I am from there. I am from here.

I am not there and I am not here.

I have two names, which meet and part,

and I have two languages.

I forget which of them I dream in.

Taking a cue from Roba’s latest blogging venture, AndBackAgain, here are some visual feasts that will inspire, contend, tickle and test:

And best of all:

Their struggle is a tale of endurance, sustenance, dogged dedication and endless hope.

Which is why when their youth call for an end to the relentless sniping between the two parties – Hamas and Fatah – a semblance of unity is forged.

In the coming days the UN bid for statehood will require unity – not only for appearances purposes, but for the tribulations and potential rejection that necessitates further strength and support.

For, as the cliché runs, ‘united we stand, divided we fall.’

On which note, Jonathan Cook has composed a rather splendid look at the death knell for the Palestinian old guard:

The first shoots of this revolution in Palestinian politics were evident in the youth movement that earlier this year frightened Abbas’s Fatah party and Hamas into creating a semblance of unity. These youngsters, now shorn of the distracting illusion of Palestinian statehood, will redirect their energies into an anti-apartheid struggle, using the tools of non-violent resistance and civil disobedience. Their rallying cry will be one person-one vote in the single state Israel rules over.

Read the full article, here.

I must concede that I am more au fait with his poetry and recent work – in itself mind-blowing.

Not just musically gifted, he had cojones when it came to Palestine/Israel too, cancelling a sell-out gig in Tel Aviv on the basis that no war is justified.

He was the voice of the revolution.

He still is.

Quick on the news that the Taliban had taken to the social network (seriously? I’ll wager their WiFi coverage beats 3) Chaim Shacham, head of the information and Internet department at the Foreign Ministry announced the initiative.

It should be daring, slightly awesome and more than a little daunting.

But given the complete absence of the spontaneity that characterizes Tweets, it fulfils only the latter:

We are intensively preparing ahead of September. We have formulated some arguments that are relevant to what’s going to happen in September, even if we don’t know exactly what it will be. We began disseminating these arguments and statements, backed by links to documents and articles, among the relevant bloggers and social media members.

From our perspective we’ve already begun the battle over publicity, though formally, nothing has begun. Our main argument is ‘Palestinian state yes, but only through direct negotiations.’ In events that we have to truncate the message to fewer characters, we say, ‘Let’s talk’. [Source]

It is orchestrated, prepared and touched by vitriol (the move is partly in reaction to the surge in online support for the flotillas) to the extent that it surely cannot work as a campaign machine.

No minds will be changed that have not been already; it will provide a platform for the Israeli perspective – no bad thing if the notion of freedom of information is to be upheld.

But as a frontier? No.

The element of calculated preparation can not rival the impromptu bursts of passionate humanitarianism shared by the pro-Palestinian side.

The ideological battle may be waged in a limited 140 characters, but it will never be won.

We are not different, no one deserves to be treated different than any other person because of his religion or ethnic origin. We are all Semites after all; we can and should live together, not separated by walls or borders.

The above writer is 16-years old.

He could teach men and women twice his age a thing or two about peace: what an inspiration!

Read the full post, How do you define ‘Coexistence?’, in all its cogent glory, here.

In a move that left students shocked, intrigued, and more aware, the University of Chicago’s Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) recently distributed over 200 eviction notices to the three largest residence halls on campus as part of the group’s annual Nakba Commemoration Week. The eviction notices were designed to realistically portray the protocol through which Palestinian families oftentimes find themselves permanently forced from their homes by order of the Israeli government.

Modeled after similar eviction notice campaigns at Harvard and Yale, students spent much of Sunday night hand-delivering the eviction notices to randomly selected dorm rooms and suites throughout campus. The front of the eviction notice reads:

“We regret to inform you that your suite or housing unit is scheduled for demolition in the next three days. If you do not vacate within the next three days, pursuant to Code No. 208.2A, we reserve the right to destroy your housing unit. We do not maintain responsibility for anyone remaining inside.” [Read on...]

And on the reverse:

Non-violent but hard-hitting, it is a smart means to heighten awareness.

Now, brace thyself for the Campus Watch backlash…

How natural it is for Israeli spokesmen to assert that the Nakba Day marches from Syria and Lebanon were the product of incitement and foreign calculations. The state, which bases its existence on 2,000 years of longing for and belonging to this country, shows contempt toward palpable displays of belonging to and longing for the same country of those who we expelled 63 years ago – and of their descendants. [...]

Another example would be the refusal to acknowledge the suffering endured by the other. Here it will be said “the Arabs started the war”, and there it will be said “the Jews caused the Nakba – the expulsion of the Palestinian people from its homeland, whereas the Palestinians bear no responsibility for the Holocaust – the genocide of the Jewish people.”

Every Jew in the world, whether a citizen of the U.S. or Morocco, has rights in this one country, from the river to the sea, that we denied to those who live in it today, and those who were born in it and grow old as refugees in Lebanon or Syria. And the Oslo process? Israel devised it as a stratagem to impose the solution of reservations.

Israel makes capital out of the six million to justify policies of destruction and expulsion not just in the past, but in the present and future. As the state which claims to be the heir of the Holocaust martyrs, Israel crowns itself as the winner in the global, historical competition of victimhood. Yet it manufactures methods of oppression and dispossession of the individual and the collective, methods which turn the Nakba into a continuing, 63-year process. [Source]

At a particular juncture her comment could be drawn directly from my work on Palestinian identity; replace ‘holocaust’ with ‘nakba’ and it is a match:

In a private, personal sense, the Holocaust did not become the “past;” for those who survived it, it continues until they die.

Hass’ article raises goosebumps with its poignancy: the similarities are startlingly between the protagonists, though one refuses to understand the other.

It is lucid and painfully so.

As I write this a friend on Facebook quipped that no Israelis, despite being descendants of the Holocaust, would act for the Palestinians.

I countered there are many leftist groups who do so tirelessly; the crux is that they are not in power.

As long as the likes of Bibi and the ever-vile Avigdor Lieberman occupy the political echelons, there will be no progression, only regression.

And so the sorry affair continues, though the voices of those such as Amira Hass will continue to provide hope, rationale and  inspiration.

To read the full article, ‘How Israel turned the Nakba into a 63-year process,’ click here.

Israel’s education ministry has ordered the removal of the word nakba – Arabic for the “catastrophe” of the 1948 war – from a school textbook for young Arab children, it has been announced.

Netanyahu spoke for many Jewish Israelis two years ago when he argued that using the word nakba in Arab schools was tantamount to spreading propaganda against Israel.

Netanyahu’s Likud takes a different view. “There is no reason to present the creation of the Israeli state as a catastrophe in an official teaching programme,” said the education minister, Gideon Saar. “The objective of the education system is not to deny the legitimacy of our state, nor promote extremism among Arab-Israelis.” [Source]

It is a shameless counter-propaganda and will be futile: if Bibi looks to Jordan he will realise the endurance of the Palestinian narrative.

Although Jordanian school text books have played down and skewed issues such as the Arab Revolt of 1936-1939, the annexation of the West Bank (and de-annexation), the Palestinian version survives through a narrative imparted in the home, generation to generation.

The books can be changed, but memory cannot and if one aspect impels the Palestinian struggle to sustain for over 60 years, it is the unwillingness to forget.

Nakba forever, it is then.

For further details on Jordanian re-interpretations of Palestinian and Jordanian history, see: Laurie Brand, ‘National Narratives and Migration: Discursive Strategies of Inclusion and Exclusion in Jordan and Lebanon’ in The International Migration Review, Vol. 44, no. 1, 2010.