On Oct 30th at The People's Forum, Rashid Khalidi and Tariq Ali will be joined by Helga Tawil-Souri to discuss The Neck and the Sword and Ghassan Kanfani's Palestinian Resistance Literature Under Occupation, 1948-1968 (co-published by the Institute for Palestine Studies). RSVP here!
The Neck and the Sword provides an essential overview of Palestinian intellectual and political history. There is biting criticism of US foreign policy, as well as insightful geopolitical analysis. Refusing to shy away from controversy, Khalidi and Ali discuss issues as wide-ranging as Palestinian resistance strategy, the failures of neighboring Arab states to support Palestine, and Western complicity in the ongoing genocide. This is crucial reading for anyone committed to Palestinian liberation.
Co-published with The Institute for Palestine Studies, Ghassan Kanafani’s remarkable extended essay Palestinian Resistance Literature Under Occupation, 1948–1968 is an unyielding act of cultural and political endurance. Writing in the wake of Israel’s devastating territorial expansion in 1967, Kanafani elaborates his theory of resistance literature and offers a visceral account of life under occupation. Translated for the first time into English by one of the greatest living translators from Arabic to English, Tarif Khalidi, Kanafani’s essay offers one of the sharpest social and political analyses of life in Palestine in this early period of occupation. In the two decades following the Nakba, Palestinian writers undertook the grueling task of advancing a cultural struggle to protect their language, culture, and heritage. Join us for a conversation about this newly translated text and its relevance to the continued struggle for Palestinian liberation.
Rashid Khalidi is the author of the bestselling Hundred Years War on Palestine, as well as Palestinian Identity, Brokers of Deceit, and The Iron Cage. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, and many other journals. He is the Edward Said Professor Emeritus of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University in New York and former editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies.
Tariq Ali is a writer and historian. He is a longstanding member of the editorial committee of the New Left Review and the author of over 50 books on world history and politics, including Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity, Bush in Babylon: The Recolonization of Iraq, and The Obama Syndrome: Surrender at Home, War Abroad.
Helga Tawil-Souri's work deals with spatiality, technology, infrastructure, and politics in the Middle East. She is co-editor with Dina Matar of Gaza As Metaphor (Hurst, 2016), and Producing Palestine: The Creative Production of Palestine Through Contemporary Media (I.B. Tauris, 2024). She is Associate Professor in the departments of Media, Culture and Communication and Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at NYU.
