film has seen success, including at a handful of Jewish Film Festivals. 

After watching West Bank Story it’s not difficult to understand why it has gained so much praise. Writers Ari Sandel, a native Californian with an Israeli father, and Kim Ray take a heavy subject and create a laugh-out-loud musical comedy.

West Bank Story takes place near a checkpoint in Palestine. A few feet away stands two falafel restaurants, side by side. One Palestinian-owned, the other Israeli. As fate would have it a customer had forgotten his hummus and Fatima, the counter girl from the Palestinian falafel stand, runs after him with the bag in hand only to be stopped at the checkpoint a few feet away by a less-than-calm Israeli soldier. Another soldier, David, puts an end to the harrassment, having fallen in love at first sight with the girl. What happens next is a parody of life within the current conflict.

Disagreements and misunderstandings escalate, walls are constructed, violent destruction ensues but in the end comes a creative resolution. Unlike the film, the reality of the situation offers no end, no humorous conclusion, which leaves you wishing the politicians could be as crafty as the restauranteurs. For us outside of the film, we will have to keep waiting for a finale, hopefully one as humorous as the film’s.

Watch clips of the film with commentary on AlJazeera’sThe Fabulous Picture Show.

Rachel Corrie: In Her Own Words April 11, 2008

Part commemoration, part celebration, Rachel Corrie’s book release gathering at Cooper Union’s Wollman Auditorium on Friday night was a testament to a wonderful person taken from this earth too soon.

Rachel’s collection of poems, LET ME STAND ALONE, recently published by Norton, meticulously selected with loving care by her family and passionate editor, reveal a girl, in her childhood writings, and woman, in her latter work, who had a striking awareness of the world.

Her writings reveal a person deeply concerned with other peoples’ right to dignity, peace and justice and an acute ability to acknowledge their suffering. Her childhood poems display an impressive wisdom that few people ever obtain regardless of age and an almost comical obsession with Moscow’s corroded water pipes.

Rachel not only exhibited compassion in her writing, she showed in with action. From her time working for a local nature conservancy, to the community hospital where she worked with the mentally handicapped to her final destination, Palestine.

In March 2003, Rachel Corrie was killed in Rafah, a village in the Gaza Strip as she attempted to stop a family’s home from demolition by the Israeli Defense Force. Standing on a mound of dirt, face to face with the driver of a Catepillar Bulldozer, Rachel was crushed as the machine continued to move foward.

SInce losing their daughter in a horrific and heartbreaking manner, Rachel’s parents, Craig and Cindy have taken up their daughter’s fight, having found, post humorously, a noble cause in the struggle for justice in Palestine.

Craig and CIndy, joined by notable friends such as actress Lily Taylor and Najla Said, the late Edward Said’s daughter and founding member of Nibrasan Arab-American theater company, took turns reading from Rachel’s poems.

This evening with the Corrie family and their friends was one of the most touching and emotional events I have ever attended.

For more information about Rachel Corrie and how you can carry on her fight, please visit The Rachel Corrie Foundation website.

For further reading about Gaza and The West Bank, I encourage you to read the works of Israeli Journalist Amira Hass, DRINKING THE SEA AT GAZA: Days and Nights in a Land Under Seige and REPORTING FROM RAMALLAH: An Israeli Journalist in an Occupied Land.

Palestinian Hip Hop Documentary April 6, 2008

It’s not the usual news coming out of Palestine, nor the usual voice your hear. Slingshot Hip Hop is a film by New York based artist and filmmaker Jackie Reem Salloum. Jackie wasn’t always a filmmaker though. 4 1/2 years ago she was just a girl going to visit her family in the West Bank. Before leaving on her trip she had become aware of DAM, a Palestinian hip hop group made of of three young guys living in Lyd, Israel (also known to many Palestinians as ‘48 - since this is the land that became Israel in 1948).

Jackie, an American-born woman whose family is Palestinian and Syrian, was both curious and excited. Palestinian hip hop? Who were these guys? Were there more groups like them? At the time, the answer was no. It was just DAM made up of Suhell Nafar, his brother Tamer Nafar and friend Mahmoud Jeri. At first they rhymed in English, having never heard anything other than American hip hop. Their heros, Public Enemy, Tupac, NAS were all that they knew and didn’t think to try a song in their own language. Luckily, the thought struck them and now their songs are mainly in Arabic, a language that lends quite well to the artform. Not only had they developed linguistically but after the first intifada - or uprising - in 2000, DAM became political. Their words songs went from fun jams for parties to strong messages for Palestinians living under occupation.

Their songs help to bridge the physical divide between ‘48 Palestinians and those living in The West Bank and Gaza - the two Palestinian territories occupied after the 1967 War. Unable to visit each other freely and experiencing different aspects of occupation, there was a need for something, anything, to help the Palestinian people feel that they were still connected. Hip hop was one such way and “Meen Erhabi” (Who’s the Terrorist) was just the song to kick it off.

The intifada reminded the ’48s, the West Bankers and the Gazans that they were one. More importantly, it gave some of the younger generation a living situation that was in dire need of self-expression. It gave new meaning to the term, “publish or perish.” Make art or wither away. Express yourself or keep it bottled up inside until it eats you. Other groups came out of this environment, many of which were aided after hearing DAM’s recordings. PR (Palestinian Rapperz) from Gaza, Mahmoud Shalabi from Akka - Northern Israel, and female hip hoppers Lyd-based Abeera and Arapeyat a duo also from Akka.

“Slingshot Hip Hop” is an in-depth look at these groups and what they mean for the Palestinian people who embrace them. Art, a form of resistance, seldom comes to mind when Westerners hear the word “Palestinian” yet these groups are offering a different way of expression to the younger generations. They are offering hope and alternatives to armed resistance and a life of drugs. They are heros to young kids who hear them when they speak at their schools and see them on the streets in their towns.

“Slingshot Hip Hop” is not only entertaining, it is important. The film gives an alternative view of Palestinians and Palestinian life, one that all Westerners could benefit from.

 

Journalist Steve Coll April 5, 2008

The other night I saw Steve Coll discuss his latest book, The Bin Ladens (Penguin Press; April 2008). The New York Times ran a great review of the book, saying:

 

“…by focusing on Mr. bin Laden’s conflicted relationship with his family and that family’s complicated relationship with the West, Mr. Coll, a staff writer for The New Yorker who also worked for many years at The Washington Post, has added fascinating new details to our understanding of how Mr. bin Laden evolved from a loyal family adjutant into an angry black sheep, intent on lashing out at the very people — the Saudi royal family and the United States of America — that his father and brothers had cultivated in their business dealings for years.”

 

Coll’s book, from what I have read so far and from what I heard Coll describe about his work, appears to be a light-hearted take on this dark character. It is not the usual book on politics and “the war on terror.” It is a book about the unlikely rise of a dangerous man from a not-so-dangerous family.

Coll was a wonderful storyteller, captivating and passionate. If the book is anything like the author, it will be near impossible to put down.

Iraqi Journalist Haifa Zangana April 4, 2008

I recently saw Haifa Zangana speak about her book City Widows: An Iraqi Woman’s Account of War and Resistance (Seven Stories Press; November 15, 2007; $20).

She discussed women in Iraqi society throughout the 20th century, from the 1920’s until the present day occupation of her country. She mentioned women owned magazines and pages in daily newspapers devoted to women poets and writers, even under the Ba’ath regime.

The main reason for her book was to show that Bush’s couching of the war in Iraq, not only perpetuated by the fear of weapons of mass destruction, but to liberate Iraqi women was also a farce. Haifa wanted to show through historical documentation that Iraqi women were already liberated and enjoyed equality in Iraqi society and now, because of the occupation and as in most wars, the status of women in Iraq has deteriorated rapidly, often at the hands of foreign forces. In fact, her book is dedicated to ‘Abir Hamza, the 14 year-old girl who was raped and burned alive by the American Marines after her family was killed.

Haifa does not glorify the Ba’ath party years in Iraq and mentioned the censorship and fear under the regime but I feel as if the current situation in the country has given people rose-colored glasses when looking back to the past, which is in itself quite sad and I have a hard time blaming Haifa for discussing history in such a fashion.

HAIFA ZANGANA is an Iraqi political commentator, and novelist. She is a weekly columnist for al-Quds newspaper and a commentator for The Guardian, Red Pepper, and al-Ahram Weekly. She lives in London.
http://www.sevenstories.com/book/?GCOI=58322100075330&fa=author&person_id=305&publishergcoicode=58322