Garnet author criticizes Obama’s speech on Palestine: May 19, 2011

Children of Catastrophe: Journey from a Palestinian Refugee Camp to America By Jamal Kanj

Jamal Kanj, the author of The Children of Catastrophe: Journey from a Palestinian Refugee Camp to America has a critical review on parts of President Obama’s speech on 19 May concerning Palestine. In his article ‘Obama’s Oratory Skills and Peace in the Middle East’ published by Intifada (Voice of Palestine), he says:

“More oratory promises to Palestinians as they watch their land disappearing before their eyes at the hand of an insatiable Israeli monster financed by billions of American tax payers’ money to build “Jewish only” settlements on the remaining 22 per cent of historical Palestine.”

Also, when it comes to the US/Israel relationships, he questions Obama’s claim of  ‘shared moral values’:

It was puzzling to hear Obama asserting that America’s friendship with Israel was “rooted deeply in a shared history and shared values.” Uncertain what values the president referring to, was it the race based politics, or was it stealing land from Natives? Such values have long been moribund in America, but still practiced in Israel.

Read the full article here

Book Review: Once Upon a Time in Jerusalem

Once Upon a Time in Jerusalem, by Sahar Hamouda

Sahar Hamouda, Once Upon a Time in Jerusalem, London: Garnet Publishing Ltd, January 2010

From: Al-Ahram Weekly

Reviewed by Amira Nowaira

Despite its title, Once Upon a Time in Jerusalem is no fairy tale. It offers no simple answers and provides no happy ending. And neither does it rehash platitudes or sentimentalities about the traumatic decades in Palestinian history leading to the Nakba.

The book, straddling the space of memoir and social history, tells the story of a Jerusalem home, Dar Al-Fitiani, located within the walls of the Haram Al-Sharif (the Sacred Enclosure) in Old Jerusalem and built originally as an Islamic school in the 15th century. The book also tells the story of the Palestinian family that lived in it continuously for at least five hundred years until 1948.