“Identity Card” In Mahmoud Darwish’s “Identity Card,” a Palestinian confronts Israeli border guards and orders them to take his claims and “put them on record.” He is tired and angry about the injustice and exile of Palestinians from Israeli government. With each stanza, the speaker provides new pieces of information about his background, about his family, and makes wholehearted statements about his rights as a Palestinian citizen. “Put it on record. I am an Arab and the number of my card is fifty thousand I have eight children and the ninth is due after summer. What’s there to be angry about?” (Darwish 1607). The short poem “Identity Card” begins with this statement from a Palestinian speaker who is speaking to an Israeli border guard. He continues to talk about his job and working in a quarry …show more content…
I am an Arab. I am a name without a title. Patient in a country where everything lives in a whirlpool of anger.” (Darwish 1608). The Palestinian speaker changes the conversation and begins to talk about his background and his lack of identity. What was once a country under British-rule, now a country forced into division the Israeli. “You stole my forefathers’ vineyards and land I used to till, I an all my children, and you left us and all my grandchildren nothing by these rocks” (Darwish 1608). The speaker reminisces his ancestors unfortunate turn of events; he blames the Israeli guards for having taken his ancestors home. After the British colonizers left the country, they divided up the country to separate both ethnicities, despite there being already a mix of people living in opposite halves. The Israeli exiled and began to isolate the Palestinians by taking their resources away from them, causing them to flee or migrate away. “Will your government be taking them too as is being said?” (Darwish 1608). The speaker builds up even more anger by accusing the guards that he has heard plans about the Israeli government wanting to take their current
Imagine being in a world that controls the life of its members ultimately taking the dignity and free-will from what every human- being is entitled to have. In the documentary One of Us, three young-people share the stories of their time in the Hasidic Jewish community and how their escape to freedom came back to bite them. The filmmaker utilizes pathos, ethos, and logical fallacies to make the audience feel compassion towards the ex-members of the Hasidic Jewish community and the suffering that comes with leaving the lifestyle.
Naomi Nye was born to a German-American mother and a Palestinian-American father. However, she normally writes from her Palestinian-Arab perspective. In several of her poems within The Heath Anthology—“Ducks,” “My Father and the Figtree,” and “Where the Soft Air Lives”—Naomi Nye reminisces about her Muslim heritage and childhood as it correlates to her present identity. In addition, she incorporates the effect of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict on herself and on Arab culture in her work. Ultimately, Naomi Nye’s poetic work should remain in The Heath Anthology as her style demonstrates how historical events and a deep-rooted heritage can enrich a sense of identity and culture.
Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night, is an account about his experience through concentration camps and death marches during WWII. In 1944, fifteen year old Wiesel was one of the many Jews forced onto cattle cars and sent to death and labor camps. Their personal rights were taken from them, as they were treated like animals. Millions of men, women, children, Jews, homosexuals, Gypsies, disabled people, and Slavic people had to face the horrors the Nazi’s had planned for them. Many people witnessed and lived through beatings, murders, and humiliations. Throughout the memoir, Wiesel demonstrates how oppression and dehumanization can affect one’s identity by describing the actions of the Nazis and how it changed the Jewish
Critics have already begun a heated debate over the success of the book that has addressed both its strengths and weaknesses. The debate may rage for a few years but it will eventually fizzle out as the success of the novel sustains. The characters, plot, emotional appeal, and easily relatable situations are too strong for this book to crumble. The internal characteristics have provided a strong base to withstand the petty attacks on underdeveloped metaphors and transparent descriptions. The novel does not need confrontations with the Middle East to remain a staple in modern reading, it can hold its own based on its life lessons that anyone can use.
Joyce, James. “Araby”. The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. Eds. R.V. Cassill and Richard Bausch. Shorter Sixth Edition. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2000. 427 - 431.
Joyce, James. “Araby.” The Norton Introduction to Literature, Shorter Eighth Edition. Eds. Jerome Beaty, Alison Booth, J. Paul Hunter, and Kelly J. Mays. New York: W.W.Norton.
Every day, people are denied basic necessary human rights. One well known event that striped millions of these rights was the Holocaust, recounted in Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night. As a result of the atrocities that occur all around the world, organizations have published declarations such as the United Nation’s Declaration of Human Rights. It is vital that the entitlement to all rights and freedoms without distinction of any kind, freedom of thought and religion, and the right to a standard of living adequate for health and well-being of themselves be guaranteed to everyone, as these three rights are crucial to the survival of all people and their identity.
This marked the beginning of the Palestine armed conflict, one of its kinds to be witnessed in centuries since the fall of the Ottoman Empire and World War 1. Characterized by a chronology of endless confrontations, this conflict has since affected not only the Middle East relations, but also the gl...
Edward Said “States” refutes the view Western journalists, writers, and scholars have created in order to represent Eastern cultures as mysterious, dangerous, unchanging, and inferior. According to Said, who was born in Jerusalem at that time Palestine, the way westerners represent eastern people impacts the way they interact with the global community. All of this adds to, Palestinians having to endure unfair challenges such as eviction, misrepresentation, and marginalization that have forced them to spread allover the world. By narrating the story of his country Palestine, and his fellow countrymen from their own perspective Said is able to humanize Palestinians to the reader. “States” makes the reader feel the importance of having a homeland, and how detrimental having a place to call home is when trying to maintain one’s culture. Which highlights the major trait of the Palestinian culture: survival. Throughout “States”, Said presents the self-preservation struggles Palestinians are doomed to face due to eviction, and marginalization. “Just as we once were taken from one habitat to a new one we can be moved again” (Said 543).
Although “Araby” is a fairly short story, author James Joyce does a remarkable job of discussing some very deep issues within it. On the surface it appears to be a story of a boy's trip to the market to get a gift for the girl he has a crush on. Yet deeper down it is about a lonely boy who makes a pilgrimage to an eastern-styled bazaar in hopes that it will somehow alleviate his miserable life. James Joyce’s uses the boy in “Araby” to expose a story of isolation and lack of control. These themes of alienation and control are ultimately linked because it will be seen that the source of the boy's emotional distance is his lack of control over his life.
Joyce, James. "Araby." 1914. Literature and Ourselves. Henderson, Gloria, ed. Boston, Longman Press. 2009. 984-988.
“Palestinians do not control their own fate but instead live under the power of other states” (82, Yambert). The one state that directly controls the fate of Palestinians in the occupied territories is Israel and for the Palestinians who do not reside in Israel, other governments control them. The history of Palestine and how Israel came into existence is essential to understand in order to break down the present day conflict. The most dominant and important player in the Palestinian – Israeli conflict has been the United States of America, which has completely shaped the predicament in order to fulfill its interests. Before delving into the role of the United States, it is essential to go back in time and familiarize with the history of Palestine and Israel.
The issue of Palestine and Israel is one that has been hotly contested for over a thousand years. The last fifty years have been especially important in the history of the Jewish people and Palestinians. Since the death of Yasser Arafat on the 11th of November 2004 , and the election of Mahmoud Abbas as his successor as leader of the Palestinian Authority, significant steps have been taken towards a lasting peace. This will hopefully lead to a conclusion of the second Palestinian intifada, which began in late September 2000, and to an end of the oppression of the Palestinian people by the Israeli Defense Forces. Both Jews and Arabs have suffered heavily from the conflict, thousands of innocent civilians have died on both sides, and peace is in the interests of all.
Identity cards vary, from passports to health cards to driver licenses. Each play a different role, one will be used to travel another used when individuals seek care and another simply to drive around town. Identity cards serve as a form of surveillance to insure the wellbeing within a country against danger. This brings me to say, is monitoring an individual’s life going to insure their safety? Forms of identification can offer security, freedom as well as accessibility to North American citizens. Although, scenarios such as identity theft can cause individuals to think otherwise. The topics discussed in this essay is, the use of identification allows basic rights to North American citizens. Monitoring insures security within countries as
National Identification System which I call NIS is a form of identification card that is a “portable document, typically a plasticized card with digitally-embedded information” (Rouse, 2010). Most of us carry around a form of NIS which confirms our identity, like our drivers licenses.