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May 20, 2010 7 PM: Commemorating the 62nd Anniversary of the Nakba in Palestine, with Ghassan Kanafani at Cambridge Public Library

Posted by admin in Events on May 13th, 2010

Commemorating the 62nd Anniversary of the Nakba in Palestine,

Please join us for an evening of readings from the work of Palestinian writer Ghassan Kanafani

This event is free.

When

Thursday May 20th, 2010
7:00 PM

Directions

Where: Lewis Room, Cambridge Public Library, Central Square

Address: 45 Pearl St Cambridge, MA 02139

Map powered by MapPress

Public Transportation

accessible by bus and red line, Central Sq stop, wheelchair accessible

Featuring:

  • Sameer Abu-Alsaoud
  • Laila Murad
  • Nada Samih
  • Dara Bayer
  • Lana Habash
  • Spiritchild
  • Viviane Saleh-Hanna
  • Gina Rodriguez, and
  • Ashanti Allston, former political prisoner

There will be readings of Kanafani’s work, musical performance, a photo exhibit, and Palestinian food.

From Ghassan Kanafani’s “Returning to Haifa”, 1969:

“What happened to you, Said?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all. I was just asking. I’m looking for the true Palestine,
the Palestine that’s more than memories, more than peacock feathers, more than a son,
more than scars written by bullets on the stairs. I was just saying to myself:
What’s Palestine with respect to Khalid? He doesn’t know the vase or the picture
or the stairs or Halisa or Khaldun. And yet for him, Palestine is something worthy
of a man bearing arms for, dying for…. Tens of thousands like Khalid won’t be stopped
by the tears of men searching in the depths of their defeat for scraps of armor and broken flowers.
Men like Khalid are looking toward the future, so they can put right our mistakes and the
mistakes of the whole world…”

History:

This May marks the 62nd anniversary of the Nakba (Arabic for “catastrophe”) in Palestine in 1948 when over 935,000 Palestinians (85% of the indigenous population of Palestine at that time) were forced off their land, in some cases at gunpoint, in other cases through massacres or threats of massacres like the massacre at Deir Yassin. As a result, 530 of an estimated 550 total villages were completely destroyed or depopulated. “Israel” was founded on the racist ideology of zionism. It has followed the expansionist and genocidal logic of white supremacy and colonialism for over sixty years. Today, the genocide in Palestine continues: from the planned expulsion of thousands of Palestinians in the West Bank, to the demolition of Palestinian homes in occupied Al Quds (Jerusalem), to the continued siege of the people of Gaza– deprived of food, water, electricity, and medicine– to the mass detention of over 11,000 Palestinian political prisoners. Ghassan Kanafani, beloved Palestinian writer, was murdered by Zionist forces in 1972. His work reminds us of the spirit of resistance that has sustained the Palestinian people for generations.

Please join us.

**The Cambridge Public Library is not a sponsor of this event.

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