Palestine For Sale Imagine being forced out of your own home by an intruder, and this intruder takes away everything you once called your own. Said’s assignment is a real-live example of this situation, he uses images of specific examples of the happenings in Palestine. Palestinian life went from being highly posted to becoming a disrespected minority where it once stood tall. The main idea of Said’s assignment is to see how one can portray their experiences as going from the majority to becoming the “other”. States focuses on the experiences, and reactions of the majority becoming the minority. This is an example of an autoethnographic piece because its a self-reflective piece written with the intention of sharing the thoughts and ideas of the Palestinian people. Our author, Edward W. Said, helps the reader understand what the people of Palestine were going through when their land was taken …show more content…
from them. He uses specific examples to help support his main idea that the people of Palestine had everything taken to them by their “intruders” from Jerusalem, and that they now had to hold onto what they had left, which was the leftover, secondhand remains of their culture, and society. Said uses several different images throughout the essay to further detail on the experiences, and happenings of the people in Palestine.
The first photograph is a picture of a woman in a wedding dress surrounded by what is assumed to be her family and groom. She’s entering a Mercedes, one of the most-common and secondhand vehicles of the area, with a bland look on her face. “A rare luxury in the west, the Mercedes - usually secondhand and smuggled in - is the commonest of cars in the Levant.(11)” The vehicle has a “D” sticker on it, this sticker clarifies that the vehicle was smuggled in from Deutschland, also knocking at its credibility. She’s surrounded by what seems to be run-down buildings, and trash. This photograph symbolizes how a sacred event, such as marriage had now lost its delicate context behind it, and seemed as if it was something that would at one time be a special event, had now become something of mockery. “...the Mercedes, its provenance and destination obscure, seems like an intruder, a delegate of the forces that both dislocate and hem them
in.(11)” Throughout the text, Said breaks the essay into different sections that highlight different experiences that support the main idea of the text. Each section tells a specific story that may paint a bigger picture, and give details to the real life experiences of the people of Palestine. These stories gave more detail to the damage of Palestinian life including the economic standoffs, agricultural deprivation, deterioration of the culture and loss of identity.. These experiences help the reader gain more of a first-hand perspective on what it was like to have something like this happen to you, and what you lose in a situation like this. “Most other people take their identity for granted. Not the Palestinian, who is required to show proofs of identity more or less constantly (16).” After having their land taken from them, people of Palestine responded with force. This seemed to excite the people of Palestine, making them believe that they were possibly going to get back what was taken from them. “The 1967 war was followed shortly after by the Arab oil boom. For the first time, Palestinian nationalism arose as an independent force in the middle east. Never did our future seem so hopeful (19).” The idea of using violent force towards those who oppress you is a differentiating idea from the other forms of text we’ve studied. In New Chronicle, Guaman Poma used art as a form of rebellion, to mock their dominant discourse, as well as using literature. This reaction, and form of literature in States represents a new kind of reaction to oppression, or the cultural clashing known as the contact zone. The perspective of Said’s essay makes the overall essay seem somewhat biased. Although he makes a point that the people of Palestine have become the “other” in the text, he continues to make himself, and the people of Palestine look like the “hero”, or protagonist of the story. A specific example of this can be examined when Said gives a description of a Jewish in town. “Because it is taken from outside Nazareth (...Upper Nazareth, a totally Jewish addition to the town, built on the surrounding hills), the photographer renders Palestine as ‘other.’ I never knew Nazareth, so this is my only image of it, an image of the ‘other’, from the ‘outside,’ Upper Nazareth (40).” By making this point, our author makes the foreign look like monsters, or the “enemy” of the text. The author also lets the reader hear both perspectives of the issue. “The proposed modes of such a sharing are adventurous and utopian in the present context of hostility between Arabs and Jews, but on an intellectual level they are actual, and to some of us - on both sides - they make sense (43).” Throughout the text, the Israelis are referred to as “intruders”, and “monsters”, but for a short moment the reader can actually grasp what their actual intentions were. Completely willing to share some type of space with the people of Palestine, the Israelis are assumed to have bad intentions into what they do, but still seem to be blind to the damage they may have done to Palestinian culture. Said concludes the essay by detailing a description of what those involved in this happening now have to deal with amongst each other, and describing an incident of from his own personal memory. “There are few opportunities for us Palestinians, or us Palestinians and Israelis, to learn anything about the world we live in that is not touched by, indeed soaked in, the hostilities of our struggle (44)”. The preceding statement supports an idea that everything that the people of Palestine once owned now is damaged, and they live with what is left of their original society. This seems to be the overall message that the author is trying to send through this essay, and also seems to be the reason why the people of Palestine are so hostile towards this whole situation.
Laird’s “Kitchen” and Dater’s “Ms. Clingfree” were two pictures I thought were similar. If you laid the two side by side, you would see nothing in them that was remotely similar. One is of a young attractive housewife sitting on the kitchen counter, cheerily showing off the fruit bowl. The other is of an older housewife, perhaps one who has been married many years and is starting to feel the stress taking its toll on her. In that sense, the pictures are of the same person (a housewife) as she goes through the years. Laird shows her when she is happily married and everything is sunny and bright. Dater shows the woman after the years have taken their toll and she is tired of it all.
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
Oppression is not always brought on in a violent and oppositional way, it can take on a peaceful and silent form; however regardless of the way oppression is introduced, it maintains the same characteristics of “imposing belief systems, values, laws and ways of ...
The film explores how resistance, to the Israeli occupation, has taken on an identity characterized by violence, bloodshed, and revenge in Palestinian territories. Khaled and Said buy into the widely taught belief that acts of brutality against the Israeli people is the only tactic left that Palestinians have to combat the occupation. In an effort to expose the falsity of this belief, Hany Abu-Assad introduces a westernized character named Suha who plays the voice of reason and opposition. As a pacifist, she suggests a more peaceful alternative to using violence as a means to an end. Through the film “Paradise Now,” Abu-Assad not only puts a face on suicide bombers but also shows how the struggle for justice and equality must be nonviolent in order to make any significant headway in ending the cycle of oppression between the Israelis and the Palestinians.
The delineation of human life is perceiving existence through resolute contrasts. The difference between day and night is defined by an absolute line of division. For the Jewish culture in the twentieth century, the dissimilarity between life and death is bisected by a definitive line - the Holocaust. Accounts of life during the genocide of the Jewish culture emerged from within the considerable array of Holocaust survivors, among of which are Elie Wiesel’s Night and Simon Wiesenthal’s The Sunflower. Both accounts of the Holocaust diverge in the main concepts in each work; Wiesel and Wiesenthal focus on different aspects of their survivals. Aside from the themes, various aspects, including perception, structure, organization, and flow of arguments in each work, also contrast from one another. Although both Night and The Sunflower are recollections of the persistence of life during the Holocaust, Elie Wiesel and Simon Wiesenthal focus on different aspects of their existence during the atrocity in their corresponding works.
The Middle East has since time immemorial been on the global scope because of its explosive disposition. The Arab Israeli conflict has not been an exception as it has stood out to be one of the major endless conflicts not only in the region but also in the world. Its impact continues to be felt all over the world while a satisfying solution still remains intangible. A lot has also been said and written on the conflict, both factual and fallacious with some allegations being obviously evocative. All these allegations offer an array of disparate views on the conflict. This essay presents an overview of some of the major literature on the controversial conflict by offering precise and clear insights into the cause, nature, evolution and future of the Israel Arab conflict.
From the child in Omelas to a slaving factory worker, those who struggle from oppression have channeled their worth and refuse to remain pushed to the side and neglected.
The author argues that in order for oppression to be vitally explored, the factors that create oppression must be realized. Oppression gives material advantage to the oppressor. "All social relations have material consequences". The author argues that all identities must be considered interconnected.
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).
A somewhat controversial publication by Chris Hedges, titled A Gaza Diary, illustrates to the reader his vivid experiences during his weeklong stay in what is know as the Gaza Strip. Hedges’s travels, with illustrator Joe Sacco, start in Jerusalem and proceeds down south through the Gaza strip to a Palestine camp refuge called Khan Younis, where they stay for the majority of the trip. They venture over to Mawasi, also a Palestine village, located on the coast. In both these locations he describes the constant unrest and turmoil that residents face everyday and every night.
In lecture, the Israel settlements were brought up. This has caused major conflict between Palestinians and Israeli’s. This settlement allowed settler homes to be built on private Palestinian land. This is like what happened to Talal and his family. His family home was going to be demolished and used to build a museum for Israeli. This museum was going to be built on private land that was owned by Palestinians. Also, when Talal’s home was being taken by the government for demolition, Talal and his community showed resistance. This refers to the reading of James Scott’s Hidden and Public Transcripts. He talks about the frontier between the public and hidden transcripts is a zone between the constant struggle between dominant and subordinate groups and dominant groups always prevail. The struggle over boundaries is the most conflict seen in ordinary life. This connects back to Talal and his house struggles because his family and himself were struggling over the boundaries of his house and they were the subordinate group. The Israeli government was the dominant group and it eventually prevailed and took the house away just as Scott had said in his article. In the article titled “Everyday Engagement with Politics and Resistance”: Exploration of a Concept and its Theories mentions how the unemployed, slum-dwellers, urban poor and lowest classes employ public and collective
This struggle against marginalization is one of the principal elements that bind their sense of community, ...
There are so many different texts that are out there. People from different cultures and communities write texts that we usually do not take seriously. We don’t want to see their point of view about things. We just want them to understand our point of view but not theirs. “States” is a transcultural text. A contact zone is the space in which transculturation takes place. Mary Pratt defines “Transculturation as a process whereby members of subordinated or marginal groups select and invent from materials transmitted by a dominant metropolitan culture” (323). Palestinians are surrounded by dominant cultures. Pratt uses “transcultural” to describe the dominant groups or cultures because there are so many
Elia Suleiman’s cinematic reflexivity and poetic structure provide him the means to work through the crisis of mimesis while attending to political particularities of the Palestinian occupation. His style resists totalizing and appropriation by other narratives. It effectively critiques Israeli state violence by opening the violence up to questioning and reinterpretation, but the film does not move beyond questioning. In leaving his film open to interpretation, Suleiman refuses to provide answers to the questions he opened in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Any attempt at providing an answer to the questions raised in the film would push the film towards a totalizing narrative and weaken the poetic structure of the film.
The Palestinian exile of 1948 marks the beginning of an ongoing identity struggle of a population of displaced persons sans a homeland. The devastation brought about by the initial expulsion of the Palestinian people is compounded by near-constant armed warfare both within the territories and in refugee camps in nearby nations that house Palestinian refugees. These constant bombardments are a detriment to collective and individual Palestinian identity, which has in turn become defined to a large extent externally (and internally to some degree) by armed resistant to Zionist influence solely, leading to a deficit in traditional, more positive national identity. The diaspora Palestinian population additionally faces complex struggles with acceptance