UPDATED: Juliano Mer-Khamis: Taken Too Soon

Shocking news broke this morning about the murder of Juliano Mer-Khamis in a refugee camp in Jenin where he lived. The 53 year-old apparently fell victim to masked gunmen who opened fire on his car. I met Juliano on a few occasions and his work and dedication for the Palestinian cause was remarkable. His loss will be tremendously felt. (Image right: Juliano working with Palestinian kids at the theater)

I had first learned about Juliano through a movie about his mother Arna. The film, "Arna's Children," is the story of Arna Mer, an Israeli Jewish woman who served in the Israeli Palmach (Armored Brigades) only to marry a Palestinian man and dedicate her life to working with Palestinians. She opened a theater in Jenin's refugee camps which became a source of comfort and an arena for expression for countless refugee children. In the film about the theater and Arna's work, which was made by her son Juliano, Juliano returns to the camp after the intifada to find out what happened to the kids he remembered from the theater his mother established. Through interviewing those that remained, he found out many of them had been killed.

To continue his mother's work and provide a creative space for Palestinian children, Juliano established the Jenin Freedom theater. Through his work, he gave voice to Palestinian children to express themselves through art. He was also a tireless advocate for Palestinian independence in his individual capacity. As a filmmaker, actor and artist, Juliano could have chosen to live in many places, but he spent a great deal of time living in the refugee camp of Jenin where he worked on the Freedom Theater. Ultimately, he gave his life there. (Image right: Entrance to the Jenin Freedom Theater)

Last night I happened to be watching Miral, the new movie by Julian Schnabel based on the story of a Palestinian girl, written by Rula Jebreal. I noticed immediately that among the cast which included Frieda Pinto, Willem Dafoe and Hiam Abbas, Juliano Mer-Khamis made an appearance as well. He plays the short roll of Sheikh Sabah for those who see the film. I could never have imagined when seeing him on screen last night that I'd be writing about his murder this morning. Juliano's mother, Arna, lost a battle to cancer after dedicating her life to Palestinian kids in Jenin. Juliano, who continued her work, joins her as well as another activist on behalf of Palestinians taken from us too early.

At this time it is still unclear who murdered Juliano or what the motive was. He had received death threats in the past from conservative elements of Palestinian society who were displeased with the artistic expression being made available to refugee children. Two things are perfectly clear, however: 1) Who ever killed Juliano Mer-Khamis must be brought to justice and has dealt a blow to efforts give to Palestinians a voice through artistic expression, and 2) Juliano's contributions will be missed, as they were appreciated, and not easily forgotten.

*UPDATE: This youtube clip below gives you an idea what kind of person Juliano was, why his work was so important, and why despite his tragic loss, it must be continued.

The full movie "Arna's Children" appears below and is worth watching:

read more...

Palestine Arts News

There are several recent, notable news items about Palestinian arts.

The New York Times published a short review of Annemarie Jacir’s film “Salt of This Sea,” which stars the poet, Suheir Hammad. Soraya is a Brooklynite who travels to her ancestral homeland to find herself, in a sense. She also tries to reclaim her Palestinian grandfather’s house and bank account, which Israel took in the 1948 war. The Times called the film, which opened in New York theaters on August 13, "a sad and engrossing look at a haunted landscape." Produced by famed thespian Danny Glover, the film had a good opening weekend turnout.

Activist groups are promoting it in hope of drawing further crowds. One such organization is pushing the film with a strong endorsement from Michael Moore. He said it is "Brilliant, emotional, intense and fresh... the kind of powerful film that stays with you long after you leave the theater. It profoundly moved me."

Soraya (Suheir Hammad) and the two Palestinian men she befriends, Emad (Saleh Bakri) and Marwan (Riyad Ideis), spend much of the film negotiating both physical barriers — walls, fences, checkpoints, holding cells — and ritual humiliations to move about the rocky, scrubby country in which Emad and Marwan are trapped.

Photograph: Murdo Macleod for the Guardian
In the UK, a theater piece, "The Cry" portrays the the brutality experienced by the Palestinian poet Ghazi Hussein, who Israel imprisoned 23 times. The power of the performance is in some shock value -- the violence is not feigned. As the Guardian reports, "the blood is real." Hussein (played by Steve Lambert, who also directs), is repeatedly held under water, held in a steel cage, and is roughed up. This forces the audience to ask themselves, "are you being complicit in what is happening on stage, or bearing witness?"

In the world of visual art, two projects centered on the famous Nabulsi soap. Jerusalem native and artist, Jack Persekian, recently discussed his 2004 art installation, which occurred at the World Economic Forum, for an exhibit at the Beirut Art Center. After constructing a wall of thousands of bars of soap, WEF delegates were invited to take bars away as mementos.

Persekian's presentation accompanied an exhibit by the UK-based Mona Hatoum. For "Witness," she built "a square comprised of 2,200 bars of soap (she favored the Al-Jamal brand), into which she pressed pomegranate seed-like red beads to create an outline map of Oslo’s politically segmented West Bank."

Though published in 2007, "The Subjective Atlas of Palestine" is available for download. This work, which won a prestigious Dutch prize, brought together over thirty different Palestinian artists, photographers and writers who responded to the challenge to "map their country as they see it." It was edited by Dutch designer Annelys de Vet.

Roger Sheety recently wrote that one prominent theme in the book is "the search for normalcy and unity under brutal and endless Israeli occupation, ethnic cleansing and land theft."

Finally, if you have not seen the video, Zein El-Amine, the Assistant Director of Writers' House at the University of Maryland, spoke recently at the Palestine Center on the subject of "Politics and Poetics: Palestinian Art and Culture as a Form of Resistance" [or read the transcripts].

read more...

The US-Israel Tiff in Cartoons

Views expressed on this post or on linked web pages do not represent the Palestine Center, the educational program of the Jerusalem Fund for Education and Community Development. All content is for educational purposes only.

read more...

BOOK REVIEW: "Footnotes in Gaza" by Joe Sacco

Each month, we will be conducting a review of a recent book that deals with issues relating to Palestine and/or the Israel/Palestine conflict. Books that are chosen for review can be academic or non-academic, historical or fictional. Next month we will be reviewing Mornings in Jenin by Susan Abulhawa. If you would like to suggest a book for review, please contact the Palestine Center.

"Footnotes in Gaza" written by Joe Sacco
Hardcover: 432 pages, Metropolitan Books (December 22, 2009)

Palestine Center Book Review No.2 (10 February 2010)

By Yousef Munayyer

In 2001, during the early part of the second Palestinian intifada, Joe Sacco accompanied Chris Hedges on a trip to Khan Younis to illustrate the story of one Palestinian town during the uprising for Harper's magazine. He recalled once hearing of a massacre that took place in Khan Younis and after further investigation, interviews and research, several paragraphs about the massacre that took place on 3 November 1956 were included in the article submitted to Harper's.

The editors at Harper's did not find the information about the massacre relevant and subsequently cut it from the published version.

To Sacco, however, the massacre at Khan Younis was too significant to ignore. He was not comfortable with leaving the "greatest massacre of Palestinians on Palestinian soil" as a mere footnote in the history of Palestine. It was this sense of injustice of historiography that drove him to look further, dig deeper and write Footnotes in Gaza.

The title itself refers passively to the outrageous obscurity of the massacres which took place in Gaza in 1956. The wonton killings described in both Rafah and Khan Younis in November 1956 are dealt with in great detail. Sacco decided that these events, these "footnotes", will no longer be subjected to the dismissive whims of editors who sanitize American literature. Footnotes in Gaza is a 432-page addendum to the Palestinian story which is now determinately etched into the annals of western writing.

Yet, throughout the book, as Sacco documents his interactions with Palestinians, even they question the relevance of a book on '56 when the transformative events of '67,'73, '88, '00, etc have dramatically reshaped their lives again and again since. His stubborn persistence prevails, however, and he manages, with the help of local guides, to find numerous individuals who testified as firsthand witnesses to the massacres of 1956.

What is unique about this book is its style of presentation. Footnotes in Gaza is a picture book, or a work of illustrative journalism to be more precise. Make no mistake, however, the content is not recommended for young readers. In fact, Sacco sketches the gruesome details of massacre in only the way images can describe, leaving an indelible mark on the memory of the reader that words alone could not accomplish.


It's not merely images of bloodied bodies strewn across the streets of Rafah or shot against a wall in Khan Younis that stick with the reader; It is also the pensive, sometimes horrified, look on the faces of those interviewed as they recall the massacres they saw unfold before their eyes so many years before. It's also the depiction of screaming widows who make the reader look for a volume knob only to realize they are in fact still reading a book.

Footnotes in Gaza is also more than a documentation of the testimonies of survivors of the massacres. It's the story of the documentation as well. Sacco takes us through the journey of navigating Khan Younis and Rafah, living in a refugee camp, the banality of journalism during the intifada and the daily horrors of Israeli occupation.

In an attempt to get to Rafah to interview a survivor, Sacco illustrates the long line at checkpoints, which routinely take hours to pass through; the Israeli watch towers, which send bullets over Sacco's head and the children waiting at the checkpoint to ride in under-occupied passengers cars for a shekel so that the cars meet the three-person capacity minimum to cross the Israeli checkpoint. He also documents the ongoing demolition of Palestinian homes along the Philladelphi crossing at Gaza's southern-most border. The author conducted much of his ethnographic research during the worst moments of the Palestinian intifada. The funerals of martyrs are drawn in the book, along with the destruction of houses, the shooting of activists and the protection of colonial Israeli settlements.

It was in fact these modern day realities which led Sacco to pen the following in the introduction to his book:

"Palestinians never seem to have the luxury of digesting on tragedy before the next one is upon them. When I was in Gaza, younger people often viewed my research into the events of 1956 with bemusement. What good would tending to history do them when they were under attack and their homes were being demolished now? But the past and the present cannot be so easily disentangled; they are part of a remorseless continuum, a historical blur. Perhaps it is worthwhile to freeze that churning forward movement and examine one or two events that were not only a disaster for the people who lived them but might also be instructive for those who want to understand why and how hatred was 'planted' in hearts."

As the famed Palestinian political cartoonist Naji Al-Ali once wrote:

"As soon as I was aware of what was going on, all the havoc in our region, I felt I had to do something, to contribute somehow My job I felt was to speak up for those people, my people who are in the camps, in Egypt, in Algeria, the simple Arabs all over the region who have very few outlets to express their points of view."

Where Ali often used faceless or nameless caricatures, or his signature 'Handala,' to convey the feelings of Palestinians, Sacco takes this many steps further by allowing real people to tell their stories in his book. The wives who buried their husbands, the boys who buried their fathers and the men who lay alive and bleeding at the bottom of a pile of terminated humanity, all get an opportunity to tell us their story.

What Sacco affords to Palestinians in this must read book is what Edward Said often claimed they had been denied: "permission to narrate."



Yousef Munayyer is Executive Director of the Palestine Center. This book review may be used without permission but with proper attribution to the Center.

Images from the Book FOOTNOTES IN GAZA by Joe Sacco. Copyright © 2009 by Joe Sacco. Reprinted by arrangement with Metropolitan Books, an imprint of Henry Holt and Company LLC.

See this video interview with Laura Flanders on GritTV.

The views in this review are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Jerusalem Fund.

read more...

Developments in the Boycott Israel Campaign

One possible fallout from Israel's invasion and bombardment of Gaza during 'Operation Cast Lead' less than 10 months ago is that international activists are finding more support for calls to boycott Israel.

Though such campaigns have occurred through the history of Palestinian dispossession and life under occupation, the international campaign stems largely from a 2005 call by Palestinian civil society groups for boycott, divestment and sanctions as a way to pressure Israel to end the occupation.

As the recent campaign over the Toronto International Film Festival shows, it is a vibrant idea, but one that often fails to succeed. However, there have also been several recent, notable successes.

In Toronto, some filmmakers pulled their submissions to the festival, others protested, because it chose to celebrate Tel Aviv as a theme this year.

It began when John Greyson, a Canadian filmmaker, withdrew his documentary short "Covered" from the festival to protest the fest's showcase of Israeli filmmaking. British director Ken Loach, Julie Christie, Harry Belafonte, Wallace Shawn, David Byrne and Viggo Mortensen, among 1500 others, joined in to argue the festival organizers have fallen victim to the "Brand Israel" campaign, which seeks to better the country's image.

The protests did not bring about a change, although the debate it spurred is significant. About 250 people attended a press conference held by critics of the Festival's Israel theme. Critics managed to persuade movie reviewer Roger Ebert to modify his earlier rejection of the protest. That it was controversial may be message enough.

However, the call hit several setbacks as Palestinian filmmaker Elia Suleiman refused to participate in the boycott, and Jane Fonda reneged on her support of the call. High profile Hollywood celebrities denounced the boycott as a "blacklist."

Other recent campaigns are having more success.

A consortium of British labor unions, however, just agreed to support a boycott of goods produced in some Israeli settlements. It also will advocate for an end to arms trading with Israel and disinvestment from some companies.

The Trades Union Congress (TUC) will target products including dates, herbs, fruit and vegetables grown on Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

"We will support a boycott of those goods and agricultural products that originate in illegal settlements through developing an effective, targeted consumer-led boycott campaign," the TUC said in a statement.

This focus on "illegal settlements" was less broad of a boycott than many TUC members sought.

The TUC has a history of supporting international boycotts.

It is possible, though less likely, the boycott will run into legal problems. Two years ago, Britain's largest union of college teachers passed a boycott of Israeli universities, which would have led to a halt on funding, visits and conferences with Israeli institutions. The University and College Union was forced to abandon the plan because it breached discrimination laws.

Earlier this month, the Norwegian government claimed it will divest its pension fund of holdings in Elbit Systems, which manufactures the monitoring system installed on several parts of the West Bank separation fence.

Norwegian Finance Minister Kristin Halvorsen said that the decision was based on the recommendation of her ministry's council. "We do not wish to fund companies that so directly contribute to violations of international humanitarian law," Halvorsen was quoted as saying, explaining that the separation barrier impinged on the freedom of movement of West Bank residents. The wall was considered illegal by the International Court of Justice in 2004.

A narrower campaign to push for divestment from a group run by Israeli billionaire and settlement financier Lev Leviev, claimed a victory. The U.S. pension fund giant, TIAA-CREF, confirmed in statements to the media that it divested from Africa Israel Investments.

There are many campaigns that are still in the works, of course. Mondoweiss mentioned other BDS movements:

Code Pink’s Stolen Beauty campaign against Ahava, ongoing campaigns against Motorola and Caterpillar as well as growing calls in support for BDS like the one from Israeli professor Neve Gordon show that BDS is squarely on the Left’s agenda.

Whether or not these activities have the ultimate intended effect is unknown. One thing is sure, the more Israel resists ending its occupation of the Palestinian territories, the more frequent such protests and calls will become. And that will mean more external pressure.

read more...

EXHIBIT: "Palestine Lost," Artwork by Rajie Cook and Helen Zughaib

The Jerusalem Fund Gallery presents

Palestine Lost
Stereopticon Images of Palestine from the Early 1900's
Stereopticon images, or lantern slides, became popular in the late 1800’s as a way for armchair travelers to experience faraway places. Viewed through an image merging device, the dual photographs become three-dimensional, resulting in a realistic, you are there feeling. The Jerusalem Fund Gallery showcases 45 rare images of a Palestine that has been mostly erased from view, a Palestine of people, farms, homes and life that for a large part only exists in these images and in memory.

To complement these images, we showcase the moving artwork of Rajie Cook and Helen Zughaib, both with the theme of keys to Palestinian family homes now vanished. Keys, that are the only tangible symbol remaining of a very personal Palestine Lost.

This exhibit will be on display at the Jerusalem Fund Gallery from 10 September - 13 November 2009

Gallery hours: M - F, 9 a.m. - 5 p.m., or by appointment

Directions and Parking Information

The Jerusalem Fund Gallery

The Jerusalem Fund's cultural program promotes the work of artists from Palestine as well as from the Arab and Islamic worlds through art exhibits, book signings, film screenings and musical performances. The cultural activities at the Jerusalem Fund Gallery, located in Washington, D.C., are being made available to a wider audience through our website and through lesson plans for educators and students of all ages.

read more...

Summer Palestine Film Series

"Voices of Palestine"
Summer 2009 Film Series
Wednesdays | 1 July - 5 August | 6:30 p.m.

The Jerusalem Fund and the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University are pleased to present their annual summer film series highlighting recent documentary and feature films from and about Palestine that explore the social, cultural and political complexities of Palestinian life and identity.

All films begin promptly at 6:30 p.m. All films are screened at The Jerusalem Fund and are in English or have English subtitles. Attendance is free and open to the public. No RSVP required. However, space is limited. For directions and parking information, click here. For all other inquiries, call the Jerusalem Fund at (202) 338-1958, or email info@thejerusalemfund.org.

Wednesday | 1 July | 6:30 p.m.
Pomegranates and Myrrh (Al Mor wa al Rumman)
Director: Najwa Najjar / 95 minutes / 2009
The director will be present at the screening.

Wednesday | 8 July | 6:30 p.m.
Young Freud in Gaza
Director: PeA Holmquist and Suzanne Khardalian / 58 minutes / 2009

Wednesday | 15 July | 6:30 p.m.
Slingshot Hip Hop
Director: Jackie Reem Salloum / 94 minutes / 2008
The director and one of the featured hip hop artists will be present at the screening.

Wednesday | 22 July | 6:30 p.m.
Salt of this Sea (Milh Hadha al-Bahr)
Director: Annemarie Jacir / 109 minutes / 2008

Wednesday | 29 July | 6:30 p.m.
Chronicles of a Refugee: Identity Without a Homeland
Director: Perla Issa, Aseel Mansour and Adam Shapiro / 78 minutes / 2008

Wednesday | 5 August | 6:30 p.m.
Wounds of the Heart: An Artist and Her Nation
Director: John Halaka / 52 minutes / 2009

read more...

Art Reception: Gaza Conversations

This video is from a reception for the current exhibit "Gaza Conversations: Persistence, Resistance, and Renewal" at the gallery of the Jerusalem Fund for Education and Community Development, the parent organization of the Palestine Center.

The three artists, Rajie Cook, Najat El-Khairy and Helen Zughaib, spoke. It was moderated by Dagmar Painter.

The event took place on 5 June 2009. The exhibit runs until September.

For an mp3 of the event.

Views expressed on this post or on linked web pages do not represent the Palestine Center, the educational program of the Jerusalem Fund for Education and Community Development. All content is for educational purposes only.

read more...

Landscapes of Desire, Drawings by John Halaka (April 2009)

John Halaka's drawings 'Landscapes of Desire' are inspired by the ruins of Palestinian villages and homes that were destroyed by Israel during and after the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestine.  He discussed his art at a recent Jerusalem Fund event.

View photos from the exhibit.

read more...

A Poster-Based Curriculum on the Palestinian-Zionist Conflict by Dan Walsh

"Answering Obama’s Call: An Open Conversation About The Palestinian-Zionist Conflict"
with Dan Walsh

19 March 2009

In February of 2008 then-candidate Barack Obama said:

one of the things that struck me when I went to Israel was how much more open the debate was…I think the U.S. pro-Israel community is sometimes a little more protective or concerned about opening up that conversation…I'm saying though that actually, ultimately, should be our goal.

Dan Walsh will present parts of a new high school curriculum specifically designed to open up the conversation President Obama alluded to in 2008. This new curriculum titled: Teaching the Formative History of Political Zionism (1897-1947) through Poster Art: A Plain Language/Language Rights Curriculum Model for American High School Educators uses historical poster art to engage American students and teachers in a more open, natural conversation about the Palestinian-Zionist conflict. It differs from existing high school teaching resources that cover the conflict in a number of ways including that it is dedicated to the concept of “civic competence”. This approach puts the students needs for jargon-free language foremost and evaluates its usefulness based on whether or not the students can carry on a civil and historically holistic discussion about the conflict. All lessons include opportunities for students to analyze the content of Zionist and/or Palestinian nationalist posters—symbols, colors, texts, styles—allowing them to engage their own critical faculties.

Dan Walsh is a graduate student at Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies. He was first introduced to the Palestine poster genre as a Peace Corps volunteer in Morocco in the mid-1970’s. While there he collected several hundred Palestine posters. Over the years he has continued to acquire Palestine poster art and he now curates what many specialists believe to be the largest such archives in the world, containing approximately three thousand original posters.

Press TV news story
Dan Walsh's PowerPoint outline

read more...