by IMAN SULTAN
It’s no secret that Palestinians have a rich tradition of arts, culture, literature and music — a mechanism of survival throughout decades of occupation and colonial displacement that has immortalised their creative output as a way to resist Israel.
As Israel’s onslaught of Gaza — what South Africa is fighting in the International Court of Justice to declare a genocide — enters its ninth month, and almost 38,000 Palestinians have been killed in the continuing siege and bombings, the need to highlight Palestinian voices in art, culture, and literature grows all the more urgent.
If, as the saying goes, existence is resistance, then Palestinians daring to share their stories and tell the world of their plight stand in the most exalted echelons of dissidence against the occupier. Whether it’s the cartoonist Naji al-Ali, the novelist Ghassan al-Kanafani, or the writer and teacher Refaat al-Alareer, Israel has tragically killed the most legendary and unforgettable Palestinian literary authors, knowing the power their pens held in galvanising resistance against it.
And yet, the deaths of Palestinian authors has only cemented the magnitude of their revolutionary works, allowing their voices to reverberate beyond the grave. In addition to the works of these late authors, commercially successful novels like Susan Abulhawa’s Mornings in Jenin, Hala Alyan’s Salt Houses, Leila Abdulrazzaq’s graphic novel Baddawi or Aya Ghanameh’s children’s book These Olive Trees teach the history of Palestine and its people from a purely human lens, allowing readers to wander in a novel or affording young children the accessibility to understand a brutal assault that has systemically targeted teenagers and babies construed as a demographic ‘threat’ by Israel.
Scholars such as Edward Said, Ilan Pappé, Tareq Baconi and the journalist Gideon Levy share their expertise in understanding the political dynamics of the occupation without sugarcoating the reality of Israel’s brutalities against the Palestinian people.
Without further ado, here are 20 books to better understand the Palestinian people, the displacement they have faced, their cultural erasure, generational trauma, colonisation, and the impacts of the ongoing brutalisation of their people that has continued for the past 76 years.
Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire, ed. by Jehad Abusalim
Dawn for more