<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?><oembed><version><![CDATA[1.0]]></version><provider_name><![CDATA[Occupied Palestine | فلسطين]]></provider_name><provider_url><![CDATA[https://occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com]]></provider_url><author_name><![CDATA[occupiedpalestine]]></author_name><author_url><![CDATA[https://occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com/author/hajarhajar/]]></author_url><title><![CDATA[Gaza Youth Breaks Out – a critique and a debate | Jews for Justice for&nbsp;Palestinians]]></title><type><![CDATA[link]]></type><html><![CDATA[<div class="post-bodycopy clearfix">
<p style="text-align:center;"><a rel="attachment wp-att-13129" href="http://jfjfp.com/?attachment_id=13129"><img loading="lazy" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-13129" title="lrb_blog" src="https://i0.wp.com/jfjfp.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/lrb_blog.png" alt="lrb_blog" width="234" height="73" /></a><a href="http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2011/01/10/karma-nabulsi/facebook-in-gaza/"><strong>Facebook in Gaza</strong></a></p>
<p style="text-align:center;">Karma Nabulsi, 10 January 2011</p>
<p style="text-align:center;">[see the <a href="http://jfjfp.com/?p=20042">Gaza youth breaks out</a> manifesto]</p>
<hr />
<p>Last weekend the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/02/free-gaza-youth-manifesto-palestinian" target="_blank"><em>Observer</em></a> carried a dramatic account of ‘The Gaza Youth Manifesto’, written in English by a handful of young people in Gaza and <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/Gaza-Youth-Breaks-Out-GYBO/118914244840679#%21/pages/Gaza-Youth-Breaks-Out-GYBO/118914244840679?v=info" target="_blank">posted on Facebook</a>.   Given the thousands of people in the West who have said they ‘like’ it   on Facebook or posted positive comments, the manifesto is said to  herald  a new movement for change in occupied Palestine.<span id="more-7221"> </span>Because of Palestinians’ lengthy predicament of expulsion,   dispossession and military occupation, there is a rich tradition of   Palestinian manifestos and declarations: hundreds of them have been   written since 1948. ‘Bayan Harakatina’ (‘Our Movement’s Statement’,   1959) played an important role in recruiting the first wave of young   people to the Palestinian National Liberation Movement-Fateh, and in   unifying their political consciousness. It was distributed   clandestinely, ‘entrusting’ its readers with the key ideas of the new   movement. Later documents, such as the founding manifesto of the Popular   Front for the Liberation of Palestine (1967), were distributed more   openly. These manifestos were written by organised Palestinian youth as   mobilising documents, exclusively for young Palestinians.</p>
<p>Manifestos have been written by everyone: ‘Workers of Palestine   Unite’ was issued by the General Provisional Committee of the Workers of   Palestine in 1962; the Unified National Command of the Intifada   released 46 communiqués between 1988 and 1990; ‘The Palestinian Civil   Society Call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel’ was   published on 9 July 2005; ‘The Palestine Manifesto’ was published last   year by the National Committee for the Defence of the Inalienable Rights   of the Palestinian People; dozens of statements have been issued by   right of return committees in the refugee camps since 1998; Palestinian   political prisoners in Israeli jails, from all parties, released the  now  famous ‘National Reconciliation Document’ in 2006.</p>
<p>Palestinian manifestos and declarations tend to do four things: 1.   engage critically with the current situation and its historical context;   2. outline a response, clearly stating the principles that should   underpin it; 3. announce the emergence of an organised group to carry   out that response; and 4. call on Palestinian youth to join the    movement. The wording is careful and has usually been negotiated at   length between a variety of people and organisations. In short, the   manifestos are purposive and geared towards some form of collective   action.</p>
<p>The ‘Gaza Youth Breaks Out’ manifesto does not belong to this   tradition: it does not put forth any clear analysis of the current   historical situation, or outline a response to it. It does not declare   the existence of an organised group, or invite anyone to join anything.   Its tone is denunciatory rather than analytical. Its language is   apolitical: the terminology of resistance common to Palestinian   manifestos is replaced here by use of the f-word. And it lacks any   mobilisational dimension. It’s unsurprising, then, that it has received   little attention in the Arab world. The most extensive report on it   appeared in <em>Al Akhbar</em> in Lebanon, which more or less reprinted the piece from the <em>Observer</em>.</p>
<p>If this manifesto does not belong to the Palestinian tradition of   declarations, then what tradition does it belong to? Clearly it captures   the despair and horror of life in Gaza today, and the young people   behind it have every right to post their appeals and complaints on   Facebook or wherever they like. But without being rooted in any   particular or collective vision of change, the three demands articulated   in the manifesto – ‘We want to be free. We want to be able to live a   normal life. We want peace’ – are meaningless. Perhaps this is why it is   so attractive to those who have read it on Facebook, and the European   and American media who have taken it up. It caters to western tastes  and  desires, especially to the <a href="http://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n23/james-harkin/cyber-con" target="_blank">fantasy of a digitally connected youth emerging from cyberspace as agents of transformative change in the real world</a>.   In the case of Palestine, this fantasy does a number of things besides   soothing guilty consciences. It reframes the issue of justice for   Palestine in vacuous and unthreatening terms, casts the method by which   change may occur into virtual space, and empties the Palestinian body   politic of the thoughtfully articulated demands of its millions of   citizens.</p>
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<p id="comments"><strong>Comments on “Facebook in Gaza”</strong></p>
<ol>
<li id="comment-3348">
<div id="div-comment-3348">
<div><cite>Seth Edenbaum</cite> <span>says:</span></div>
<div><a href="http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2011/01/10/karma-nabulsi/facebook-in-gaza/comment-page-1/#comment-3348">10 January 2011 at 5:25 pm</a></div>
<p>“But without being rooted in any particular or collective vision of   change, the three demands articulated in the manifesto – ‘We want to be   free. We want to be able to live a normal life. We want peace’ – are   meaningless.”</p>
<p>That statement makes sense only as coming from an Oxford academic.    GYBO are teenagers telling adults to stop acting like 5 year olds; your   schoolmarmish response is inappropriate and self-serving.</p>
<p>Whatever its limitations, the sociability of Facebook is preferable   to the asociality of people who pretend to live in the world of ideas   rather than people.</p>
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</li>
<li id="comment-3350">
<div id="div-comment-3350">
<div><cite>macuchlan</cite> <span>says:</span></div>
<div><a href="http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2011/01/10/karma-nabulsi/facebook-in-gaza/comment-page-1/#comment-3350">12 January 2011 at 10:51 am</a></div>
<p>Dear Ms. Nabulsi</p>
<p>I am Macuchlan a member of the Gaza Youth Break Out. The reason   behind my name is that the Irish legacy of a youngster who studied all   human sciences and migrated in a  cave the corruption of his community   and their arrogance, He returned when he becomes old enough (30s ) and   lead his country to accept their freedom and to free themselves to think   and to act towards improvement in giving the youth the right to fight   for what they believe. I can’t disagree with you about the historic   manifests that brought the Palestinian community a further failure   because the Palestinian policy has to do with the leader not the people.   We gave the educated youth the right to release their anger and   oppression that they have been facing for a long time. We are not   westernized as we understand the Palestinian glorious history and the   inglorious present. I hope you cite what you said in the Manifesto as   you cited the before manifests, not misinterpret the message of freedom   not only mentally but also in a based ground of the tragic situation of   Palestine. Our faith in our lands will never change but our present   needs a change carried by the youth as a step aware.</p>
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</li>
<li id="comment-3351">
<div id="div-comment-3351">
<div><cite>macuchlan</cite> <span>says:</span></div>
<div><a href="http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2011/01/10/karma-nabulsi/facebook-in-gaza/comment-page-1/#comment-3351">12 January 2011 at 11:23 am</a></div>
<p>Let me view something here,<br />
The Palestinian revolution at the first Place, placed education as an   effective tool for youth to lead a change, as far as the revolution   ended up with devision educated and educative youth have the right to   change. We do not neglect the Palestinian historic Manifests while they   have turned to be failure with the usage of Israhell to our own   Political leaders. If the youth have their god -given right to change   and to lead their change, our current situation will be dissimilar.   UNITY is our tool to change if the Old traditional manifests doesn’t   change the reality of having fake accords that are self imposed and   Israhelli imposed on the Palestinian people to lead them to think of   having the basic family supplies and the money supplies that always have   to do with regional and international propagandas, then leave the  stage  for a youth group on their own to lead a positive change not a  birth of  a new middle east according to the American agenda…</p>
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</li>
<li id="comment-3352">
<div id="div-comment-3352">
<div><cite>acitizenofpalestine</cite> <span>says:</span></div>
<div><a href="http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2011/01/10/karma-nabulsi/facebook-in-gaza/comment-page-1/#comment-3352">12 January 2011 at 11:36 am</a></div>
<p>Beautifully said Karma, you wonderfully articulated what many of us   have been discussing. While our sympathies lie with the motives and   frustration behind the ‘manifesto’ we were perturbed by the amount and   nature of the Western press it received, compared to that   accorded/denied the hundreds of serious and collective initiatives   launched by Palestinians over the years.</p>
<p>Cynicism will get us nowhere, we need to return to our own   revolutionary history in order to rebuild a collective movement for the   future.</p>
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</li>
<li id="comment-3353">
<div id="div-comment-3353">
<div><cite>Chris Mullen</cite> <span>says:</span></div>
<div><a href="http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2011/01/10/karma-nabulsi/facebook-in-gaza/comment-page-1/#comment-3353">12 January 2011 at 2:34 pm</a></div>
<p>“The ‘Gaza Youth Breaks Out’ manifesto does not belong to this   tradition: it does not put forth any clear analysis of the current   historical situation, or outline a response to it.”<br />
Actually this is the point, but longtime Fateh/PLO-representative   Nabulsi is not getting it. For her, to speak up you have to be a)   organized (in political groups or parties), b) having an analysis and   the concept for making it better, a strategy. True, the manifesto “does   not declare the existence of an organised group, or invite anyone to   join anything.” And for sure “its tone is denunciatory rather than   analytical” and its “language is apolitical”. But that’s the new, the   progressive of the manifesto, whose authors take the right to CRITICIZE,   and that means telling what is bad, and that it’s bad. That here we   have INDIVIDUALS speaking, and not one of the ideological, corrupt,   selfish parties and organization that Nabulsi seemingly prefers, that we   have the “terminology of resistance common to Palestinian manifestos”   replaced by “the f-word” and the statement that the youth “do not want   to fight in the political, ideological game but just want to live a   peaceful life – this is what gives this manifesto for sure more   “mobilisational dimension” than any ideological call in the name of an   objectivated collective (“the Palestinians”). Mrs. Nabulsi, what you say   is reactionary. What they say, is progressive. In the end, the   individuals are speaking.</p>
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<ul>
<li id="comment-3357">
<div id="div-comment-3357">
<div><cite>acitizenofpalestine</cite> <span>says:</span></div>
<div><a href="http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2011/01/10/karma-nabulsi/facebook-in-gaza/comment-page-1/#comment-3357">12 January 2011 at 8:37 pm</a></div>
<p>Chris, your political preference for dead-end, harmless outbursts  of  frustration distorts your perspective. The fact that you consider   initiatives that are “denunciatory rather than analytical” using   “language [that]is apolitical” as novel only underlines Karma’s point   about the misrepresentation of Palestinian initiatives in the media.   There is nothing new, glamorous or exciting about such outbursts in our   history. We are all too used to unrepresentative ‘manifestos’ and   ‘declarations’ popping up in English in Western media outlets, elevated   by the attention they receive but with no real backing amongst   Palestinians. Whereas rarely do the communiques of our mass   organisations achieve such attention.</p>
<p>The fact that you consider this type of ‘initiative’ to be   progressive reflects your interests and priorities but not mine and   judging by the Palestinian non/reaction to the ‘manifesto’, neither   those of Palestinians. Progressive initiatives, as the best in our   history, often include criticism (although I don’t believe   indiscriminate use of the ‘f-word’ can really be described as that) but   also offer the hope of change, something positive that engages with the   community rather than dismissing it. Quite how you think this is   mobilisational, I’m not sure.</p>
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<li id="comment-3358">
<div id="div-comment-3358">
<div><cite>Chris Mullen</cite> <span>says:</span></div>
<div><a href="http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2011/01/10/karma-nabulsi/facebook-in-gaza/comment-page-1/#comment-3358">12 January 2011 at 9:42 pm</a></div>
<p>Yeah, you know about “the Palestinan interests”. You, like Nabulsi,   think that this text (outburst) written by frustrated adolescents in   Gaza, is not representing “the Palestinian” cause (this does not exist).   They just represent themselves, and many of their friends. By the way,   adolescents constitute half of the population in Gaza.<br />
But if you prefer the well known boring and stereotypical statements of   political parties and organizations (that are making their profit in   this conflict and that follow their ideological agendas) over the   “unrepresentative ‘manifestos’” of this young individuals representing   themselves and thus representing loads of people that don’t want to fit   in the traditional dichotomic discourse of “resistance” – well, don’t   expect me to like this idea. This is what I called reactionary.</p>
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<li id="comment-3355">
<div id="div-comment-3355">
<div><cite>Ahmed Moor</cite> <span>says:</span></div>
<div><a href="http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2011/01/10/karma-nabulsi/facebook-in-gaza/comment-page-1/#comment-3355">12 January 2011 at 7:25 pm</a></div>
<p>Dr. Nabulsi’s main criticism isn’t that the young people in Gaza   ought to avoid commenting or comment within an identifiable political   framework or even that theirs is a milquetoast manifesto.  Instead, she   notes that the enormous positive reaction garnered by the manifesto in   the West is largely a consequence of the vague, non-threatening   “demands” these young people make.  An aggressive, (inconveniently)   unyielding Palestinian tradition cannot be widely endorsed in the West   because it seeks to upend Western history.  But a manifesto full of   feel-good vagaries places the Palestinian youths firmly in a   non-controversial space.  She’s not disagreeing with the Gaza youth;   she’s commenting about Western reaction and what it’s motivated by.</p>
<p>I agree with her, and many other young Palestinians agree with her.</p>
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<li id="comment-3356">
<div id="div-comment-3356">
<div><cite>chespirito</cite> <span>says:</span></div>
<div><a href="http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2011/01/10/karma-nabulsi/facebook-in-gaza/comment-page-1/#comment-3356">12 January 2011 at 8:36 pm</a></div>
<p>This debate reminds me of how the story of Rosa Parks has been deformed into a spurious parable of spontaneous individualism.</p>
<p>Rosa Parks was the Black seamstress who in 1955 efused to give up her   seat to a white woman in a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama, and   got arrested.  This sparked the Montgomery bus boycott, a key event  (and  triumph) in the American civil rights movement.  And nearly every  time  Ms Parks’ deed is publicly remembered in America her act is  chalked up  as a catalytic act of spontaneous individualism–a story of  how one  person acting alone can make a difference!<br />
In fact Ms Parks was a stalwart and highly politicized activist, the   secretary of her local NAACP chapter, not just some random citizen.     The boycott that followed  was rigorously planned from start to finish.    Previously a 15 year old girl had done what Ms Parks did, but the  NAACP  deemed her an unsuitable public face for the campaign when it  came out  that the she was pregnant.  Ms Parks acted as a conscious  member of a  highly coordinated political group.<br />
All of which is to say: sure, it would be nice if spontaneous   individuals and their Facebook networks could change the world.  But in   reality it is only organized groups, the kind with visions, plans,   strategies and yes, ideologies, that actually get things done.  Working   with such organization has many pains, but internet individualism has  no  pleasures, and is politically inconsequential.</p>
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<li id="comment-3359">
<div id="div-comment-3359">
<div><cite>Chris Mullen</cite> <span>says:</span></div>
<div><a href="http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2011/01/10/karma-nabulsi/facebook-in-gaza/comment-page-1/#comment-3359">12 January 2011 at 11:47 pm</a></div>
<p>Actually you are right, the manifesto will not “change the world”  or  change anything. And Nabulsi is right that it will not get people to   organize in political organizations’ structures.<br />
But this is not the point. The maifesto is an encouraging sign of a   “change” inside (!) Palestinian Society, where young people move away   from the traditional, ideological political organizations and challenge   the discourse with courage (under the threat of Hamas repression) and   the unwillingness to be “aggressive” (Ahmed Moore), the unwillingness to   be either  the young militant “hero” or just the passive victim, the   stereotypes the media is presenting. And this change brings forth a   group of people that as individuals have the moral right to demand their   freedom and peace from Israel, as they are demanding it categorically,   and inside the Palestinian society, too. Just if the criticism and the   demands are universal, you have the right to criticize. Protesting   Israeli aggression while not caring about Gazas Social Centres being   shut by force and violence and torture by Hamas, makes a hypocrite.</p>
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<li id="comment-3360">
<div id="div-comment-3360">
<div><cite>daughterofjerusalem</cite> <span>says:</span></div>
<div><a href="http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2011/01/10/karma-nabulsi/facebook-in-gaza/comment-page-1/#comment-3360">13 January 2011 at 6:49 am</a></div>
<p>The ironies and problems in this essay abound.</p>
<p>Let us begin by reminding ourselves that these are young people.   Young people who live in conditions never before seen in Palestinian   history.</p>
<p>While she reminds us of our history of manifestos, her neat schema   ignores their content. The first Fateh manifesto she refers to was a   short paragraph calling on the sons of Palestine to join the struggle.   It did not reveal a fully formed strategy; it was angry and vague,   calling on the sons of the Nakba to rise up.  Those first manifestos of   the underground leadership of the first intifada were the same. Angry   (with the PLO leadership that had betrayed them from Tunis), and vague   (calling for a rising up, but offering little strategic vision–yet). The   Thawabet document she refers to is written by individuals. Individuals   with absolutely no representative or democratic legitimacy.</p>
<p>Moreover, her nostalgia for the earlier phase of the revolution is   unjustified. This is a revolution that may have inspired Palestinians   with manifestos, but whose leadership utterly betrayed them any chance   they could have had in succeeding – time and time again from Palestine   and beyond in piles of the broken souls that lay forgotten in a trail of   their broken promises. Moreover, it would behoove her to take off her   rose-tinted glasses and remember that the Palestinian revolution also   penned manifestos in English, aimed at a Western audience, and indeed   strategized with Western sensibilities in mind–quite often to the   detriment of the rights and just cause of our people. Why can’t youth in   Gaza also speak to that same audience? Must they first get permission   from the self-annointed gate-keepers of the “revolutionary tradition”?</p>
<p>Your revolution and its strategies and manifestos failed. We will   learn from it, not replicate it. We will move beyond it, reach further,   aim higher. Your revolution is caste in amber. Ours continues, is  alive,  and well, and will flourish. We will liberate our homeland, our   refugees will return, and our comrades in Gaza–as our youth in Gaza  have  so often done–will lead the way.</p>
<p>What is more important? A tradition of speaking truth to   power–consequences be damned–(even if it is a small collective of youth   in Gaza), or a tradition of empty sloganeering?</p>
<p>Finally, it is an irony of shameless proportions that someone who   does NOT speak nor read Arabic, who enters refugee camps in   UNRWA-protected cars, would dismiss this manifesto as “written in   English” and critique this very same “Western media” for over-inflating   it in a Western, English, paper.</p>
<p>Love to Gaza’s young people breaking out, from Jerusalem’s-Arab Jerusalem’s–young people breaking out</p>
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<li id="comment-3362">
<div id="div-comment-3362">
<div><cite>acitizenofpalestine</cite> <span>says:</span></div>
<div><a href="http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2011/01/10/karma-nabulsi/facebook-in-gaza/comment-page-1/#comment-3362">13 January 2011 at 10:38 am</a></div>
<p>The bitterness, cynicism and personal vitriol of your comment, daughter, offers us at best nothing more than a dead-end.</p>
<p>The fact that you are so dismissive of decades of Palestinian   history, a revolution that succeeded in pulling together the fragments   of a broken people after the Nakba and mobilising two generations, here   in Palestine and in the camps outside, does your argument no favors.  The  way you toss aside all those years of sacrifice and struggle from   bottom up and initiatives that launched mass movements, in preference   for a facebook post lauded by the Western papers, shows how alienated we   have become from our own history. You might not consider it yours but I   am proud to consider it mine.</p>
<p>You say we will liberate our homeland. I hope so. But we will not do   it through facebook nor without the hard work of organising and  building  a movement that our parents and grandparents sacrificed so  much to  achieve.</p>
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<li id="comment-3361">
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<div><cite>Marc</cite> <span>says:</span></div>
<div><a href="http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2011/01/10/karma-nabulsi/facebook-in-gaza/comment-page-1/#comment-3361">13 January 2011 at 9:06 am</a></div>
<p>Thanks, Karma, for reminding us of the necessity of collective   vision and collective action in politics. The only way that change can   occur is through the action of people working together, in organization,   for a cause that represents their general will. As you say, there is   nothing wrong with individuals posting to facebook or particular groups   making denunciations of an awful situation. But we must not mistake   anger for action. Action has its own prerequisites, as identified so   perfectly in the manifesto tradition that you summarize so effectively.</p>
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<p>For further comment and discussion go to <a href="http:///">Facebook in Gaza </a></p>
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<p><a href="http://jfjfp.com/?p=20294&amp;utm_source=rss&amp;utm_medium=rss&amp;utm_campaign=gaza-youth-breaks-out-a-critique-and-a-debate">Gaza youth breaks out – a critique and a debate | Jews for Justice for Palestinians</a>.</p>
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