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2005 | Book

Introduction Read chapter Read first chapter

The Rhetoric of Violence

Arab-Jewish Encounters in Contemporary Palestinian Literature and Film

Author: Kamal Abdel-Malek

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan US

Part of: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

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About this book

Despite the urgent need to develop understandings of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in the light of the current situation in the Middle East, the role of violence and reconciliation in Palestinian and Israeli literature and film has received only brief treatment. This book is intended to fill that void; that is to explore how Israelis and Palestinians view and depict themselves and each other in situations that lead to either violence or reconciliation, and the ways in which both parties define themselves in relation to one another. The book examines selected Palestinian and Israeli literary works and a small number of films and their tacit assumptions about Israeli Jews. It will attempt to look at, among other questions a) is violence perceived as a means of empowerment, b) is there connection between imaginary violence in literature and actual violence, and what is the nature of the association between creative writers and violence? (eg. popular writer Ghassan Kanafani who is also a spokesman for the violent PFLP).

Table of Contents

Frontmatter
Introduction
Abstract
Publications on the various aspects of the Arab-Israeli conflict abound; there are historical, political, social, military, and diplomatic accounts that fill library shelves the world over. The vast majority of these publications, however, largely ignore how the Arab-Israeli conflict is portrayed in the artistic realms of literature and film. This book is but an attempt to explore this terra incognita in order to glean an understanding of how the creative word and the artistic image depict the assumptions both sides have about their violent confrontations and moments of reconciliation. What is embedded deep in the obscure poem, the little-read piece of fiction, or the cinematic screen shot of Arab-Jewish encounters may be more revealing of the true sentiments of either side than their respective political declarations to world media.
Kamal Abdel-Malek
Chronology of Modern Palestinian History
Kamal Abdel-Malek
Chronology of Modern Israeli History
Kamal Abdel-Malek
Chapter 1. Strangers at Home
Abstract
The Palestinian Christian journalist Najib Nassar penned the first book in Arabic on Zionism, entitled Zionism: Its History, Objective, and Importance.1 It warns Arabs about the menace posed by the Zionist enterprise. Interestingly enough, it concludes with Nassar’s observation that what Palestine needs in order to mount a serious opposition to Zionism is men such as the Zionist leader Theodore Herzl, “sincere leaders like Herzl who will forget their private interests in favor of the public good ... we have many men like Herzl; all they lack is realization of their own abilities, and the courage to take the first step. Let such men appear, and not hesitate, and the circumstances will favor them, for men’s ideas have matured and we are ready.”2
Kamal Abdel-Malek
Chapter 2. Exile and Life on Border Lines
Abstract
The literary depiction of the deep scars war and exile have inflicted on Palestinians can be understood in terms of the concept of the in-between (liminal) position of the rites of passage, as developed by Turner, Firmat, and others. The following chapters will show that major works by Palestinian writers as different as Mahmud Darwish, Emile Habibi, Ghassan Kanafani, and Fawaz Turki include characters, techniques, and literary tropes that can be characterized as threshold entities that, in turn, represent the central Palestinian experience of living a marginal existence on literal and figurative borders. This precarious living on border lines can also be seen in the fiction of other Palestinian writers, such as Jabra’s novel The Ship—wavering as it is far from land with characters on board teetering on the brink of madness and death.1 Such experience of living on border lines has shaped both the views of Palestinians on Israeli Jews and the kind of literary and artistic products they employ to reflect these views.
Kamal Abdel-Malek
Chapter 3. Encounters and Moments of Breakthrough
Abstract
Encounters between Arabs and Jews in Palestinian literature are found in various works covered in previous chapters. Hanna Ibrahim’s “The Infiltrators” and Emile Habibi’s “The Mandelbaum Gate” are samples of such encounters. Both authors are Palestinian citizens of Israel and the perspectives they present are perspectives min al-dakhil, from the inside. In what follows we will illustrate how similar encounters between Arab and Jewish characters are depicted by other Palestinian prose writers as well as poets—with some comparisons with their Israeli counterparts.
Kamal Abdel-Malek
Chapter 4. The Feminine Connection: Palestinian Women Writers on War and Reconciliation
Abstract
Do Palestinian women writers see their national struggle against Israelis in a different way from their male counterparts? To attempt to answer this question some works and views of major Palestinian women writers will be presented—activists and writers as varied as the commando figher Leila Khaled, the activist Raymonda Tawil, the poet Fadwa Tuqan, and the novelist Sahar Khalifa.
Kamal Abdel-Malek
Chapter 5. Reel Encounters: Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews in Film
Abstract
It was only in the 1940s that Palestinian Arabs began producing films, most of them documentaries by amateurs. A certain Ibrahim Hasan Sarhan mentioned in an interview that he had produced in 1935 a documentary about King Saud’s visit to Palestine. The film was shown in a cinema in Tel Aviv. Other documentaries were produced later in the 1940s, on individual politicians or on social issues such as that of the Palestinian orphans.
Kamal Abdel-Malek
Conclusion
Abstract
By now it should be clear how the analytical reach of the in-between (liminal) concept covers the motifs in Palestinian literary works and films about identity, struggle for change, and liberation: both individual and national. This middle position appears to characterize the many aspects of the works under study: fictional characters, both literary and cinematic, who at times exist on literal or figurative borders; texts of indeterminate genre; and rhetoric of both resistance and reconciliation.
Kamal Abdel-Malek
Backmatter
Metadata
Title
The Rhetoric of Violence
Author
Kamal Abdel-Malek
Copyright Year
2005
Publisher
Palgrave Macmillan US
Electronic ISBN
978-1-137-06667-1
Print ISBN
978-1-349-73231-9
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-06667-1