Introducing The View from Gaza
- By Jim Hicks and Britt Rusert, for the editors
Jim Hicks, outgoing editor of the magazine, passes on the Mass Review keffiyeh to Britt Rusert, incoming editor. Photo courtesy of Hiltrud Schulz.
Every evening, in times like these, there are tough choices to be made, a great number of commitments to honor, and multiple places where one ought to be. So, of course, not even all our local supporters were able to join us last Friday at UMass’s Old Chapel for our meditation and celebration of this year’s very special issue, The View from Gaza, featuring a video presentation from some contributors as well as a live reading by Amherst College poet-in-residence George Abraham and a performance by the Arabic music ensemble Layaali.
On the blog this week, we will bring you special moments from that celebration as well as other features related to the new issue, including an essay from Noura Kamal, titled “A New Generation is Emerging, and Gaza is their Compass.”
At the Friday event, we opened the evening in the only way possible. Outgoing Executive Editor Jim Hicks began with these words:
As-salamu alaykum! [The audience responded, Wa ʿalaykumu s-salām.]
For reasons that should be obvious, our welcome today begins in Arabic, with the Arabic word for peace. We also need to begin with an acknowledgement that we stand here today on the unceded lands of the Pocumtuck people, and that the surrounding lands and waters are the ancestral homes of their neighboring communities, including the Nipmuc, the Narragansett, the Mohegan and Pequot, the Mohican, the Abenaki, and, a bit to the north, the Penobscot, our own Morgan Talty’s people. We also need to remember that this state university, commonly referred to as a “land-grant” institution, was funded in part through the sale of tribal lands in the West. One has to wonder what it would take for this “land-grant” university to become a “land-back” university? Paying rent, perhaps? Tuition waivers for Native students? Permanent tribal representation in university governance?
No one in this room today will need reminding of the urgency for addressing the rights of indigenous peoples, since we are in fact here to celebrate the spirit and survival of another indigenous culture, that of the Palestinians. For that reason, it is not our voices that you need to hear this evening, it is those of the Palestinian people and the Palestinian diaspora. Including the voices that will never be silenced, including that of the poet and teacher Refaat Alareer, who—as you know—was targeted and murdered exactly one year ago today. Our evening is dedicated to him.
Incoming Executive Editor Britt Rusert continued, thanking the event’s sponsors and noting that:
Our special thanks, of course, goes to Michel Moushabeck, who first proposed this project to us and whose leadership made it possible. And nothing happens without the tireless efforts of our staff: our Managing Editor Emily Wojcik, our Associate Editor Eddie Clifford, our Assistant Editor Franchie Viaud, and our interns Suzanne Bagia and Avalon Fedder. We also would like to remember Eddie’s father, James Clifford, who passed away suddenly in October, for his generosity and support.
Earlier that day, on the WHMP radio show “Talk the Talk,” Bill Newman asked Michel Moushabeck if editing this special issue had affected him in a way that he didn’t expect. Michel responded by returning to the issue’s real subject:
The war itself has broken me in more ways than I thought possible. Every day in Gaza, and now Lebanon, is a day of death, and slaughter, and destruction. And every day in Congress, and in the White House, is a day of complicity—complicity that violates US and international laws by continuing to arm Israel’s ongoing genocide. This horror has been going on now for fourteen months. The genocide in Gaza is an Israeli-American joint venture, sadly, and it must end. There is nothing left. There is nowhere left for people to go.
I’m a descendant of Nakba survivors. My parents had multiple exiles: they had to leave in 1948 from West Jerusalem to East Jerusalem, and then from East Jerusalem they had to go to Amman, Jordan, from Amman, Jordan to Beirut, Lebanon, and then they had leave again during the civil war in Lebanon. And I carry their pain with me every day. I have friends in Gaza, in the West Bank, in East Jerusalem, in Beirut, and some of those friends have recently been killed by Israel’s indiscriminate bombardment of their villages, and towns, and neighborhoods, and buildings. And some might still die, because the bombardment has not stopped. Even though we heard there was a ceasefire in Lebanon, Israel is continuing to bombard villages with white phosphorus, and people are unable to go home. In Lebanon now there are 1.2 million displaced people, in Gaza, 2.3 million. The horror is unimaginable.
The interview concluded with a question to Michel about his hopes for the issue.
I hope that people will pick it up, that they will read it, and, better yet, that they will subscribe to the Massachusetts Review. There are thirty-five contributions in this issue, and those contributions collectively give us a vivid glimpse of what is going on, and a glimpse of Palestinian literature in general, which is varied, and which is beautiful. Especially during this time, it is really my hope that the day will come when Palestinians can find safety and dress their wounds and become free. But until that time, Palestinian literature has found permanent safety in the pages of this special issue of the Massachusetts Review. So please get yourself a copy.
Stay tuned. As soon as the issue arrives in our office, we’ll post more of its pages here—as well as a link for ordering your own copy.
The Layaali Arabic music ensemble, featuring Jamal Sinno (qanun), Insia Malik (violin); Gabe Lavin (oud); and Michel Moushabeck (percussion), at the Old Chapel, University of Massachusetts Amherst, December 6, 2024.
