Targeting culture is an assault on society

Written by: Nihad Abu Ghosh

It is always useful to recall the importance of the Palestinian national culture in the battle of the Palestinian people to obtain their national rights. It suffices to recall the comment of Golda Meir, the Israeli Prime Minister in the sixties, on the assassination of the martyr Ghassan Kanafani when she said, "Today we got rid of an armed intellectual brigade." In addition to Ghassan, a group of the best Palestinian creators, intellectuals, and media figures appeared on the lists of Israeli assassinations, whose main weapon was the pen, the feather, and the word to defend their people and their national cause, among them the martyrs Majid Abu Sharar, Kamal Nasser, Naji Al-Ali, Hanna Moqbel, Hani Jawhariyyah, Hanna Mikhail, Ezzeddine Al-Qalq and Naim Khader, Abd al-Wahhab al-Kayyali, Mahmoud al-Hamshari, Wael Zuaiter, Ali Fouda, and many others, as well as those of Palestine’s creators, writers, and intellectuals who were subjected to arrest, including poets Mahmoud Darwish, Samih al-Qasim, and Tawfiq Ziyad, and those who were subjected to deportation, such as our Jerusalem writer Mahmoud Shuqair, Akram Haniyeh, Khalil al-Sawahiri, and others.

Targeting culture and intellectuals is not an Israeli specialty, but rather a global phenomenon that was paid for by the great international creators who faced tyranny, such as the Turkish poet Nazim Hikmat and the Chilean Pablo Neruda.

Now, in the circumstances of the intractable internal crisis that we live in, and with the decline in the status of the Palestinian cause regionally and internationally, and the intensification of the Israeli attack on our land, our sanctities, and all our national rights. An attack is launched from among our ranks on the climate of public freedoms, including freedom of expression and cultural and artistic creativity that we extracted from the tusks of the occupier, and which grew, developed and took root in the context of confronting the occupation, rebuilding the Palestinian national character, and formulating its national consciousness. In the past few weeks, culture and freedom of creativity, which is a condition for its prosperity, have been subjected to a series of attacks and threats that led to the suspension of some performances and events, and intimidation of all workers and those interested in the fields of culture and arts, which heralds a serious setback for Palestinian society in general, and an alarming decline in public freedoms and the conditions for creativity. Especially cultural and artistic.

The last thing that happened in this context was the decision of a solid institution such as the Abdul Mohsen Qattan Foundation to cancel one of its activities and close its doors temporarily after receiving a threat from an “unknown person”. The statement warned of "the dire effects that these threats and actions could have on cultural life" in Palestine and on society in general. Also, the organizers of a music festival in Bethlehem were forced to cancel it due to such threats, and before that, the attack on the "Cultural Warehouse" event. A year and a half ago, angry young men attacked an artistic event in the shrine of the Prophet Musa under the pretext of violating the sanctity of a mosque. None of these young men, who had the support of even some leadership circles in power, were held accountable, while the artist Sama Abdel Hadi was arrested and questioned despite obtaining official permissions. for the event!

There are a number of issues that raise concern in all of these incidents, the most prominent of which is that those who threaten and attack are individuals and groups who have decided to take the law into their own hands on behalf of the authority, its tools, and its justice and security institutions, and on behalf of society with its various forces, bodies and formations, which opens the way for advocates of chaos and chaos to implement their own law According to their awareness, mood, and interests, which could expand tomorrow to include interference in people's behavior in public facilities, universities, streets, and workplaces.

In this downward regression, culture appears to represent the "minor rib" or the "inclined wall" on which the supporters of chaos prevail, and justify their actions by claims of defending the culture of society and virtue, although there are serious doubts about the extent of their eligibility to present a conception of culture and virtue. Especially after it became clear that their attack on the Ishtar theater was due to a misunderstanding as a result of incitement from some party, so they imagined that the colors that the playwrights carried in their activities symbolized the gay flag! Noting that their zeal and zeal is focused on issues associated with sex, nudity or light clothing, and does not rise up against the daily violations and systematic humiliation of tens of thousands of Palestinians, men and women, that affect their dignity and humanity, at checkpoints, crossings and workplaces in Israeli settlements and projects, in addition to daily raids and desecration. The holiest of sanctities and the assault on the stationed and stationed.

Strange is the silence and disregard of the authority, or even its failure to carry out its duties in protecting culture, the arts and its institutions, and protecting individuals regardless of their orientations. And the chaos that reached its climax in the city of Hebron, and in the incident of the sinful assault on Dr. Nasir al-Din al-Shaer. With these stances, the authority contributes to detracting from its prestige and weakening its legitimacy, as if it were shooting at its feet and at the project of building a state of law and sovereign institutions.

The danger of attacking culture and its institutions threatens the entire Palestinian society with its institutions, public freedoms, values, and traditions of struggle and pluralistic democracy. This does not definitively mean that we are all required to accept or support any cultural project or artistic show as it is without criticism or scrutiny. The competence of the one charged with enforcing the law, and before him the official institutions, is not to impose the law by hand, clubs, and chains, and the aggressor today may be the victim tomorrow.