The Palestinian Festival of Literature

Originally posted on December 9th, 2024 on Medium

I had the wonderful opportunity to attend the Palestine Festival of Literature in Philadelphia on November 26th. The event, “Palestine, Philly & the Urgent Word”, featured critical and emotional readings by Nicki Kattoura and Sarah Hagi and a discussion on history, academic repression, and resistance with Ahmad Shokr and Huda Fakhreddine. Jovial conversation between keffiyeh-donned comrades filled the auditorium before the talk, and after, airless ambivalence in response to the harrowing tales told. The conclusion of the night, delivered by Fakhreddine, is that Gaza is the focus of our efforts and needs to continue to be highlighted as we continue our resistance against the Zionist entity. As the beginning of this essay, it grounds the subsequent discussions in the very real reality of the backdrop in which I — rather, we — write. It is the territory of the eschaton.

Nicki Kattoura opened the night with his retelling of “Counting the Dead in Gaza: Difficult but Essential”, an article published in The Lancet journal on July 20th, 2024.¹ The article itself is a straightforward account of the mounting pragmatic difficulties of the Ministry of Health in Gaza’s efforts to tabulate the casualties. The authors delineate the dead as direct or indirect, yet ultimately condemn conservatively 186,000 Palestinians to death through means of shortages of food, water, and shelter, lack of medical treatment, and, of course, by means of war through bombs and bullets. For those counting the dead, there is only the Palestinian that has been killed and the Palestinian not yet killed.

How difficult, rather impossible, it is to put into words the scale of the destruction. The entirety of human essence is condensed to a numeral that exists only to be counted toward a larger number. One turns into two just as easily because both are numbers. Numbers are meant to decouple existence from everything that makes existence worth it on a scale comprehensible to the human mind. All one’s characteristics, relationships, affinities, dreams, and beliefs are gone with only the surviving able to record the deceased. Numbers do not, and can not, record one’s particular existence on Earth. It cannot reconcile the immense pain present in the process of the deaths. For many, the process is a protracted hemorrhaging or infection. For some, perhaps the “lucky” ones, the process is instantaneous liquefaction or vaporization of the body and consciousness. As Nicki writes, even words fail as “language cannot communicate what the mind cannot process”.² Additionally, when one conceives of 186,000, it is likely only in relation to a big number, but not a massive number. 186,000 minutes is 129 days, or a bit over 4 months. $186,000 is feasible to make as a salary, as student loan debt, or as a downpayment for a house. Even in terms of death tolls known to the average American, 186,000 doesn’t reach the heights of World War 1 or 2, or the Vietnam or Korean wars. To the average American, to whom only the greatest or most numerous sticks in their mind, the death toll of Palestinians is either too little to care about or, at best, run-of-the-mill.

What can be said that hasn’t been said already for the past 75+ years? Or, perhaps more urgently, why write when words cannot convey the reality that has so deeply affected those with a conscience? The process of writing is futile as long as the pen is not a sword, the notepad not a shield, and grammar is “utterly, utterly useless”. Nicki reminds us, that despite the appearance of futility, writing does have power:

How else have corrupt journalists, or stenographers, conjured beheaded babies out of thin air but through writing? How else did Zionists convince the world of the Palestinian as subhuman but with a string of words? How else did the movement for Palestine grow beyond any measure without the words and actions of Palestine and her comrades? Why else did Israel assassinate writers like Ghassan Kanafani or Refaat Alareer? If writing didn’t matter, then why did I still write this?³

It seems, then, that the task of the writer is to cast off politeness for the sake of not offending the oppressor. During Nicki’s reading, his evocation of the “Jewish State” is rhetorically jagged. On one hand, it is the imperative of the Zionist to conflate Israel and Zionist ideology with Judaism. Zionists derive their legitimacy from hijacking the genealogical roots of Judaism and shield themselves from criticism by claiming anti-Semitism when confronted with crimination or condemnation. Their exceptional status as a State is only argued in conjunction with their exceptional status as a people, as Jews in general. Secondly, the audience may cringe more at the terminology of the “Jewish State” more than it does the number of Palestinians killed. This is a success of the Zionist entity to dehumanize Palestinians. We are scolded when we call the ongoing conflict a genocide, are scolded for alienating potential allies, being too loud, bringing politics up too much, being too emotional, or being too little of accepting of opposing viewpoints. We cannot call out the “Jewish State” for carrying itself similarly to the German National Socialists of the 1930s, but in the same breath, we must also denounce Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis, and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. It is the task of the writer to sharpen one’s critique of imperialism to effectively challenge the terrain that our enemies have laid claim to. In doing so, we create the language of liberation that inherently resists against the language of oppression.

Sarah Hagi poses this question during the Festival as asking what we are willing to sacrifice and for whom we are sacrificing. When one announces their solidarity with the Palestinian struggle, it is an activity with a lot of risk. Workers risk being fired, students risk being expelled, and public officials risk being censured. People are doxxed, threatened, and blackmailed into submitting to the oppressors in silencing their calls for solidarity. Donors enact tremendous pressure on university campuses, non-profits, or political campaigns. Taking a stand with Palestine and against Israel is a brave act because it is done in the face of tremendous repression from all corners of civil society.

When we risk not being vocal in our support, who do we benefit? Sarah assures us that when we are silent, we only aid Israel and the Zionists who would much rather see their crimes go unnoticed and unspoken. It is the Palestinians that want us to raise our voices. When we risk not reaching out to our employer or our professors for fear of retaliation, does this not play into the hands of the Zionist? One must question deeply who benefits from the silence in the face of a genocide: the Génocidaires or the victims?

The next part of the Festival was a conversation with Huda Fakhreddine and Ahmad Shokr mediated by Malcolm Harris. Topics covered were the historical background prior to October 7th, 2023, the repression faced by academics from the university administration and resistance to the genocidal program of the Zionists. Ahmad Shokr, a professor of modern Middle East history at Swarthmore, provided a crash course on the relationship between Gaza and Israel. During the Nakba after the partition of Palestine, Gaza City became isolated and known as the Gaza Strip. It was a site of great concentration of refugees, and therefore, a political hotbed of Palestinians organizing toward the restoration of Palestine. Resistance to Zionism led Israel to take more aggressive measures against the territory. Consistent and constant bombardment by Israel in Gaza keeps the population in a state of precarity. Israel exerts full control over the movement of goods and people into and out of Gaza, either by land, sea, or air. Since 2007, Israel has declared war on the “hostile” territory and imposed a blockade on the strip. Since 2023, the blockade has been further strengthened to include everything needed to sustain life.

Huda Fakhreddine, professor of Arab Literature at UPenn, speaks of her personal encounters with Zionism through the invasion of Lebanon in 1986. Just a child, she was a witness and victim of the brief, “minor” invasion.⁴ Huda describes the difficulty of being an Arab academic studying the Arab world: your identity is weaponized to satisfy the orientalist conceptualization of informant or threat. The Arab academic is forced to contend with Bush’s imperial citizenship, “either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.”⁵

As Ahmad pointed out, Palestine is increasingly becoming a lens that people are using to analyze the world. Perhaps more accurately, Palestine has become the focal point, or a catalyst, for real relations to become visible and at the forefront of anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggle. The bare ass of manufactured consent, weapon manufacturers, investment portfolios larping as educational institutions, international law, etc… has been shown to the First World and it is hard to imagine a world in which we go back to “normal”. Gaza, and its continued resistance to Israeli genocide, is a “counterpoint in history”. Gaza is calling out to the world and it is our job not only to listen but to answer the call by transforming the world we inhabit.

Writers and academics necessarily need to wield their power, privilege, skills, etc to confront the structures that enable the oppressors to rule over the oppressed.

This past week (11/29–12/5) has been #ReadPalestine week, an international initiative to consume works of literature by Palestinian authors. It’s an act of resistance to read from Palestinian voices when the Zionist entity attempts to erase Palestinian identity from the land and the collective memory of the world. As they bomb schools, burn libraries, kill teachers and students, and expel and terrorize academics abroad, merely the act of continuing the literary tradition of Palestine and Palestinian authors spits in the face of the Zionist entity. We, readers of the world, unite to bear witness to Israel’s genocide and pledge, through our readership, to not forget what we have seen.

I’m grateful to be in possession of Gaza Unsilenced, a compilation of Palestinian voices following Israel’s attacks on Gaza in 2014. It is a book I cherish deeply for two reasons other than its incredible literary value. The first is that it was edited in part by Dr. Refaat Alareer. The Palestinian writer, poet, professor, and activist was murdered with his close family on December 6th, 2023 in Gaza City. He contributed to Gaza Unsilenced a eulogy for his brother, Mohammed, and the rest of his family that was killed in an Israeli airstrike in 2014. As Refaat writes, Mohammed is “martyr 26” in his extended family.⁶ Much like the rest of the book, it is deeply emotional and puts into words feelings that should be impossible to convert to language. This is the second reason why I cherish this book. It remains unfinished, sitting on my desk, because it pains me too much to read too much of it. Over the past year, I think I have become desensitized a bit to the visual destruction of Palestine, the telegram footage of human beings blown limb from limb, twisted and contorted in ways that seem fake due to their excessively macabre nature. Actually sitting down to read dispatches from Gaza, even when no visual material is there to supplement the piece, grounds me and the reality sets in like a stone in my stomach. It is hard to even read the accounts of those living through it. I am filled with so much anger at the system that has declared this acceptable. How can we go on living normal lives when this genocide is occurring with the tacit support of our representatives, leaders, bosses, coworkers, teachers, neighbors, and family? I want to do anything in my power to stop this now and forever. Nothing like this can ever happen again. It is hard, but I know I need to continue working as if it can be stopped, and not tire myself out in nihilistic spirals and lose the liberatory fervor that propels me forward. These are the final words of Refaat that I must embody through my work, my praxis.

If I Must Die by Refaat Alareer, translated by Sinan Antoon ⁷

If I must die,

you must live

to tell my story

to sell my things

to buy a piece of cloth

and some strings,

(make it white with a long tail)

so that a child, somewhere in Gaza

while looking heaven in the eye

awaiting his dad who left in a blaze —

and bid no one farewell

not even to his flesh

not even to himself —

sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up above

and thinks for a moment an angel is there

bringing back love

If I must die

let it bring hope

let it be a tale

References

¹ Khatib, Rasha, Martin McKee, and Salim Yusuf. 2024. “Counting the Dead in Gaza: Difficult but Essential.” Lancet 404 (10449). https://doi.org/10.1016/s0140-6736(24)01169-3.

² Kattoura, Nicki, and Nada Abuasi. 2023. “Grief Beyond Language.” Institute for Palestine Studies. October 27, 2023. https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/1654517.

³ Kattoura, Nicki. 2024. “‘A Thousand Eulogies Are Exported to the Comma.’ of Syntax and Genocide.” Literary Hub. February 12, 2024. https://lithub.com/a-thousand-eulogies-are-exported-to-the-comma-of-syntax-and-genocide/.

⁴ Fakhreddine, Huda. 2024. “Intifada: On Being an Arabic Literature Professor in a Time of Genocide.” Literary Hub. August 29, 2024. https://lithub.com/intifada-on-being-an-arabic-literature-professor-in-a-time-of-genocide/.

⁵ Bush, George W. 2000. “Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People.” September 20. https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010920-8.html.

⁶ Alareer, Refaat, and Laila El-Haddad, eds. 2015. Gaza Unsilenced. Charlottesville, VA: Just World Books. Page 38.

⁷ Antoon, Sinan, and Refaat Alareer. 2023. “‘If I Must Die,’ a Poem by Refaat Alareer.” In These Times. December 27, 2023. https://inthesetimes.com/article/refaat-alareer-israeli-occupation-palestine.