Dr. Hassan Hamid: “The Algerians, with what they possessed, resisted the French army, which is one of the strongest armies in the world in the modern era, and they did not fear it, just as the Palestinians are now resisting an Israeli army, which is one of the strongest armies in the world in the modern era, and they did not fear it...”Yes, literature writes the history of the country as it confronts the oppression of the colonialists.The Algerian revolution said very clearly: People cannot be defeated...and this is a certainty supported by history.The Algerians and Palestinians have derived a trench for cultural struggle that is parallel to their revolutionary trench.The interview was conducted by Hadjira Bendjeddou Bendjeddou and was featured in the Arabic Narrative Anthology newspaper.
He is a Palestinian short story writer and researcher. He published more than ten short story collections containing more than 100 short stories. His texts won awards in the Arab countries and in Germany, including the Naguib Mahfouz Award for the year 1999 for the novel “The Bridge of Jacob’s Daughters,” which was translated into both languages. French and Turkish. I am pleased and honored to host Dr. Hassan Hamid. Welcome, dear guest.
I have the honor to be with you. Colonialism, settlement, occupation... the names are many, but the meaning is the same, which is to seize a land that is not his, exploit its inhabitants, and uproot them from their lands and homes through extermination and displacement, as he transforms the country he colonizes into a new land and removes from it all its archaeological, religious, political, and cultural monuments in order to practice... Absolute control over it is through the settlers. This is what Algeria knew in 1830 when France occupied it, and Palestine went through it in 1948 when it was settled by Jews, and in 1967 when the Israeli army occupied the West Bank, part of Jordan, the Gaza Strip, the Syrian Golan Heights and the Sinai Peninsula in a war called The Six-Day War, which entered the Palestinian dictionary as “the setback” Does Dr. Hassan believe that writing true history through stories or novels is the writer’s responsibility, and to what extent?Yes..Literature always plays this very important role when society is afflicted with tremors that threaten its sovereignty, history, land, traditions, language, customs, and the security of its people. The condition of the people of Palestine has been like this for a hundred years and more. Therefore, writers, writers, and poets set out to write Palestinian history through poems, novels, short stories, plays, and children’s literature. Because the news and the numbers of martyrs, wounded, and missing will be consumed by the passage of years. And here comes the role of literature in order to immortalize events and incidents, restore to the names of the revolutionaries and leaders the patriotic luster of their actions, and restore national history to its glow once again.
The Deir Yassin massacre was numbers... and through literature, it became a national biography that talks about the village, the population, the number of martyrs, the destruction of homes, and what the Israelis did in mutilating the bodies of the martyrs, and the panic and fear that occurred that included all the homes of the village..
Yes, literature writes the history of the country as it confronts the oppression of the coloniser. Tolstoy wrote in his novel “War and Peace” the history of the Russian people’s confrontation with Napoleon Bonaparte’s army, and Vercor wrote the novel “Silence of the Sea” which talks about a form of French resistance on the day Germany occupied Paris in World War II. ...and there are many examples... Dozens of novels were written about the British occupation of South Africa, and Algerian writers wrote the biography of the French colonizer and his satanic practices on the one hand, and the biography of the Algerian people as they resisted. So Ibn Hadouqa, Kateb Yassin, and Al-Tahir Wattar wrote, and Wassini Al-Araj wrote the history of the country of a million and a half history of grandparents.
As for Algeria, those battles and the intense popular resistance of Sheikh Al-Maqrani, Sheikh Al-Haddad, Laleh Fatima N’Soumar, Bouziane Al-Kalai and others sparked a liberation revolution, whose machine gun was a statement that led to the Algerian people revolting, and its top was leaders planning and planning how to get rid of this brutal destruction, so the Algerian War broke out in On the 1st of November 1954, no more than 1,500 Mujahid soldiers participated in it with a few weapons and a few traditional-made bombs. After that, the Algerian people presented successive convoys of martyrs from among the best of their loyal sons, who watered with their pure blood every inch of our good land, and its foundations became a mixture of the pure bones of the martyrs. Blessed, with similar steps and on the same path, the Palestinian resistance has been moving since the era of the British Mandate to the present day. By virtue of the love and mixing of blood between Algeria and Palestine, and the horror of colonialism that the two countries witnessed, and the results of political relations, can we say that the Palestinian liberation resistance draws its strength and struggle from the blessed Algerian liberation revolution?Yes..What the Algerian revolutionaries did, from 1954 until 1962, and even before this date (I mean what Emir Abdel Qader Al Jazairi did)... is the national and revolutionary mirror that the Palestinian people always look to in order to learn from it the plans and secrets of confrontation, and to learn the lesson from it. The most loyal and most beautiful patriot is not to neglect the homeland, no matter how great the sacrifices are, and no matter how long the time takes.
From the Algerian revolution, the Palestinians learned patience, courage, love of the homeland, and the ability to liberate it from the abomination of colonialism, and that there is no reassurance or a secure life except the expulsion of the colonizer and his return, defeated and defeated.
The Algerian Revolution was an example for all countries and peoples that gained independence after the victory of the Algerian Revolution.
The Algerian revolution said very clearly: People cannot be defeated...and this is a certainty supported by history.
What we have noticed in many revolutions is that the focus is on the political struggle more than the cultural struggle, which is no less important than the revolutionary struggle. The Palestinian issue can also be introduced using various arts such as theater and cinema. We mention, for example, the play “God’s Chosen People.” By Ahmed Ali Bakathir, a theatrical work that discussed the Palestinian issue. Among the dramatic works: the film “A Girl from Palestine,” which touched on the Palestinian issue in 1948 immediately after the Nakba, the film Jamila Bouhired, and the film The Battle of Algiers, these films also discussed the Algerian issue during the French colonization of Algeria.. The Palestinian resistance through poetry and novels, and the Algerian resistance as well through poetry and novels. Among the most prominent freedom fighters is the poet of the Algerian revolution, “Mufdi Zakaria,” the author of “The Iliad of Algeria,” and the revolution, anger, and beauty it carried within it. Likewise, when we say resistance literature, we remember the martyr journalist writer, “Ghassan Kanafani,” who He published 18 books and wrote hundreds of articles on culture, politics, and the struggle of the Palestinian people. These works were translated into 20 languages and some of his works were included in school and university curricula. He is not the only one, of course. There is also “Mahmoud Darwish,” known as the poet of the Palestinian revolution, and a large elite of writers. The poets were known for their support of the Palestinian and Algerian cause. What are the points of intersection between the Algerian cultural struggle and the Palestinian cultural struggle, and what were its dimensions in supporting both causes? Writers of both countries emphasized the importance of popular struggle, willpower, patience, and not fearing or submitting to the power of the occupier, no matter how great it is, and that the colonizer does not understand a language other than the language of force, and will not end the years of torment and humiliation except through resistance and confrontation.The Algerians, with what they possessed, resisted the French army, which was one of the strongest armies in the world in the modern era, and they did not fear it, just as the Palestinians are now resisting an Israeli army, which is one of the strongest armies in the world in the modern era, and they did not fear it... All of this was demonstrated by the Algerian writers in their literary blogs. It is enough to read what Mufdi Zakaria, the poet who was wronged by life, and Al-Tahir Watar wrote...to know how the Algerians struggled until they gained their cherished independence, and the situation is the same among Palestinian writers...it is enough to read the poems of Ibrahim Tuqan, Abdel Karim Al-Karmi, Abdel Rahim Mahmoud, and Tawfiq Ziad. Rashid Hussein, Mahmoud Darwish, Samih Al-Qasim, Khaled Abu Khaled, and Moin Bseiso. It is enough to read the novels, plays, and stories of: Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, Ghassan Kanafani, Samira Azzam, Yahya Yakhlef, Rashad Abu Shawar, and Tawfiq Fayyad to know the importance of the Palestinian struggle.
The Algerians and Palestinians have derived a trench for cultural struggle that is parallel to their revolutionary trench.
Aside from the claims of the Zionists, how did the Palestinian narrative contribute to the history of the true Palestinian narrative?The conflict with the Israeli occupier, which represents the last form of ancient colonialism, is a conflict over everything, over land, history, life...and over vision.The most dangerous thing is the conflict over the narrative adopted by both parties. Everything that the Israeli narrative says is false, allegations, false fabrications, and blatant lies. It is not supported by credibility, nor is it supported by logic. The Zionist entity.. is not a natural creation. It is a child created by British power. It is Today it is guarded by both American and Western power. It was born and created in the United Nations in 1948. It will disappear because it is a satanic outgrowth, and this is what the Israeli narrative jumps at and does not want to mention. The Israeli entity has been Judaizing everything since 1948. It has not succeeded, and it will not succeed. Jaffa will remain Jaffa and not Tel Aviv.. They steal everything and call it with Hebrew names, and are trying to create a history or a heritage for themselves.. And I cannot mention to the Israelis a history other than the history of massacres against the Palestinians, and no heritage except the heritage of stealing the heritage of others... from their star. To steal the Palestinian dress.
The Israeli narrative and the Palestinian narrative are a struggle between falsehood and truth, and between falsehood and truth.
How did resistance poetry arise among educated Palestinians? How did this poetry contribute to introducing the Palestinian issue abroad?Palestinian resistance poetry arose since the British occupied the Palestinian country in 1917, and literature and arts are usually what announce the spark of the beginning of the resistance. So poetry was a trench next to the trench of the revolutionaries, first against the British, then against the Zionist gangs again. Palestinian popular poetry had the great national role in inciting Resistance, and at all times and occasions. Among the most important Palestinian popular poets: Noah Ibrahim, whose name was repeated in every home, just as his poems were repeated in every national demonstration. After 1948, the scope of Palestinian resistance poetry expanded with the expansion of the injustice that occurred on the Palestinian country, starting with the massacre. Deir Yassin to the Kafr Qasim massacre...to the epic flood of Al-Aqsa in these days.Palestinian resistance poetry today has an important place in the Arab poetry blog because it preserved the history of the Palestinian revolution during 100 years of resistance.
The poetry of the Palestinian resistance became known for the Palestinian cause after it was translated into several international languages, and after it was written by Palestinian poets with great talents such as:
Abd al-Karim al-Karmi, Noah Ibrahim, Abd al-Rahim Mahmoud, Ibrahim Touqan, Mahmoud Darwish, Samih al-Qasim, Izz al-Din al-Manasra, and Ahmad Dahbour.. He studied this poetry in many Arab countries.
Dr. Hassan told me about resistance through poetry and novels between the past and the present? Also, the Palestinian novel had a prominent role in introducing the world to the Palestinian issue, just as the role of poetry had..Since the novel “Memoirs of a Chicken” by Musa Al-Husseini... until the latest novel published today... Palestinian novelists have been writing Palestinian national history... and the history of the Palestinian revolution inside and outside the Palestinian homeland...
The Palestinian novel has preserved Palestinian customs, traditions, customs and dreams, and today it is one of the most important Arab narrative blogs, and its knights are many: Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, Ghassan Kanafani, Emil Habibi, Tawfiq Fayyad, Rashad Abu Shawar, Yahya Yakhlef, Atef Abu Saif, and Walid Al-Sharafa..
What is the role of resistance literature in supporting just causes in general and the Algerian and Palestinian revolutions in particular?Literature in general, including poetry and the novel, is what expresses the conscience of the people who face injustice, it is what narrates heroics, it is what describes battles, and it is what glorifies the actions of revolutionaries.All the Arabs knew the heroic achievements of the Algerian people, most notably gaining independence through Algerian poetry, stories, plays, and novels. They knew the names of Algerian cities, towns, and battles from Algerian poetry, stories, and novels. This role was played by poetry and all genres of Palestinian literature, at home and abroad...and when it was translated. Algerian and Palestinian literature into international languages. Others knew the importance of the two peoples as they struggled against the occupiers, and the heroism that pervaded the Algerian and Palestinian geography.
The essential role of literature is to resist injustice and defend freedom and human values.
Do you have final thoughts you would like to share with our readers and audience?I am in love with Algeria and its loyal people who taught the world how to love the land, history, customs and traditions. Dr. Hassan! My meeting with you was interesting and useful! Thank you for accepting the invitation again, and we will meet in the coming days,God willing, on other topics.
With my everlasting love..
