As a six-year-old child in 1948, Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, who was born in the village of Berweh, witnessed first-hand the total obliteration of his home as a result of the establishment of the Israeli state. Though the village is now visibly absent, the pain of his loss is still felt in every word, metaphor, and description. Through his poetry, the Palestinian experience is not just seen through Israel’s narratives of violence and conflict, but through the real and heart-wrenching experience of exile and loss. To the outside world, the struggle of the Palestinians is simply a journalistic report of events and number of casualties, yet the truth is that it goes beyond the random recurring events of conflict. As South African writer Nadine Gordimer once described, journalistic truth is different from inward testimony, as while journalism reports the daily event, the writer’s inward testimony goes deeper “towards the goal of truth” in an “era when between slogans and the truth is an abyss”. The writer or the poet can grasp the deeper meaning behind the human experience that cannot be simply extracted from factual reporting, as it produces a…
How a Palestinian Poet Used the Power of Rhetoric to Center the Palestinian Narrative
September 17, 2022
