1935, Bethlehem, Palestine 🇵🇸 Portrait of Marguerite Kattan (née Mattia Kattan) reading alongside her two sisters.

1935, Bethlehem, Palestine Portrait of Marguerite Kattan (née Mattia Kattan) reading alongside her two sisters.

Pals

@palsofnations

https://x.com/palsofnations/status/2005590431317492176

AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES (or quotes) IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine, or at least fair and just laws and policies]

Palestinian passengers will be more tempted to read books after a new reading campaign is launched next week. A group of young writers are gathering books to put in mini-vans linking major cities in the West Bank, routes that can waste hours.

 http://www.themedialine.org/news/news_detail.asp?NewsID=36916
Library on the Move Written by Diana Atallah
Published Monday, January 14, 2013

Get In the Taxi, Pick Up a Book

Ramallah - Palestinian passengers will be more tempted to read books after a new reading campaign is launched next week. A group of young writers are gathering books to put in mini-vans linking major cities in the West Bank, routes that can waste hours.

Wiam Karyouti, a sales employee and a young writer, first thought of the campaign when a passenger next to him asked him if he had another book for him to read. “I usually read in the taxi and carry books with me. I handed him a novel and he gave it back to me at the end of the ride saying he would go buy it,” Karyouti told The Media Line.

The incident triggered Karyouti to think of ways to encourage reading and use the spare taxi time only to find that taxi drivers welcomed the initiative of putting books in their orange-painted service cars, which take up to seven passengers.

Karyouti and his colleagues at a young writers club called “Bastet Ibda" (Creativity Peddlers) volunteered to make their idea come true and advertised for the campaign through their Facebook pages.

Since their announcement on December 26, they have received 600 books donated by NGOs, publishing houses, intellectuals and individuals who came to the collecting points in different West Bank cities.

After the collecting ends this week, seven or eight will be available in a cloth bag near each driver in 311 taxis for passengers to read. “The topics range from religion, science history and arts, to novels and children books, because we think that parents might travel with their kids,” Karyouti added.

“We still need another 600 books, but we won’t distribute all of them at once. We plan to periodically renew new books in taxis," Karyouti explained. 

Intellectuals and young writers agree that reading is not very popular among Palestinians and think the education system and lack of government support has a role in pushing people away from reading. 

“I see the same groups of people in book readings,” says Karyouti, who hopes that when he publishes his first poetry book, he will rely on friends to encourage their connections to read it.

Abd El Salam Khaddash, the Reading Campaigns Manager at Tamer Community Education Institute, told The Media Line the Palestinian curriculum doesn’t make students thirsty for knowledge and learning.

Khaddash added that the curriculum depends on memorizing books by heart, and doesn’t encourage creative thinking.

Tamer championed reading campaigns for the past 20 years focusing on a different topic each year. Last year, their “Father: read for me” campaign events included distributing children books in the dentists’ waiting rooms.

Although Ramallah’s public library, not far from the city center, has more than 40,000 books in different topics and languages, it only served around 7,000 visitors of the city’s 30,000 inhabitants during 2012. Around 300,000 people live within the borders of the governorate of Ramallah and Al Bireh and neighboring villages.

“A few visitors come for the sake of reading, but we have housewives, workers and retired people who come to read for fun. Students visit because they are required to study and read for their research papers,” library supervisor Ruba Husseini told The Media Line.

In 2012, around 1,000 books were loaned to the library’s subscribers who pay a yearly fee that doesn’t exceed $10. Using the library is free of charge unless photocopying is needed.

Khaddash thinks that reading has become less of a priority these days. “I was a student in the eighties and people were eager to know what would happen next with their lives, especially politically,” he said.

Tamer works with 75 libraries in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and around 50 public schools libraries to encourage reading. “We think that the librarians can play a part in encouraging learning and education but their salaries are too low and some work as volunteers,” Khaddash said.

He added that there is a problem with both libraries. Some community libraries are the first facilities to be affected when the local municipalities face financial difficulties. Also, the absence of specific reading classes in many schools or using this class for exams studying makes school libraries less useful to students.

Hala Kaileh, the manager of a libraries enhancement project in the Ramallah Municipality, told The Media Line that the municipality is working to develop reading in the Palestinian society. The municipality set up a new children's library to help make reading a habit for children. “Content of books is important but the library looking good is important to attract visitors, and we’re working on developing the children's library and including a film room as well,” Kaileh said.

Karyouti is not worried if people decide to borrow or keep the books they read in the taxis for themselves. “If I win a reader, I wouldn’t mind losing a book,” he cheerfully told The Media Line.

Khaddash told The Media Line he is optimistic. “I interview hundreds of people for jobs, and I care less for their university marks. Now parents care more for their children to be educated rather than being at the top of their class,” he said.

Khaddash added that it’s not important that readers increase by a thousand, but rather to broaden the idea into the importance of education and reading in life.

Daoud Kuttab: Prisoners have the right to see parents and read books... but Israel won't let them

Prisoners have the rights to see parents and read books
By Daoud Kuttab

I knew, separately, Suheir Ismael and Najeeb Farraj before they became a couple. I knew Najeeb as a colleague working with AFP and Al Quds daily, and an avid reader of the political scene in Palestine. I worked with Suheir when we produced the documentary Palestinian Diaries during the first Intifada. In it, Suheir talks about the day her brother was killed by Israelis while he was trying to help a neighbour in Al Khader village, near Bethlehem.

With her brother gone and her father killed in Lebanon, Suheir grew up a strong woman fighting for her rights in a male-dominated society.

I will never forget the day she interviewed her mother for the documentary, asking her a tough question: Why didn't you follow dad into exile? She later told me that the camera gave her the courage to ask a question she had not dared ask face-to-face.

Another documentary I co-produced documents her wedding day and includes a segment in which distant male relatives try to take advantage of her men-less family, only to be put down by Najeeb's brother Hamdi, a leading Palestinian columnist.

Suheir moved to Najeeb's home in Dheisheh camp and continued to work in filmmaking, set up a media NGO that trains women filmmakers. She and Najeeb have also produced a lovely family.

When they were gifted with a son, they called him Ismael, in memory of Suheir's dead brother. The name has given the young boy some trouble, as it matches the name of the deputy head of the Palestinian intelligence service, Ismael Farraj (who is Najeeb's older brother).

The young Ismael, however, seems to have adopted points of view a little to the left of those of his pro-Fateh uncle. His leftist ideology has also incurred the wrath of the Israelis.

Described by friends and family as smart, clever and charismatic, the young Ismael Farraj became a supporter of the PLO's left-wing faction Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. At Al Quds University, where Ismael is a second-year law student, he became involved in the PFLP's student movement. As any active student, he would help with public events on and off campus.

Last October, Israeli soldiers sneaked into areas under Palestinian security rule and broke into the Farrajs' home, in Dheisheh camp and arrested young Ismael. He was charged with belonging to an illegal organisation.

Although the PFLP is part of the PLO, which has signed a memorandum of understanding with Israel in 1993, Israel has not removed the organisation from their long list of organisations it considers terrorist.

Ismael is also accused of having prepared chairs for public events and inciting people to throw stones. He, himself, is not accused of any violent act.

Since October 10, Ismael has been held at the Ofra detention facility near Ramallah. This is the first time Ismael was detained. His parents are banned from seeing him. No official explanation is given for this ban. Only his siblings, Lamis 17 and Ruba 14, are allowed to see him.

What is most upsetting to Ismael and his family is the relatively new Israeli policy (under Premier Benjamin Netanyahu) that bans books from prisons or detention centres. Israelis are allowing only three books per year, and of those, only textbooks.

This week, Ismael, who was brought to a hearing, told his family that he wishes they could get him a world atlas, which apparently is allowed under this weird textbook policy.

Palestinians are also prevented from pursuing education in prison, including the ability to apply for the Tawjihi matriculation test and for college education.

Palestinian prisoners have declared a prison-wide hunger strike. It began with 1,200 prisoners demanding basic rights, such as family visits (those with family in Gaza have not seen relatives since 2007), the ability to touch and hug children and family members and to apply for high school and college degrees, as well as have regular books brought in. They are also calling for an end to administrative detentions.

Israel violated international law when it transferred Gaza prisoners to Israel and has continued to flaunt international humanitarian law by preventing prisoners, since June 2007, to see their families. Barring parents also seems to be used as an unauthorised punishment, as in Ismael's case.

It might help if international celebrities like George Clooney , Angolina Jolie and Richard Gere who have championed world issues would also champion these basic rights of Palestinians including that of family visits and the right of a parent even in prison to hug their children during visits.

It would be commendable to see Nobel Literature laureates sign a statement calling on Israel to stop the policy of banning books for Palestinian prisoners.

It would be great if universities around the world and academics would push Israel to allow prisoners to take the high school examination and enroll in distance college education.

It would be great if Jewish religious and secular leaders whose history and culture highlight the importance of books and being a light unto nations would protest denial of books to Palestinian prisoners.

One might disagree with the cause of the conflict or the reasons for jailing people, but even prisoners have their rights protected and safeguarded by international law and basic common sense.

Ismael's father expects his son to be sentenced to about two years. The big question, however, for Ismael and all other prisoners, is what will happen once they end their prison term and what will they think of how the world acted when they were being punished.