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Before There is Nowhere to Stand: Palestine • israel: Poets Respond to the Struggle
Appalled by the violence of Israel's Operation Cast Lead against Gaza in 2008/2009, Joan Dobbie and her niece Grace Beeler, descendants of Holocaust survivors, issued a call for poems by writers of "Palestinian or Jewish heritage. . . for an anthology that strives for understanding . . . in the belief that poetry can create understanding and understanding can dull hatred." This book is a tribute to resourceful imaginations. Its purpose is to give readers an occasion to perceive the aspirations and passions of those whose lives have been affected by the struggle--in Joseph Conrad's words, "to make you hear, to make you feel--it is, before all, to make you see."
The poems are arranged in seven sections, each dealing with an attribute or phase of the Palestine-Israel struggle. When possible, selections alternate between Jewish and Arab authors, effecting dissonance in subject, emphasis, and attitude--an uneasy multiculturalism.
Contributors
Philip Metres • Ruth Fogelman • Yousef el Qedra • Yasmin Snounu • Yael Ben-Israel • Willa Schneberg • Vivien Sansour • Tom Berman • Tawfiq Zayyad • Susan Martin • Sharon Doubiago • Seema V. Atalla • Scot Siegel • Sandy Polishuk • Samuel Hazo • Samih al-Qasim • Sami Al Jundi • Sam Hamod • Sabena Stark • Rochelle Mass • Rick Black • Richard Tillinghast • Richard E. Sherwin • Reuven Goldfarb • Reja-e Busailah • Rachel Corrie • Rachel Barenblat • Peter Marcus • Nizar Qabbani • Nitza Agam • Naomi Shihab Nye • Monica Raymond • Molly Spencer • Miriam Stanley • Mike Maggio • Merle Feld • Maryna Ajaja • Marjorie Stamm Rosenfeld • Marian Haddad • Mahmoud Darwish • Lahab Assef Al-Jundi • Khaled Abdallah • Judy Kronenfeld • Judith A. Brice • Joy Ladin • Johnmichael Simon • Jerry Newman • J. Weintraub • Ingrid Wendt • Helen Bar-Lev • Hannah Stein • Hadassah Haskale • Gloria Bletter • Gavriel Reisner (Ben-Ephraim) • Fadwa Tuqan • Erik Sutter-Kaye • Ellen Bass • Elana Bell • Edward Morin • Doreen Stock • Diab Rabie • Debbi Brody • David Miller • David Gershator • Dana Negev • Dafna Hornike • CB Follett • Carolyne Wright • Carol Alena Aronoff • Bonnie J. Morris • Atar Hadari • Alicia Ostriker • Aftab Yusuf Shaikh • Adonis (Ali Ahmad Said Esber) • Adam Schonbrun • Ada Aharoni
The poems are arranged in seven sections, each dealing with an attribute or phase of the Palestine-Israel struggle. When possible, selections alternate between Jewish and Arab authors, effecting dissonance in subject, emphasis, and attitude--an uneasy multiculturalism.
Contributors
Philip Metres • Ruth Fogelman • Yousef el Qedra • Yasmin Snounu • Yael Ben-Israel • Willa Schneberg • Vivien Sansour • Tom Berman • Tawfiq Zayyad • Susan Martin • Sharon Doubiago • Seema V. Atalla • Scot Siegel • Sandy Polishuk • Samuel Hazo • Samih al-Qasim • Sami Al Jundi • Sam Hamod • Sabena Stark • Rochelle Mass • Rick Black • Richard Tillinghast • Richard E. Sherwin • Reuven Goldfarb • Reja-e Busailah • Rachel Corrie • Rachel Barenblat • Peter Marcus • Nizar Qabbani • Nitza Agam • Naomi Shihab Nye • Monica Raymond • Molly Spencer • Miriam Stanley • Mike Maggio • Merle Feld • Maryna Ajaja • Marjorie Stamm Rosenfeld • Marian Haddad • Mahmoud Darwish • Lahab Assef Al-Jundi • Khaled Abdallah • Judy Kronenfeld • Judith A. Brice • Joy Ladin • Johnmichael Simon • Jerry Newman • J. Weintraub • Ingrid Wendt • Helen Bar-Lev • Hannah Stein • Hadassah Haskale • Gloria Bletter • Gavriel Reisner (Ben-Ephraim) • Fadwa Tuqan • Erik Sutter-Kaye • Ellen Bass • Elana Bell • Edward Morin • Doreen Stock • Diab Rabie • Debbi Brody • David Miller • David Gershator • Dana Negev • Dafna Hornike • CB Follett • Carolyne Wright • Carol Alena Aronoff • Bonnie J. Morris • Atar Hadari • Alicia Ostriker • Aftab Yusuf Shaikh • Adonis (Ali Ahmad Said Esber) • Adam Schonbrun • Ada Aharoni
- GenresPoetry
220 pages, Paperback
First published May 24, 2012
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 29, 2012
I have two poems in the following book I am reviewing. MSR
In 2009, Joan Dobbie and Grace Beeler posted in Poets & Writers:
"Are you Jewish or Palestinian? Of Palestinian or Jewish heritage? Please submit poetry for an anthology that strives for understanding in these troubled times. All points of view wanted in the belief that poetry can create understanding and understanding can dull hatred."
Before There Is Nowhere to Stand, published in May of 2012, is a collection of mostly fine poetry marred by highly partisan introductory material.
A dedication includes Khaldoun Sammoudi, a young Palestinian shot in January, 2011, at a checkpoint near Nablus. Internet accounts describe him as running toward soldiers shouting “Allahu Akbar” and holding a pipe bomb. Explosives and a knife were also found on his body.
Joan and Grace are described as “reeling” from Israeli “atrocities” and a “massacre” during Operation Cast Lead—strange accusations considering that the IDF dropped more than a million leaflets and made thousands of phone calls warning Gazans away from targets, Hamas confirmed that as many as 700 of the war’s 1166 fatalities were combatants, Colonel Richard Kemp testified before the U.N. Human Rights Council that the IDF in Gaza “did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare,” Judge Richard Goldstone retracted his earlier conclusion that Israel had intentionally targeted Gaza civilians (based on initial Hamas claims that only 48 of the Gaza fatalities were combatants), and Barbara Lubin admitted that her damaging “Sophie’s Choice” story was false.
A letter from Vivien Sansour notes that Sderot, the Israeli town against which 10,000 rockets and mortars have been launched, sits on stolen land. Sderot is a few miles from what’s left of Najd, an Arab village cleared of its inhabitants on May 12-13, 1948, by the Negev Brigade in anticipation of the Egyptian invasion two days later. Because the source of this information appeared to be Benny Morris, I contacted Professor Morris and have permission to publish his response:
"I'm afraid I have no information about Najd beyond what is in The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited. I don't like the term "ethnic cleansing", as applied to 1948, because it conjures up the Yugoslav wars, and the situations and events were completely different. All that needs to be remembered is that the war of 1948 was launched by the Palestinians in November 1947, and that what befell them, including expulsions, was forced on the Jews by Arab aggression. They try to depict the war as beginning in May 1948, when the Arab states invaded Palestine. But the war began six months earlier, and almost 2000 Jews were killed by Palestinians during those months, and their villages and towns were the bases of their aggressing militias, and the creation of the refugees was the result of what they precipitated."
An Internet article by Noam Bedein includes a photo of a Najd ruin with Sderot in the distance. Did the Najd villagers own the land they farmed? Most of the land in Palestine was public land belonging previously to the Ottoman Turkish government, with Arabs as tenant farmers. Absentee Arab owners also had land holdings in Palestine they sold to Jews or the JNF. Kenneth Stein’s The Land Question in Palestine lists a transaction in which “Shaykh Mahmud al DA’UDI, a close associate of the Mufti, al-Hajj Amin al-Husayni, sold an unspecified amount of land at Najd and Deir Suneid in the Gaza Subdistrict.” Sderot was established in 1951 as a tent camp for Jews expelled from Arab lands, few of whom were likely to be there in 2001, when rocket attacks started. In any case, how can one justify attacks against civilians of a town within agreed-upon armistice lines in a sovereign state?
I wish I had space to deal with the poetry in this book. Alicia Ostriker’s introduction covers some of this ground. Other reviewers will undoubtedly cover more. The list of contributors is a veritable Who’s Who in poetry. The poems are accomplished; many are heartbreakingly beautiful. More poems than one suggest that there is enough land, enough of everything for everyone, Arab and Jew. As Ben Gurion wrote in a 1937 letter to his son (widely misquoted because of a mistranslation identified by Efraim Karsh):
"We do not wish, we do not need to expel the Arabs and take their place. All our aspirations are built upon the assumption — proven throughout all our activity in the Land — that there is enough room in the country for ourselves and the Arabs."
More’s the pity that this fine collection has been promoted and prefaced in such a biased way.
Marjorie Stamm Rosenfeld
In 2009, Joan Dobbie and Grace Beeler posted in Poets & Writers:
"Are you Jewish or Palestinian? Of Palestinian or Jewish heritage? Please submit poetry for an anthology that strives for understanding in these troubled times. All points of view wanted in the belief that poetry can create understanding and understanding can dull hatred."
Before There Is Nowhere to Stand, published in May of 2012, is a collection of mostly fine poetry marred by highly partisan introductory material.
A dedication includes Khaldoun Sammoudi, a young Palestinian shot in January, 2011, at a checkpoint near Nablus. Internet accounts describe him as running toward soldiers shouting “Allahu Akbar” and holding a pipe bomb. Explosives and a knife were also found on his body.
Joan and Grace are described as “reeling” from Israeli “atrocities” and a “massacre” during Operation Cast Lead—strange accusations considering that the IDF dropped more than a million leaflets and made thousands of phone calls warning Gazans away from targets, Hamas confirmed that as many as 700 of the war’s 1166 fatalities were combatants, Colonel Richard Kemp testified before the U.N. Human Rights Council that the IDF in Gaza “did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare,” Judge Richard Goldstone retracted his earlier conclusion that Israel had intentionally targeted Gaza civilians (based on initial Hamas claims that only 48 of the Gaza fatalities were combatants), and Barbara Lubin admitted that her damaging “Sophie’s Choice” story was false.
A letter from Vivien Sansour notes that Sderot, the Israeli town against which 10,000 rockets and mortars have been launched, sits on stolen land. Sderot is a few miles from what’s left of Najd, an Arab village cleared of its inhabitants on May 12-13, 1948, by the Negev Brigade in anticipation of the Egyptian invasion two days later. Because the source of this information appeared to be Benny Morris, I contacted Professor Morris and have permission to publish his response:
"I'm afraid I have no information about Najd beyond what is in The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited. I don't like the term "ethnic cleansing", as applied to 1948, because it conjures up the Yugoslav wars, and the situations and events were completely different. All that needs to be remembered is that the war of 1948 was launched by the Palestinians in November 1947, and that what befell them, including expulsions, was forced on the Jews by Arab aggression. They try to depict the war as beginning in May 1948, when the Arab states invaded Palestine. But the war began six months earlier, and almost 2000 Jews were killed by Palestinians during those months, and their villages and towns were the bases of their aggressing militias, and the creation of the refugees was the result of what they precipitated."
An Internet article by Noam Bedein includes a photo of a Najd ruin with Sderot in the distance. Did the Najd villagers own the land they farmed? Most of the land in Palestine was public land belonging previously to the Ottoman Turkish government, with Arabs as tenant farmers. Absentee Arab owners also had land holdings in Palestine they sold to Jews or the JNF. Kenneth Stein’s The Land Question in Palestine lists a transaction in which “Shaykh Mahmud al DA’UDI, a close associate of the Mufti, al-Hajj Amin al-Husayni, sold an unspecified amount of land at Najd and Deir Suneid in the Gaza Subdistrict.” Sderot was established in 1951 as a tent camp for Jews expelled from Arab lands, few of whom were likely to be there in 2001, when rocket attacks started. In any case, how can one justify attacks against civilians of a town within agreed-upon armistice lines in a sovereign state?
I wish I had space to deal with the poetry in this book. Alicia Ostriker’s introduction covers some of this ground. Other reviewers will undoubtedly cover more. The list of contributors is a veritable Who’s Who in poetry. The poems are accomplished; many are heartbreakingly beautiful. More poems than one suggest that there is enough land, enough of everything for everyone, Arab and Jew. As Ben Gurion wrote in a 1937 letter to his son (widely misquoted because of a mistranslation identified by Efraim Karsh):
"We do not wish, we do not need to expel the Arabs and take their place. All our aspirations are built upon the assumption — proven throughout all our activity in the Land — that there is enough room in the country for ourselves and the Arabs."
More’s the pity that this fine collection has been promoted and prefaced in such a biased way.
Marjorie Stamm Rosenfeld
May 31, 2012
Contributors: Ruth Fogelman • Yousef el Qedra • Yasmin Snounu • Yael Ben-Israel • Willa Schneberg • Vivien Sansour • Tom Berman • Tawfiq Zayyad • Susan Martin • Sharon Doubiago • Seema V. Atalla • Scot Siegel • Sandy Polishuk • Samuel Hazo • Samih al-Qasim • Sami Al Jundi • Sam Hamod • Sabena Stark • Rochelle Mass • Rick Black • Richard Tillinghast • Richard E. Sherwin • Reuven Goldfarb • Reja-e Busailah • Rachel Corrie • Rachel Barenblat • Peter Marcus • Nizar Qabbani • Nitza Agam • Naomi Shihab Nye • Monica Raymond • Molly Spencer • Miriam Stanley • Mike Maggio • Merle Feld • Maryna Ajaja • Marjorie Stamm Rosenfeld • Marian Haddad • Mahmoud Darwish • Lahab Assef Al-Jundi • Khaled Abdallah • Judy Kronenfeld • Judith A. Brice • Joy Ladin • Johnmichael Simon • Jerry Newman • J. Weintraub • Ingrid Wendt • Helen Bar-Lev • Hannah Stein • Hadassah Haskale • Gloria Bletter • Gavriel Reisner (Ben-Ephraim) • Fadwa Tuqan • Erik Sutter-Kaye • Ellen Bass • Elana Bell • Edward Morin • Doreen Stock • Diab Rabie • Debbi Brody • David Miller • David Gershator • Dana Negev • Dafna Hornike • CB Follett • Carolyne Wright • Carol Alena Aronoff • Bonnie J. Morris • Atar Hadari • Alicia Ostriker • Aftab Yusuf Shaikh • Adonis (Ali Ahmad Said Esber) • Adam Schonbrun • Ada Aharoni
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews