Author: asa

Published by The Electronic Intifada.

Asa Winstanley, The Electronic Intifada, 2 February 2011

“This is what it means to be Palestinian, to care, because if you stop caring, then you let go. We cannot let go” (p. 110) explains Jerusalemite Samia Nasser Khoury in Dina Matar’s landmark new book, What it Means to be Palestinian. Matar is a lecturer in Arab media at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies. In researching the book, Matar conducted countless interviews across the Arab world with fellow Palestinians, recording their experiences.

Matar grounds this fascinating collection in a series of brilliant historical summaries that open each chapter. From the Great Arab Revolt against the British occupation of the late 1930s until the first Palestinian intifada, this is a rich narrative woven together by expert hands. In all the historical phases presented here, the ethnic cleansing of historic Palestine — what Palestinians call the 1948 Nakba — looms large: “Most of those I interviewed wanted to tell of personal experiences … not as past events, but as events that remain current because, to them, what happened in 1948 is not over” (p. 130).

Above all, the book aims to “ascribe agency to the Palestinians, not as helpless victims of forces beyond their control, as they have often been portrayed, but as actors at the center of critical phases of their modern history” (p. xii, emphasis in original). Indeed, Matar succeeds brilliantly in this aim. What comes through more than anything, are the many insights readers gain from the Palestinian narrators themselves.

Behind the success of this book are three main strengths: the well-balanced spectrum of Palestinian interviewees, Matar’s solid grasp of Palestinian history and the lively and interesting stories of the interviewees themselves. The footwork that went into Matar’s research is obvious, and has reaped great rewards. Matar traveled to Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Palestine to interview Palestinians in refugee camps, villages, towns and cities.

Continue reading Book review: Rich definition of “What it Means to be Palestinian”

Written for and originally published on The Electronic Intifada.

Asa Winstanley, The Electronic Intifada, 15 December 2010

Western publishers have too often neglected the perspective of Palestinians and other Arabs when it comes to books on Israel and the Palestinians. Letters from Palestine, a new collection of Palestinian writing edited by Kenneth Ring and Ghassan Abdullah, is thus a welcome initiative. As writer Anna Baltzer says in the foreword: “Palestinians themselves are the experts on their own plight and liberation struggle, and their voices are the ones that most need to be heard.” It’s a simple but effective idea — allowing Palestinians to explain in their own words what their lives are like.

Ring explains in the introduction that his interest in the plight of the Palestinian people is relatively recent. The book takes the form of a selection of letters to Ring from Palestinian correspondents, many of whom he was put in touch with by his co-editor Ghassan Abdullah, who himself writes one of the best, and most humorous, chapters of the book. Most of the pieces were written especially for this volume, but others were originally sent out as emails or blog posts addressed to American friends. There are even two poems, including the transcendent and brilliant “Pick Me Up” by Hind Shoufani.

There is a decent selection of the Palestinian experience in all its variety represented in the book; all contributors are Palestinians from the diaspora, from the West Bank and from Gaza — plus one account of contemporary Palestinian life in Haifa. The international scope of the Palestinian reality is well conveyed. Unfortunately omitted for the most part, is the particular plight of refugees in the camps in Arab states (although there is a good selection of stories from West Bank and Gaza refugees). The subjective and personal nature of most of the pieces also means the work as a whole suffers a little from lack of context and detail at times.

The kind of subjects that constitute “everyday life” for Palestinians varies greatly, even within this selection. But some common themes do emerge: personal and collective identity; return and dispersal from the homeland; racism, freedom and family life are some of the most identifiable. The final part of the book brings things up-to-date with tales from the most recent major Israeli assault on the population of Gaza in winter 2008-09.

Continue reading Book review: Humanity and warmth in “Letters from Palestine”

Originally published on Electronic Intifada.

Asa Winstanley, The Electronic Intifada, 1 November 2010

Economist Shir Hever has served as the main author behind a series of pamphlets entitled “The Economy of the Occupation” published by the Alternative Information Center in Jerusalem during the past five years. The pamphlets serve as the basis for Hever’s debut book, The Political Economy of the Occupation. Although the work as a whole is still a little disjointed at times, there are enough flashes of brilliance to make this new book more than worth your while.

Hever has an impressive grasp of the literature and has trawled through a slew of primary and secondary sources and raw data to synthesize a solid analysis of the economic factors behind the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Indeed, The Political Economy of the Occupation abounds with fascinating and original insights.

Hever outlines three distinct periods: the early occupation, the late occupation (or the years of resistance) and the privatized occupation (the last two periods overlapping). While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu proposed a policy toward the Palestinians of “economic peace” during the 2009 elections, the origins of this idea can be found at the beginning of the occupation in 1967 — of course, it failed.

Hever recounts that soon after occupying the West Bank in June 1967, the military authorities implemented policies such as the “open bridge” to Jordan (an “enemy state” at the time) which allowed Palestinians to continue trading with the Hashemite Kingdom. But this was only one element in a carrot and stick approach. Palestinians were required to obtain permits from the military regime for “nearly any economic activity, from going to work inside Israel to setting up a shop.” Such permits were often revoked in cases where the Israel Security Agency, or Shin Bet, made accusations of “dissenting political activity” (p. 9).

Such economic suppression forced Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza to cease working on independent farms, as they became unprofitable. Many then sought jobs within Israel or in the newly booming oil economies of the Gulf states.

Continue reading Book review: understanding the economics of occupation

Originally published on Electronic Intifada.

Asa Winstanley, The Electronic Intifada, 30 July 2010

Mike Marqusee’s book If I am Not For Myself, newly available in paperback, is a fascinating, meandering sort of family memoir. From the subtitle “Journey of an Anti-Zionist Jew” one expects an autobiography. As it turns out, it mostly tells the story of Marqusee’s grandfather Edward V. Morand, based on an inherited suitcase full of his old personal letters, newspaper clippings and so forth.

Morand (or EVM as he is referred to throughout) was an American lawyer, sometimes columnist and Jewish activist. The fight against anti-Semitism on the streets of New York during the long build-up to the Second World War forms a large part of the narrative thrust of the book. Marqusee takes us through the Jewish and leftist milieus of the period, with extensive detours via extracts from his own life story, with analysis on religion, history and politics.

We meet Jewish prophets, heretics, thinkers, militants and activists: from Amos to Spinoza, the Haskalah and the Bund. They are a mixed bag, but their stories are rarely less than intriguing. Marqusee recalls a politically formative moment from his childhood, when an Israeli soldier, fresh from the 1967 occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, visits his Jewish weekend school. The exotic visitor’s dismissive attitude towards the Palestinians makes a deep impression on the 14-year-old Mike:

“… they were better off now, under Israeli rule. ‘You have to understand, these are ignorant people. They go to toilet in the street.’ Now something akin to this I had heard before. I had heard it from the white Southerners I had been taught to look down upon … So I raised my hand … It seemed to me that what our visitor had said was, well, racist” (p. 59).

Around the dinner table, Marqusee senior angrily dismisses his son’s reaction as “Jewish self-hatred.”

Continue reading Book review: history lesson on the left’s Palestine blind spot

Originally published on Electronic Intifada.

Asa Winstanley, The Electronic Intifada, 26 July 2010

The small volume The Punishment of Gaza is a selection from Gideon Levy’s columns on Gaza in Israeli daily Haaretz since 2006. The dissident Israeli journalist reminds us that the brutal Israeli assault on Gaza has not been a matter of isolated wars of aggression, but an ongoing, long-term policy directed at the population of that small, refugee-packed fraction of Palestine.

Despite his ideological limits, Levy is a searing critic of Israeli brutality, as anyone who has read him will know. Right from the beginning, he named the last major Israeli massacre of Gaza “a war crime” — in his 27 December 2008 article “The Neighborhood Bully Strikes Again.” And he criticized it on moral grounds, not merely as the “mistake” or “blunder” that hypocritical Israeli pundits, masquerading as critics, would label it much later on.

At his best, Levy has a way with words that leads him to some brilliant indictments of Israel. He speaks of “the basic, twofold Israeli sentiment that has been with us forever: to commit any wrong, but to feel pure in our own eyes. To kill, demolish, starve, imprison and humiliate — and to still be right, not to mention righteous.” He describes how the 2008 feature film Waltz With Bashir, Ari Folman’s apologia for the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, “outraged” him on a second viewing: “Art has been recruited here for an operation of deceit” and, “this is not an antiwar film.” He also seems to implicitly support the movement to boycott Israel with statements such as “Israelis don’t pay any price for the injustice of the occupation, so the occupation will never end” and the piece “A Just Boycott.”

Yet reading Levy can be a frustrating experience. In a July 2006 piece about an attack on Gaza after the capture by Palestinian fighters of a soldier involved in shelling the Strip, Levy writes: “The legitimate basis for the [Israeli army’s] operation was stripped away the moment it began.” This is an odd and convoluted phrase. Why not just say it was illegitimate to begin with? But there is worse than that. In an article arguing for negotiations with Hamas, he describes the first Palestinian intifada as “unnecessary and cursed.” Palestinians would beg to differ — the popular uprising is widely regarded as a high point of legitimate and mostly unarmed resistance.

Continue reading Book review: Gideon Levy and the Western media elite