Nora Lester Murad - The View From My Window in Palestine

I wrote three OpEds for The Forward. They published zero.

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On May 30, 2024, The Forward contacted me in response to a tweet of mine criticizing an article they published. They asked me to write an OpEd, and after checking with some friends in the Palestinian solidarity movement, I decided to accept the offer as long as they didn’t censor my ideas. Over the next several months, I wrote three OpEds, none of which were published. The first got stale when The Forward didn’t respond in a timely way. The second was completely rewritten and my politics misrepresented, so I refused to agree to their edits. I sent a third one with a new hook, but after agreeing to publish (and pay for it), The Forward stopped replying to my emails. They also didn’t respond to my invoice for payment. For what its worth, I’m sharing one of the OpEds here.

What are we keeping Jewish students safe from?

As the new school year approaches, I am being bombarded with emails and texts about the imperative to keep Jewish students safe in the new politicized atmosphere. But safe from what? One text message noted that the BDS movement has been training campus activists and that anti-genocide encampments will be back.

There are actual right-wing racists, including white supremacists and Christian nationalists, who are being emboldened by MAGA rhetoric, but the self-appointed antisemitism watchdogs don’t mention those real threats at all. They focus on students who believe in the humanity of Palestinans and support their right to be equal and free. 

I wonder how Jewish outlooks might change if they understood their fate not as aligned only with one another against the world, but as inextricably linked with the people of color, including Palestinians, who constitute the global majority. What if Jews believed that that Jewish wellbeing depended on Palestinians also being safe?

I sought insight from one of my cousins, a liberal Zionist with whom I’ve had many respectful exchanges: “Why can’t everyone in Israel live together in equality? Isn’t that what we strive for here in the United States?” 

When I pose this question to most liberal Zionists, I hear some version of “We would love to, if only they didn’t hate us.” I tell them how my own, albeit unusual, lived experience proves that Palestinians don’t hate Jews – they only hate being oppressed. But most liberal Zionists simply don’t believe me. 

A Jew who married into a Palestinian Muslim family, who is loved as a daughter- and sister-in law, who is accepted as a neighbor and friend, and has had significant roles in Palestinian civil society does not fit into the story of Palestinian antisemitism and Jewish vulnerability they tell themselves. In fact, when Palestinians learn that I’m Jewish, they frequently recall stories from their elders about the good ole days when Muslim, Christian, and Jewish Palestinians lived peacefully as members of one united community, and they long for a country where once again everyone can live together in peace.

I learned these important truths serendipitously. When I was a 19-year-old college sophomore still lacking a plan for my life, the Sabra and Shatilla massacres shocked me into understanding that as a Jew I was implicated in a conflict “over there.” I assumed that understanding Palestinians would be difficult, so I sought them out with a genuine curiosity and concern I inherited from my Jewish ancestors. I studied in Cairo, then in Jerusalem. Taxi drivers taught me Arabic, and women I met in vegetable markets taught me to cook. I made friends on travels in Sudan, Jordan, and Syria.

Unexpectedly, I fell in love, got married, and after years in the U.S., we moved to the West Bank to raise three daughters under Israeli military occupation. 

It hasn’t always been easy being part of the Palestinian community. It hurts to see how statelessness disperses families around the world. It hurts to break bread with families who live under constant threat of home demolition. It hurts to hear friends recount settler attacks on their children and not know how to help.

But being part of the Palestinian community has also been uplifting and fulfilling in countless ways. Palestinians have shown me how the world appears different depending on your relationship to power. They have inspired me to pay attention to life’s smallest gifts. They taught me that safety is found not individually, but within the collective.

Now, 11 months  into a historically brutal slaughter in Gaza by Israel, I am struck by how divergent my perspective of the power to be found in connecting with Palestinians is from the deeply held beliefs of many Jews around me, including those who self-identify as liberal.

Lawn signs reading “I Stand with Israel” confound my Jewish and humanistic sensitibilites. Do we stand with Jews even when they are wrong? Labeling ceasefire demands as antisemitic infuriates me. If it is wrong to be killed, isn’t it also wrong to kill others?

At least right-wing Jewish Zionists are consistent. They weaponize antisemitism against everyone whose politics they don’t like, shamelessly using their Jewish identity as a shield against criticism of their unadulterated violent politics. These are the same people who oppose affirmative action, blame crime on immigrants, and deny health care to trans people. Like their white Christian nationalist pro-Israel political allies, they have no incentive to change the system to include others when the current system is working for them.

I called my cousin to say that I don’t understand why liberal Zionists think they are better than right-wing Zionists. I see liberals fighting passionately against discrimination in the United States, but when it comes to Israel, they uphold a political ideology that values Jews over non-Jews. He didn’t respond with some implicitly racist message that Jews can never be safe without being dominant. 

He surprised me by saying, “Of course, every person and group should enjoy the same rights to land, safety, and dignity.”

“Then you’re like me!” I said, with great relief. “You’re not a Zionist!” 

“Yes I am a Zionist. I care about Jews and want Jews to thrive.”

“I care about Jews and want Jews to thrive, too!” I countered. “But that’s not what Zionism is.”

People like to say that Zionism can mean different things to different people, but the Zionism explicitly espoused by many of Israel’s founders, and the Zionism that Palestinians experience in their everyday lives, is an ideology and practice of Israel as a nation-state for the benefit of Jews and only Jews. Under that ideology, non-Jews will always have an inferior status, because they do not share the right to collective self-determination It is the imperative to keep Jews dominant that drives Israel’s rejection of refugees’ legally-enshrined right to return, the military occupation of over 5 million Palestinians in a brutally repressive regime that controls all aspects of life, and also the reality that 20% of Israel’s population, the indigenous Palestinians who are legally citizens of Israel, are deemed by law to have lesser rights–not only than their fellow Jewish citizens, but also fewer rights than non-citizens anywhere in the world who are Jewish.

My cousin said I gave him a lot to think about.

I keep thinking, too. What if Jews did not work only to protect Jewish students, but instead dedicated themselves to protecting all students, including those who are Palestinian? What if Jews saw their prospects for thriving as tied to a world where bombs and starvation and dehydration and disease were not tolerated – no matter who the victim is, and regardless of the identity of the perpetrator? 

I believe with all my heart that a just peace with Palestinians could not only save tens of thousands of Palestinian lives, but it would also save Jewish lives, and could spare Jews from the anxiety of living with a perpetual sense of existential threat. It could save Jews by re-focusing us on the ways that antisemitism works in concert with anti-Blackness, patriarchy, militarism, and other forms of bigotry, to uphold white supremacy. It would save Jews by reminding us that Palestinians are human beings.

But to achieve a just peace with Palestinians, it is not enough to trust in their humanity. We also need to do the sometimes painful work of living up to our own. 

Censorship of Palestinians is So Normal, Even Antiracists Don’t See It

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This guest post exploring censorship of Palestinian children’s books was first published on Betsy Bird’s blog on School Library Journal.

www.IdaInTheMiddle.com

I started researching censorship of Palestinian children’s books out of concern that my forthcoming young adult novel, Ida in the Middle, could be attacked or banned because the protagonist is a Palestinian-American. Ida is an 8th grader who faces ridicule and bullying at school and finds her strength by connecting with the struggle for self-determination happening in Palestine. Ida’s experiences in her Massachusetts school are loosely based on my youngest daughter’s junior year about which she says, “I didn’t feel like they kicked me out because they had never included me in the first place.” I later spoke with many Palestinian kids with shocking stories of racism, exclusion and invisibility in US schools all of whom thought they were the only one – because no one talks about anti-Palestinian racism.

Palestinians aren’t on the radar of most advocates for marginalized books

What I’m finding in my research about censorship of Palestinians is concerning. Although advocates of intellectual freedom, freedom to teach and the right to learn stand up (appropriately so!) for books about Black, brown and queer communities, the intense, multilayered censorship of Palestinians goes virtually unchallenged – and, in fact, unnoticed. Simply put, Palestinians and their literature are invisible to organizations like the American Library Association, National Coalition Against Censorship, and the National Council of Teachers of English, among others. A good example of this is PEN America’s oft-cited report, America’s Censored Classrooms, which doesn’t even mention Palestinians, although there is a barrage of legislation targeting them, and overwhelming documentation of censorship of Palestinians.

For example, earlier this month, Independent Jewish Voices (IJV) released a detailed, 97-page study of harassment, intimidation and repression against Palestinians in education that includes interference in hiring, classroom surveillance, restrictions on campus groups, demands for the censure or dismissal of pro-Palestinian faculty and students, and obstruction of pro-Palestinian events. They found that the constant and increasing harassment creates a “chilly” environment which threatens academic freedom, muzzles scholarly production, obstructs academic careers, encourages mendacious and malicious discourse, and stifles legitimate protest. More than that, they paint a picture of life for many Palestinian teachers and students that is painful and unfair.

The IJV report focuses on Canadian higher education.  Here at home, Palestine Legal, a Chicago-based nonprofit co-published a study with the Center for Constitutional Rights in 2015 called, “The Palestine Exception to Free Speech” showing the same tactics are used in the United States. In nearly 100 pages and with accompanying videos, they explore a range of silencing tactics that are pervasive across US higher education institutions, including monitoring and surveillance, falsely equating criticism of Israel with antisemitism, unfounded accusations of support for terrorism, official denunciations, bureaucratic barriers, administrative sanctions, cancellations and alterations of academic and cultural events, threats to academic freedom, lawsuits and legal threats, and more. In the US, as in Canada, simply being Palestinian seems a provocation, which is hard enough for adults, but imagine being a Palestinian student facing this type of racism in school?

Information about attacks on Palestinians in education is anecdotal but abundant

Although no one seems to be systematically tracking the impact of censorship of Palestinians in K-12 education in the US, there is abundant evidence of harassment aiming to censor Palestinian and pro-Palestinian voices. For example, the Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Consortium (LESMCC) has been slapped with a lawsuit because of their inclusion of Palestinians in the curriculum, and teachers not limited to the LESMCC teachers are experiencing administrative harassment in the form of tens if not hundreds of public records requests, not to mention threats to individuals and institutions.

In a separate incident, Palestinian-American teacher, Natalie Abulhawa, was fired from a private, all-girls school called Agnes Irwin for social media posts that were nearly a decade old and were found on a known Islamophobic site, according to the Council on American Islamic Relations. 

Attacks on Palestinian books also happen. In a well-known case, a NY bookstore was attacked  for their support of the picture book P is for Palestine (Bashi Goldbarg, self-published), and a Hannukah reading of the book organized by anti-zionist Jews was attacked by right-wing Israel supporters. 

More recently, Kayla Hoskinson, a librarian in Philadelphia was disciplined for an antiracist post that mentioned Rifk Ebeid’s picture book, Baba, What Does My Name Mean? (self-published) and references to Ebeid’s book and the works of Palestinian poet laureate Naomi Shihab Nye were censored.

Another recent library censorship case occurred in San Francisco over ideas about Zionism and racism. San Francisco Public Library canceled an art exhibit and public event when organizers refused to remove text that ACLU lawyers said was protected by the First Amendment. The library’s explanatory statement said: “… the Library retains the right to determine the suitability of any proposed exhibition to be included in the Library’s exhibition program. The Library also reserves the right to reject any part of an exhibition or to change the manner of display.” But if a library has the right to reject any part of an exhibition, they also have the right to include it, despite pressure from politically-motivated interest groups.

Librarian Kayla Hoskinson talks about the chilling effect of this kind of censorship. 

“Attacks against librarians and teachers for including Palestine in their curriculum are definitely noticed by our colleagues. Some are unafraid to move forward with me to plan and host programs about Palestine. More colleagues, though, see what happened to me and don’t want the trouble. Even if they agree, they know they will not be supported against attacks. ALA really needs to re-develop policies and guidelines about neutrality in the field.”

Very few children’s books about Palestine are being published

But when it comes to traditional bans–the listing of books that are forbidden in schools and libraries–attacks on Palestinian books seem more opportunistic and ad hoc rather than systematic and ambitious like the ones directed against Black, brown and queer books.

This may be because there are so few books about Palestine. For example, the Diverse Book Finder studied over 2000 picture books published since 2002 and found only 3% fell into the broad Middle Eastern category. How few of those are Palestinian?

In a study I’m currently doing with several Palestinian teachers to produce a framework that educators and librarians can use to evaluate books involving Palestine, we found that a full 40% of our sample of books about Palestine authored by Palestinians were self published, indicating that censorship is happening before publication. This means that fantastic children’s books like Tala Fahmawi’s self-published Salim’s Soccer Ball get only limited visibility and lack the library-attractive credibility that comes along with being traditionally published.

Sadly, the problem is not merely one of oversight or negligence. In a webinar called “Translating Palestine,” translator Sawad Hussain said she had been told outright by some editors that they are afraid to work with Palestinian authors lest they be seen as too political or publishing “too many Palestinian authors.” Translator Marcia Lynx Qualey said that even books accepted for publication are often “bulletproofed,” which she described as scrubbed of content Palestine’s opponents would claim is offensive.  

Palestine is a taboo topic due to fear and politicization

My publisher, Interlink Books, founded by Palestinian-American Michel Moushabeck has provided a much-needed pathway for Palestinian books and books about Palestine to reach US readers, yet he too has faced challenges. Most recently, Malak Mattar’s Sitti’s Bird: A Gaza Story (2022) has been unable to get a single mention or review in trade publications and mainstream media, unlike all the other picture books he’s published. Moushabeck says, “It’s because it’s a Palestinian story of trauma. We knew this would happen because the same thing happens to all our titles written by Palestinians. Some editors do not assign books by Palestinians for review–especially ones they deem controversial or think can get them into trouble.”

The consequences of the censorship of Palestinian children’s books goes far beyond the impact on Palestinian authors and Palestinian children. As the ALA’s Unite Against Book Bans campaign says, without books:

“Students cannot access critical information to help them understand themselves and the world around them. Parents lose the opportunity to engage in teachable moments with their kids. And communities lose the opportunity to learn and build mutual understanding.”

American Library Association

Applying principles of intellectual freedom, freedom to teach and the right to learn to Palestinian topics

For the ALA and other librarians and educators who advocate for intellectual freedom, freedom to teach and the right to learn, Palestine should be with others at the frontline of the struggle. Some even argue that Palestine is the litmus test of antiracists’ commitment to rights for all. For this reason, I hope organizations like the American Library Association, the National Coalition Against Censorship, PEN America, the NCTE and others who librarians and educators look to for leadership will become proactive in rejecting the violent silencing and criminalization of Palestinian voices. I hope they will step forward to demand intellectual freedom, the freedom to teach and the right to learn not only for some, but for those who most need to be uplifted in order to be heard, including Palestinians.

The Mapping Project is Not Antisemitic but it is Destructive Activism

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This opinion piece about The Mapping Project first appeared in Mondoweiss.

The Mapping Project is undermining years of social justice efforts to bring Palestinian rights into the mainstream. In greater Boston, where I live and organize, the folks I know can’t stop shaking our heads and asking “why?”

Palestinians and social justice activists have hard ideas to bring into the mainstream. We need to show how the state of Israel is allied with right-wing causes like policing and imperialism and that mainstream Jewish organizations are complicit with (and sometimes fronts for) pro-Israel political pressure. 

I suppose that’s what The Mapping Project was trying to do, to expose the system we’re up against, to bring into one place, for example, the way the ADL simultaneously promotes a militarized, racist Israel and militarized, racist policing in the US. This is true, but being right is not the same thing as being effective.

Protest in Boston, May 2021

Because of our opposition’s free wielding of false accusations of antisemitism and the confusion it causes among potential allies, the movement has spent much effort over the years being  intentional about how we communicate. We explain to policymakers and the public that there is nothing inherently pro-Jewish about supporting Israel, a right-wing, militarized, Apartheid state that does not embody Jewish identity. We explain that there is nothing anti-Jewish about fighting for Palestinian rights. We explain that one can’t be truly antiracist on behalf of any group without also standing up for the humanity of Palestinians. We work hard to distinguish between Judaism and Zionism because we support the humanity of Palestinians and Israelis (and everyone!) and believe that we are all  oppressed in some form until everyone is liberated.

Yes, it is exhausting and infuriating to have to work so hard to consider the comfort of (mostly white, mostly Jewish) people when the lives and rights of Palestinians and other people of color are being taken. But while Palestinians in Palestine fight for their land, their livelihoods and their security, we in the US are fighting for a narrative – a narrative that respects Palestinians as equal in every way, a narrative that will open policy options that aren’t available now. So, we are careful.

And then, out of the blue, comes The Mapping Project. 

Good, smart people can disagree, but it is my view that The Mapping Project, while a Herculean effort that provides lots of useful information, is a poor piece of research and a destructive piece of activism. If they intended it to be truth-telling, they didn’t implement it well.

The Mapping Project is Poor Research

First, it’s important to trace institutional and political relationships between pro-Israel and other military interests, like police, and creative to show links with other harms like medical apartheid. While many of the organizations identified by The Mapping Project are legitimate advocacy targets, it is unhelpful to throw random organizations like a disability rights group (even if they do advance Israeli interests) in along with major players like the ADL. Including every possible actor hides the important differences in their levels of influence, and it unnecessarily opens windows for attack.

Second, while the data is well-referenced, the conclusions drawn by The Mapping Project are not always supported. A single interaction between Facing History and Ourselves and AIPAC is not sufficient evidence to conclude the organizations are collaborators. Ironically, there is relevant information not included in The Mapping Project, perhaps because it didn’t lend itself to an easily linked data point, but rather requires the harder work of unraveling narratives and exposing distortions. Facing History and Ourselves is a good example. An influential educational nonprofit, they promote an understanding of antisemitism that considers some critiques of Israel to be anti-Jewish. This does show a convergence in narratives between Facing History and AIPAC that is useful to map. In other words, I think Facing History is a strategic choice for action and their narrative supports AIPAC’s pro-Israel agenda, but I don’t think you can conclude that from the data point that Facing History presented at an AIPAC event in 2019. The problem of selective data and weak conclusions is especially troubling in a project that presents itself as data-driven.

Third, I see no analytical value to presenting organizations on a geographical map. I understand that maps can be powerful tools for illustrating local-global connections and facilitating local organizing. But showing that an organization with offices on Arlington Street gets a grant from an organization on Tremont Street doesn’t add to their analysis.

The Mapping Project is Destructive Activism

Besides being poor research, The Mapping Project is a strategic mistake of incalculable proportions that we will pay for over many years.

First, the release of the Mapping Project, without the support of key antiracist groups working in the Israel-Palestine space, and without a clear call to constructive action, put activist groups in a bad position of catch-up. The ADL and friends were highlighted in media spaces that covered The Mapping Project with their anti-Palestinian spin, but no one was ready from the social justice community to step in and convey our message. Every time the media said “we reached out to The Mapping Project and other local pro-Palestinian actors and got no response,” it was a huge missed opportunity. 

Second, while we all know that pro-Israel advocates would have attacked the project even if it had been good, their attack is stronger because the advocacy message of The Mapping Project is so unclear. Saying, “Our goal in pursuing this collective mapping was to reveal the local entities and networks that enact devastation, so we can dismantle them. Every entity has an address, every network can be disrupted” makes sense to me, a progressive in the movement who understands organizing, nonviolent action, and local-global connections. But any informed person could anticipate that these words would be interpreted by fear-mongerers and mainstream media as a call to antisemitic violence. If, as the developers say, the map “is intended first and foremost to cultivate relationships between organizers across movements and deepen our political analyses as we build community power,” the project should have been vetted more broadly and coordinated with other organizers, including ones positioned to bear the brunt of the pushback.

Third, and importantly, The Mapping Project alienates potential allies and upends rather than cultivates synergies between causes. A case in point is the inclusion of Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey on the map. While the information provided about them is likely true, some people would consider Warren and Markey on the right side of many other issues, and worthy of inclusion in the “need to cultivate” category – unlike others on the map, such as the Consulate General of Israel to New England. I’m not saying we should excuse or go easy on those who are “progressive except for Palestine,” but I do think each kind of actor needs its own strategy. And the left is hardly in a position to throw progressives under the bus for their imperfections, especially since we too are imperfect. The challenge is to learn how to hold tight to our values while building alliances, especially with people in positions of power who can move our policy aspirations forward.

The Mapping Project is not ideologically or religiously anti-Jewish as the ADL and other spokespeople for zionism claim, and those bogus accusations should be exposed for what they are–virulent, deceptive, anti-Palestinianism. But even though it is not antisemitic, The Mapping Project is still destructive to our public-facing work and to the movement.

Confusion Within the Movement

We have been asked to defend The Mapping Project because it has been attacked by the same forces that regularly attack us, and there’s some logic in that. For example, respected Mondoweiss activist/journalists Phil Weiss and Adam Horowitz doubled down on their defense of The Mapping Project, saying:

The attacks on one element of this analysis demonstrate a truth of the report and a problem we have long pointed out here. Israel lobby institutions have considerable political and cultural power in dictating the discourse of Israel/Palestine, and the resultant policy. But they are unaccountable. That power can never be pointed out. Because it’s supposedly a form of Jew hatred. 

But others point out, if not publicly, that while we’re used to having to defend against attacks on movement work, in this case we’re asked to do that with no preparation, context or collaboration on the content of what we’re asked to defend, and we don’t even know who is behind the project. This is an organizing problem that extends beyond The Mapping Project.

Damage Control

How do we know what is the most constructive stand to take in this situation? So much time and effort has already been wasted doing damage control, when a respectful, movement-grounded effort would have been better positioned to withstand the inevitable attack. Many activists feel derailed rather than helped by The Mapping Project, meaning that empirically, it’s not having the effect the authors likely wanted.

But let’s be honest, there are sub-par research projects and poorly conceived social justice  campaigns all the time. Why did this one garner such incredible visibility, to the extent that the city council in Newton, my Boston suburb, felt compelled to make a statement against it? Because we do not have the civic space to have open discourse around Israel-Palestine. Just last month pro-Israel advocates leveraged fear of Jew hatred to try to shut down and control an event sponsored by Families Organizing for Racial Justice that featured Palestinian-Americans in Newton talking about their search for belonging. But the Newton City Council didn’t make a statement against anti-Palestinian racism, no. They didn’t even respond to my invitation to attend the event. That’s my point: The civic space we have is small and precious and must be utilized wisely.

Pro-Israel actors have long searched for examples of “antisemitism from the left.” These examples are essential to their twisted logic claiming that “everyone hates Jews, including those who call themselves antiracist, so Jews are never safe, which is why Israel must be supported unconditionally or there will be another Holocaust.” Sadly, the Mapping Project has given those pro-Israel forces a gift and we, social justice movement actors, are left trying to mitigate the harm.

Since this article was published, I did an interview with KKFI’s “Understanding Israel and Palestine.” You can hear our discussion about The Mapping Project followed by an interview with Charlotte Kates of Samidoun. Also, Jewish Currents “On the Nose” podcast discussed The Mapping Project, and referred to my and other articles exploring various points of view.

Fragmented Love in Alison Glick’s “The Other End of the Sea”

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This Palestinian book review originally appeared in The Markaz Review.

It would be easy to focus on the Jewish protagonist in Alison Glick’s debut novel The Other End of the Sea. After all, it was the search for her roots that first took Rebecca Klein to Israel. But like the author, whose visit to Israel “opened her eyes to the realities for Palestinians living under Israeli control,” the protagonist, too, was captivated not by Israel, but by Palestine.

Palestinian Book Review: The Other End of the Sea - Alison Glick (Book Cover)
Available from Interlink

The premise — a US Jew who evolves to support Palestinian rights — is more than plausible. Increasingly, Jewish Americans are becoming informed about Israeli history, and they are more vocal in critiquing Israel’s policies — Peter Beinart being only one case among many who are speaking out and taking action based on the principle of liberation for all.

But The Other End of the Sea is not another pro-Palestinian screed, it is a bona fide love story, complete with the tenderness, pain, intimacy and miscommunication that define any romantic relationship.

In this narrative, Rebecca Klein meets Zayn Majdalawi in the early 1980s in a taxi cab as both try to find a way out of Gaza. Zayn is a refugee from Shati camp studying in the West Bank, where Rebecca works as a teacher in the Quaker school. Even this plot point — a US Jew falling in love with a Palestinian Muslim — is conceivable. In fact, I myself am an American Jewish woman who married a Palestinian Muslim, and in our nearly forty years together, we have met many other “mixed” couples.

The rest of the plot, however, is completely far-fetched. Despite already serving fifteen years as a political prisoner, Zayn gets exiled by Israel and over the next several years, the couple move between Egypt, Lebanon, Libya and Syria trying to find a safe and secure place to raise their daughter. On the way, Rebecca sees the inner workings of Palestinian families, refugee camps, the life of exiles, political strategizing, and so much more. The protagonist, Rebecca, takes the reader deep into places and situations that no non-Palestinian could ever see.

Except for one thing: The Other End of the Sea is a fictionalized memoir, based closely on the life of the author, Alison Glick. Those “far-fetched” events and forays into the depths of Palestinian experience really happened. It is a story that no one else could have told.

Glick takes readers through a unique and important experience — that of Palestinian exiles. Her masterful storytelling is gripping, pulling us fully into every scene. Over the course of the 30-year-long story, each historical event, place, situation and person erupts into Technicolor. Something as mundane as watching her husband eat melons is told in a way that makes the reader salivate:

In the late morning light, juice the color of a harvest moon ran in rivulets down his smooth arms as, one after the other, he sliced through the fruit’s flesh, scooped out the seeds, and quartered them, methodically eating each one down to the rind. The waiting garbage can registered each fruit with a clunk.

I related deeply to the charged moments at which Rebecca and Zayn just couldn’t understand one another. In one situation, Rebecca expresses her liberal values around gender relations, values that Zayn had always shared. But in a foreign country, and beaten down by his exile, Zayn is overwhelmed. He throws up his hands and says, “You just don’t get it, do you?” Neither is able to explain themselves across the cultural divide, widened by trauma and despair.

Like all good fiction — and effective memoir writing — Glick tells a story that is not only entertaining, but one that matters. Even though politics and culture pervade every aspect of the story, the book centers on one thing: The impact of Israel’s fragmentation of Palestine on a family.

Of course, the story of Palestinian fragmentation cannot be fully captured in a single novel, and it did not end on the last page of Glick’s book. With a population of around 13 million today, there are over 2 million Palestinians living as second-class citizens in Israel, 2.5 million under Israeli occupation in the West Bank, and 2 million living under Israeli siege in the Gaza Strip. Another 3 million Palestinians live in Jordan, with the rest scattered across the Arab world, Europe, Latin America and North America, each group with a different, often precarious, legal status. Nearly every Palestinian is touched by this fragmentation: grandparents are strangers to their grandchildren, aunts miss their nieces’ weddings, and brothers are absent from their brothers’ death beds.

It’s not surprising, then, that love, no matter how strong, can choke from the toxicity of this fragmentation. This shows up poignantly, and tragically, in Glick’s life and her brilliant novel. At one point in the story, Rebecca returns to the house in Gaza she shared with Zayn, a house to which Zayn can no longer go. She says:

“Standing in that hushed house, I understood that it wasn’t the Palestine Street chickens or leftovers that shifted the course of our relationship. It was the realization that despite all we had lost — friends, family, our home, our work — there was still more left to lose.”

Aiding Liberation, a book chapter

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“Do non-Palestinians only stand in solidarity with the struggle against Israeli settler colonialism? Or do we recognize that the struggle for actual liberation is bigger than statehood? Does our understanding of Palestinian liberation include a critique of racial capitalism and neoliberal globalization and the ways they too perpetuate exploitation, inequality and injustice? If so, how should liberation-minded activists interact with Palestinians whose interests diverge, like those who aspire to build a Palestine that is allied with US and European corporate interests or those who want to establish another Islamic state?”

Our Vision for Palestinian Liberation book cover

This is an excerpt from my chapter, “Aiding Liberation” in Ramzy Baroud and Ilan Pappe’s edited volume, Our Vision for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders & Intellectuals Speak Out.”

Get your copy from your favorite independent bookstore or from bookshop.org.

Pushing back against right wing attacks on education by centering Palestinian voices

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This book review was first published by Mondoweiss on March 24, 2022

Determined to Stay: Palestinian Youth Fight for Their Village by Jody Sokolower is one of the rare non-fiction, young adult books that center contemporary Palestinian experiences and voices.

Teachers and students will quickly recognize that this valuable resource was written by a skilled educator, and one with deep knowledge about how to teach social justice issues to youth. After working as a classroom teacher in middle and high school settings, Jody spent eight years as managing editor of the social justice publisher Rethinking Schools, during which she edited two groundbreaking books. She now works as co-coordinator of the Teach Palestine Project at the Middle East Children’s Alliance and helps lead the National Liberated Ethnic Studies Coalition.

PALESTINIAN YOUTHS CONFRONT ISRAELI SOLDIERS DURING THE CLASHES IN THE EAST JERUSALEM NEIGHBORHOOD OF SILWAN, WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 22, 2010. (PHOTO: MAHFOUZ ABU TURK/APA IMAGES)

The structure and content of Determined to Stay utilize and model best practices in teaching material that is unfamiliar to students and about which there are different and potentially conflicting perspectives. For example, a compare-and-contrast approach is woven throughout the book enabling readers not only to learn about Palestine, but about their own communities. This starts right at the beginning with a framing introduction by Nick Estes (Lower Brule Sioux), co-founder of Red Nation, a Native American resistance organization. Past and current examples of US colonialism are integrated throughout the book, giving readers a home base from which they can venture out to understand what’s happening in Palestine. She also includes the stories of Palestinian-Americans, who only infrequently get to see themselves in books. The inclusion of Palestinian-American stories helps non-Palestinian readers understand that the issues in the book are relevant in the US, not just “over there.”

The bulk of the content is Palestinians telling their own stories. The reader “hears” about Palestinian youth’s lives in their own words. Sokolower does not explain what Palestinians say or give her own opinions. She lets Palestinians’ voices stand on their own. She models self-reflection for the reader by gently commenting on her own experiences in light of what she learns from the Palestinians she interviews. She also models for readers the importance of considering one’s own social location and biases. She reminds the reader that she is an older, white, Jewish woman from the US, and that reality shapes her experiences and perspective.

The chapters are short, between 5-10 pages, and can be easily woven into lessons in various disciplines at different levels. Given that the material is heavy and may be new to readers, these short bites are perfect for taking in an aspect of Palestinian youth’s lives, and connecting the learning to previous chapters and other material they are discussing in school.

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It is refreshing that Determined to Stay starts small. It doesn’t try to explain the entire background and history of what’s going on. Context and history are included in reference to Silwan, the village that is the subject of the book. Most importantly, it doesn’t try to “balance” what Palestinians say with opposing views, a tactic used in US media and educational settings to undermine Palestinian voice.

Showing her expertise in social justice education, Sokolower addresses hard issues like arrest of youth, demolition of homes, harassment by Israeli soldiers, the lasting effects of trauma, and more. But in every instance, she highlights the way that Palestinian youth cope, find agency, support one another and resist.

In this way, the difficult aspects of life under military occupation and siege do not define Palestinians, nor do they overwhelm readers. They are actors who think and act and offer hope for change. Seeing them act inspires us to consider how we, too, can act to improve our situations.

There are some maps, artwork and photos. The most important photos are of young Palestinians in a variety of settings, including dancing and playing as well as being arrested and resisting. Since many US readers never meet a Palestinian, they are subject to the ways Palestinians are framed, often as “terrorists,” in US media. Humanizing images are critical for young readers to be able to relate to and connect with the stories of their counterparts in Palestine.

Although Determined to Stay: Palestinian Youth Fight for Their Village is clearly about youth, it is not immediately obvious from the cover that it is for young readers. Adult readers, including teachers, will also benefit from the book, but there are plenty of other books for adults that address Palestinian topics. Determined to Stay: Palestinian Youth Fight for Their Village fills a void because it is aimed at youth readers, and it raises the bar for forthcoming books for this audience.

Sadly, despite increasing interest in Palestine and Palestinians in the US, it is getting harder for K-12 teachers to bring Palestinian perspectives into the classroom. Attacks on what is erroneously called “Critical Race Theory” are the most recent indication of the politicization and divisiveness of public discourse around education. Educators with social justice sensibilities, however, understand that the key to constructive civic discourse is not banning certain books or ideas, but rather prioritizing skills in listening, evaluating facts, analyzing different narratives, forming opinions, and engaging in civil discussion across lines of difference. Determined to Stay: Palestinian Youth Fight for Their Village is a valuable resource for all of us who want to keep education relevant, honest and effective in our struggle to improve the world in which we live.

My people are from…

by

My people are from the front of the march, where signs are held high

cardboard in sweaty hands

slogans universal, historic

pockets bulging with snacks for the children in tow

My people are from the ache of knowing how it feels and the

contradictory science

of self-preservation

My people got lost when the protest turned left at the corner

when the police stepped out of their cruisers

when the reporter tapped a young guy wearing a kuffiyeh to speak about

liberation

and his words were “insufficiently nuanced”

My people stopped at a sidewalk cafe on the way

back to the car parked under a tree

and got a mocha latte in a to-go cup

with a plastic top

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