The Diplomat
Franklin & Marshall’s weekly online newsletter
Look Beyond the Conflict
Uri Horesh
Parents take their children to the playground or to the market to buy groceries. Teenagers listen to pop music and chatter with peers. Young people fall in love and get married.
“If you see the media’s portrayal of life in Palestine, you might think Palestinians do nothing but throw rocks and talk politics,” said Uri Horesh, director of the Arabic Language Program.
“In spite of the violence, Palestinian culture, art and music persist,” Horesh said.
Hoping to break through misconceptions about Palestinian life, the Arabic Language Program will host “Palestine: A Cultural Portrait,” a symposium on Palestinian culture, on Friday, Jan. 30, at 4:30 p.m. in the Bonchek College House Great Room.
The symposium brings together three emerging scholars to discuss Palestinian life in the West Bank and Gaza, as well as in North America.
Hope Fitzgerald, program coordinator for the Arabic language program at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, will discuss contemporary artistic expression in Palestine.
Dana Hercbergs, a doctoral candidate in folklore and folk life at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, will highlight controversies of Israeli and Palestinian cultural appropriations.
And Ali Issa, a graduate of the University of Texas with a master’s degree in Arabic Studies and a community organizer working in New York City, will address issues of cultural practices and identity among Palestinians living in exile in North America.
The timing of the symposium— during a shaky cease-fire between Hamas and Israel, which invaded the Gaza Strip last month—should create an interesting conversation, Horesh said.
“Recent events will come up and I want someone to interrupt the speakers and ask the obvious question: ‘Why are you talking about Palestinian pop music when so many people are being killed?’” Horesh said.
The presentations and discussion will be followed by a screening of the award-winning film Tale of the Three Jewels at 7:30 p.m.
The Tale of the Three Jewels is the first feature film produced in the Gaza Strip. Filmed in 1994, it tells the story of Yusef, a 12-year-old who spends his days in the countryside to escape the chaos of the ongoing Palestinian-Israeli conflict. When he falls in love with Aida, a ravishing gypsy girl from a nearby neighborhood, he begins a quest to find the three jewels missing from a necklace brought from South America by her grandfather.
The film is in Arabic with English subtitles.
The symposium is sponsored by the International Studies Program, the Bonchek College House and the Arabic Language Program.
