Tears For Tarshiha

A Palestinian refugee’s inspiring tale of her lifelong fight to return home. Olfat Mahmoud is a Palestinian refugee – a descendant of the Christian and Muslim people who fled Palestine in the period leading up to and after the founding of the state of Israel in 1948. She is an accomplished woman in her own right: the director of an international NGO, an internationally recognised peace activist, a registered nurse and, most recently, the recipient of a doctorate. Born in a refugee camp in Lebanon more than 60 years ago, Olfat’s determination to help her people in their fight to return to their homeland led to a nursing career that has placed her at the front line of atrocious massacres and wars in the Middle East. Tears for Tarshiha follows Olfat’s career amid the death and destruction of Lebanon’s many conflicts, and chronicles the Palestinian people’s remarkable capacity for love and bravery in the most extreme conditions. Olfat’s extraordinary story is emblematic of the Palestinian plight, illustrating their continued survival and determination that has become an inconvenience to the international community. These are the descendants of those Palestinians who were forced from their homeland at gunpoint by the Israeli military in 1948 in what is known as the Nakba – or Catastrophe. In 1949, David Ben-Gurion, one of the founders and the first prime minister of Israel, stated that ‘we must do everything to ensure [the Palestinians] never do return...the old will die and the young will forget’. Despite Olfat’s parents and grandparents never seeing Tarshiha again, this book is part of Olfat’s ongoing campaign to keep her people’s predicament in the public consciousness.

Growing up in a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, Chaker Khazaal’s mission was to escape displacement and find his rightful place in the world. This detailed glimpse into his life takes you on an exciting adventure from the Middle East to North America and beyond. All will be revealed in Chaker’s pursuit of success-a journey of internal psychological conflicts. Ouch! Denied entry to his homeland in February 2020, Chaker returns to Beirut and liaises remotely with a team of lawyers to contest Israel’s decision. Coincidentally, Covid-19 starts to force lockdowns around the world. Chaker quickly adapts to the restrictions and continues his involvement in a variety of global projects. Meanwhile, the world is struggling to comprehend the unprecedented occurrences taking place-from the Lebanese revolution to the Black Lives Matter protests-culminating in the Beirut Port blast on August 4, 2020. Although Chaker survives the fourth-largest explosion in the world, can he overcome his mental struggles? During the lockdown, Adam, a Palestinian waiter at the Smallville Hotel, develops a friendship with Chaker. Amid the chaos and tension, their inexplicable connection leads to an astonishing climax that no reader will ever foresee. In this psychological thriller, Chaker’s painful secret is finally revealed. Ouch!

"Voices of the Ritual analyzes the revival of and manifestation of rituals at female saint shrines in the Holy Land. The book's central claim is that, in the Middle East, a turbulent, often violent political context, states tend to have no clear physical borders, and lands are constantly at stake. In this context, deprived ethno-religious groups with no voice in the political, cultural, media, and legal arenas look for alternative venues to voice their entitlements. Through the book I argue that in Israel/Palestine, religious minorities (Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Druze, and others) employ rituals in various sacred places, especially female saints' shrines, to claim their belonging to and appropriation of territory. At the heart of this book is the question: What does this female ritualistic revival mean-politically, culturally, and spatially? To answer this question, I base my analysis on a long ethnographic study (2003-2017) that analyzes the rise of female sacred shrines, focusing on four dimensions of the ritual: the body in motion, female materiality, place, and the rituals encrypted in the Israel/Palestine landscape. The book sets out to examine the popularity of body rituals in sacred places, and the female themes that stem from these rituals. I show that, in the practices at these shrines, mostly canonical, the idea of the "body in motion" is central, with rituals imitating birth and the cycle of life using a set of body gestures. These mimetic rituals, performed by men and women, are intimate forces that extend between the female saint and the worshippers. Female materiality strengthens intimacy and creates a bridge between the experience and the material. Minority groups in these venues, Jews and Christians, use these sacred shrines, their female contents and intimate bodily ritualistic experience, to stake a claim to and appropriate the land. The intimacy between saint and worshipper (females and males each in their own modes) created with the body that imitates the cycle of life, and the female material scattered around, are keys to intimate claims to the land, making the land familiar to worshippers. Rituals encrypt female themes into the landscape, a dynamic that is taking place in a zone that has for decades been dominated by violent, masculine-disseminated war and conflict"--

New York Times Notable Book of the Year “An imposingly rich and realistic novel, a genuine masterwork” that vividly captures the Palestinian experience following the creation of the Israeli state (New York Times Book Review) After Palestine is torn apart in 1948, two men remain alone in a deserted makeshift hospital in the Shatila camp on the outskirts of Beirut—entering a vast world of displacement, fear, and tenuous hope. Khalil holds vigil at the bedside of his patient and spiritual father, a storied leader of the Palestinian resistance who has slipped into a coma. As Khalil attempts to revive Yunes, he begins a story, which branches into many: stories of the people expelled from their villages in Galilee; of the massacres that followed; of the extraordinary inner strength of those who survived; and of love. Khalil—like Elias Khoury—is a truth collector, trying to make sense of the fragments and various versions of stories that have been told to him. His voice is intimate and direct, his memories are vivid, his humanity radiates from every page. Khalil lets his mind wander through time, from village to village, from one astonishing soul to another, and takes us with him. Gate of the Sun is a Palestinian Odyssey and the first magnum opus of the Palestinian saga. Beautifully weaving together haunting stories of survival and loss, love and devastation, memory and dream, Khoury humanizes the complex Palestinian struggle as he brings to life the story of an entire people.

From the River to the Sea: Palestine and Israel in the Shadow of ‘Peace’ provides original analyses of how different coping strategies were developed as well as new forms of political expression, interaction, and mobilization since the 1993 peace deal between the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel. Its premise is that an historical realism is essential in order to develop a route out of the post-Oslo impasse that extended and solidified the power imbalance under the auspices of ‘peace’. The book includes chapters from experts across the disciplines of anthropology, economics, law, political science and sociology to map out and critically assess the impacts and responses to this ‘peace’ in different geographical and political settings. These innovative analyses also investigate processes that might enable a future to be built based on greater equality and an end to the oppression and violence that currently exists between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea (and beyond).

First published in 2003. The Mediterranean region, which includes Turkey, the Middle East, and North Africa, along with Italy, Greece, Spain and other European countries, encompasses a plethora of diverse but also interconnected cultures. The musical styles are just as diverse. Mediterranean Mosaic weaves together issues of music contemporary geopolitics and identity struggles. Acknowledging the region's historical legacy, it examines the ebb and flow of traditional musics within the region as well as outside influences on these traditions. Topics covered include: Klapa singing and Cha Wave from Croatia, the pop group Alibina, Pop-Rai from Algeria, and jazz in the Mediterranean. Also includes 20 musical examples.

The book that is providing a storm of controversy, from ‘Israel’s bravest historian’ (John Pilger) Renowned Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe's groundbreaking work on the formation of the State of Israel. 'Along with the late Edward Said, Ilan Pappe is the most eloquent writer of Palestinian history.' NEW STATESMAN Between 1947 and 1949, over 400 Palestinian villages were deliberately destroyed, civilians were massacred and around a million men, women, and children were expelled from their homes at gunpoint. Denied for almost six decades, had it happened today it could only have been called 'ethnic cleansing'. Decisively debunking the myth that the Palestinian population left of their own accord in the course of this war, Ilan Pappe offers impressive archival evidence to demonstrate that, from its very inception, a central plank in Israel’s founding ideology was the forcible removal of the indigenous population. Indispensable for anyone interested in the current crisis in the Middle East. *** 'Ilan Pappe is Israel's bravest, most principled, most incisive historian.' JOHN PILGER 'Pappe has opened up an important new line of inquiry into the vast and fateful subject of the Palestinian refugees. His book is rewarding in other ways. It has at times an elegiac, even sentimental, character, recalling the lost, obliterated life of the Palestinian Arabs and imagining or regretting what Pappe believes could have been a better land of Palestine.' TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT 'A major intervention in an argument that will, and must, continue. There's no hope of lasting Middle East peace while the ghosts of 1948 still walk.' INDEPENDENT

This is the story of an airpower-dominated campaign, one that was deeply flawed in its design yet impressive in its efficiency. This quick-look study is based upon visits to damaged sites, villages, towns, and cities; discussions with government and military officials; and experience of having evaluated airpower and its effects in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the former Yugoslavia (and previously in Lebanon). Months of follow-up research included exchanges with Israeli, Lebanese, Hezbollah, and US experts. The intent was to develop a timely airpower narrative to enhance professional military education and planning. About the author: William M. Arkin is an independent military analyst, journalist, and author. He writes the ?Early Warning? column for washingtonpost.com (where he previously wrote the ?DOT.MIL? column from 1998 to 2003) and is a longtime NBC News military analyst.(Originally published by Air University Press)

Yoel Hoffmann—“Israel’s celebrated avant-garde genius” (The Forward)—supplies the magic missing link between the infinitesimal and the infinite Part novel and part memoir, Yoel Hoffmann’s Moods is flooded with feelings, evoked by his family, losses, loves, the soul’s hidden powers, old phone books, and life in the Galilee—with its every scent, breeze, notable dog, and odd neighbor. Carrying these shards is a general tenderness, accentuated by a new dimension brought along by “that great big pill of Prozac.” Beautifully translated by Peter Cole, Moods is fiction for lovers of poetry and poetry for lovers of fiction—a small marvel of a book, and with its pockets of joy, a curiously cheerful book by an author who once compared himself to “a praying mantis inclined to melancholy.”

Two Sides of the Coin: Independence and Nakba 1948, written by two eminent historians, Adel Manna and Motti Golani, takes the reader on a journey to the War of 1948, by offering contemporary multi-perspective narratives on the war, accompanied by maps that highlight historical events during that time. The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is understood as a conflict over territory, while simultaneously it is a conflict over historical narratives. One of the most important questions asked in this conflict over narrative is: what happened in 1948? Golani and Manna have treated with delicacy and depth this highly complex and divisive question, their approach contributes significantly to a mutual understanding between Israelis and Palestinians on their common history.