Democratic Palestine : 17 (ص 31)
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- Democratic Palestine : 17 (ص 31)
- المحتوى
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crime of expelling and uprooting our
people. We presented the reality of the
Palestinian people, and their willingness
to actively participate in making peace
in the framework of justice and inter-
national legitimacy.
The ‘civilized’ racism of the Zionist
ideologues reached the point of claiming
that the Palestinian people, throughout
their thousands of years of living in
Palestine, had not created any civiliza-
tion or cultural values. They thereby
aimed to prove their claims that there is
no national link between the people and
the land.
We confronted these racist lies. Here I
would like to mention the late Emil
Touma, the great intellectual. He
refuted these racist lies by compiling a
list of the hundreds of Palestinian Arab
scientists, poets, writers, researchers
and historians throughout the past cen-
turies. This confirms the Palestinian
people’s active contribution to the crea-
Almeida Street Islington London NI ITA GLC
01.359 4404
Financially assisted by the London Borough of Islington
tion of the Arab and Islamic civiliza-
tion.
THE CULTURAL AND
LITERARY MOVEMENT
On this backdrop of struggle to
remain in the homeland, for cultural
and national survival, and to foil the
conspiracy to uproot us and annihilate
our nationalism, the Palestinian Arab
cultural and literary movement was
established in occupied Palestine after
1948. This movement had national and
humanist goals, a popular orientation
and revolutionary conduct - this was its
ideological character. We wrote about
our people and for them.
In the fifties and sixties, the pheno-
menon of poetry festivals flourished.
Poets read their poems to mass assem-
blies in public squares and under the
trees. This period was characterized by
enthusiasm, for the poets were close to
the masses and the popular culture.
Poems came first, and'soon afterwards,
stories: The art of story and novel wri-
timg was developed, as was literary cri-
tique. Efforts began to create an Arab
theater, and to advance the plastic arts.
The Zionist critics accused our culture
of being extremist and full of hate, but
this was a big lie. We don’t hate, but we
are confronting hate. We are not
extremists, but we resist the official
extremism directed against us. We don’t
like to kill, but we defend ourselves.
The Palestinian people are not terro-
rists, but the victims of terrorism, resis-
ting terrorism. It wasn’t easy to destroy
this distorted picture which tried to
portray the victim as the killer, and the
rightful owners of the land as terrorists.
We in occupied Palestine resisted poli-
tically, socially, culturally and ideolo-
gically, to present the facts, and to have
the conscience of the world face its res-
ponsibility vis-a-vis the Palestinian tra-
gedy and the necessity of solving the
Palestinian problem.
After 1967, there were those who
wrote that the Palestinian Arabs in
‘Israel’ had created a political and cul-
tural miracle through their steadfastness
and developed, revolutionary nationalist
culture. We believe that what we did was
very normal rather than a miracle. We
were steadfast and refused to leave our
homeland. It was only natural to refuse
having our national identity wiped out,
to insist on preserving our genuine
national culture. All the aspects of
Palestinian culture in occupied Palestine
automatically converge with Palestinian
culture everywhere.
Our immortal poet, Abu Salma, once
said in a conversation with us, his stu-
dents: «The unity of Palestinian culture,
wherever it exists, despite geographical
boundaries, is proof of the unity of the
Palestinian people as a strong entity.»
Between 1948 and 1965, when there was
no official Palestinian organization,
‘Palestinian culture served as the institu-
tion which preserved the name Palestine
and foretold the birth of the Palestinian
revolution in its modern form. This
year, we celebrate the SOth anniversary
of the Palestinian revolution of 1936-39.
If we return to that period, we find that
the best of the Palestinian intellectuals,
poets, writers, critics and teachers were
with the revolution. They were the cul-
tural face of the fighting people.
From this important meeting in soli-
darity with the Palestinian culture, let us,
appeal to conscience and mind, to
completely restore the unity of the PLO,
the sole, legitimate representative of the
Palestinian people--- to reunify our cul-
tural movement and increase interna-
tional solidarity with our people’s just
cause and their national culture of
resistance.
* Cosmopclitanism: repudiation of patriotic sen-
timents and national culture and traditions.
31 - هو جزء من
- Democratic Palestine : 17
- تاريخ
- يونيو ١٩٨٦
- المنشئ
- الجبهة الشعبية لتحرير فلسطين
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