As a author and somebody who works in publishing, I’ve at all times believed that tales have the facility to liberate the world. As a Palestinian American, I do know they’ve the facility to destroy it too.
When my mother and father moved to the USA within the Nineteen Seventies, they had been appalled by the misrepresentations of our tradition and the stereotyping of Arabs and Muslims. This was lengthy earlier than hummus was a staple of American meals and stomach dancing was a classy train. The one photos of Arabs my mother and father noticed had been as villains within the Indiana Jones motion pictures or in violent, reductive information headlines. They determined to convey genuine illustration from the World South to American readers and began a small impartial publishing home in Brooklyn.
Rising up surrounded by literature, my father at all times instructed us that “books are the gateway to a folks’s soul” and that as Palestinians it is crucial that we educate folks concerning the historical past, artwork, literature and wonder that our tradition brings into the world. He defined that this was a part of our resistance to the brutal occupation happening in our homeland, funded partly by American tax {dollars}.
Storytelling is an historical custom in Palestinian tradition. My sisters and I grew up listening to tales about our ancestral homeland from all our relations. Some had been instructed to my mom by my father’s mom—valuable tokens, handed down the best way some households share recipes. Others had been instructed at bedtime, interspersed with fairy tales. Then there have been the tales instructed by tears and gasps as my family members relived their darkest days. Carrying and sharing these tales is my best honor and best burden.
Because the starting of October, I’ve watched with horror the violence unfolding in Gaza. My household was ethnically cleansed from our homeland in 1948 and I’ve listened to the tales the media and politicians instructed about my folks all my life. These storytellers conjure up photos of a bloodthirsty barbaric folks pushed by hatred, with out coronary heart or humanity. Or just a those who by no means existed in any respect. In spite of everything, like Winston Churchill – somebody contributing to the destiny of the Palestinian folks – instructed us, “Historical past is written by the victors.”
These insidious tales arm our tongues and switch our prayers, God is nice, into requires violence and our battle, jihad, to a menace to humanity. Our cry for freedom and liberty, from the river to the ocean, are twisted to suit a constructed narrative. People are instructed these tales as justification—that Palestinian loss of life is an unlucky, unavoidable price of safety.
The propaganda and misinformation making headlines at the moment mimics tales instructed about oppressed peoples all over the world. In America, false narratives are used to justify state-sanctioned violence towards black folks and unjust legal guidelines towards LGBTQ+ folks. They had been instructed about Jews in Europe and Japanese People throughout World Conflict II. We proceed to have fun these falsehoods on holidays like Thanksgiving on settler-colonized land.
The false narratives about Palestinians are inflicting actual hurt to civilians who’re killed every single day by US-made weapons, and to Arab and Muslim People who’re being discriminated towards and assaulted at an alarming charge. Many Jewish and Palestinian People are additionally smeared and attacked as anti-Semitism is conflated with anti-Zionism.
It takes a complete story to influence the world to look away from the bloodbath in Gaza that’s occurring earlier than our eyes. As an alternative, make the selection to see our humanity and listen to our tales.
Hannah Moushabeck, the creator of “Homeland: My father goals of Palestine,” is a second-generation Palestinian American editor and e book marketer and co-owner of Interlink Publishing.