Amidst the relentless cycle of terror, death and destruction endured by Palestinians daily, the full extent of their suffering is evident to those who witness these atrocities via social media and independent media. Yet, what is frequently lost in these images is the profound humanity of those who once lived vibrant lives in the very region that is now almost completely rubble.
Jordan Elgrably is an American, French and Moroccan writer and literary editor at The Markaz Review. His new book, “Stories from the Center of the World: New Middle East Fiction,” explores various short stories from the perspective of Middle Eastern and North African writers. On this episode of Scheer Intelligence, Elgrably recounts to host Robert Scheer the often forgotten stories of Palestinians, whose voices desperately need to be heard.
Elgrably paints a vivid picture of the impending future of Palestinian children and teens, pointing to only one aspect of the destruction. “Right now we're looking at a situation where all of the universities in Gaza have been destroyed. Most of the libraries are gone. A lot of the schools are gone,” Elgrably lamented. “And so imagine you have a whole generation, a lost generation of Palestinian kids and teens that are not going to be able to go to school for who knows how long. They're saying it's going to take years to be able to rebuild even places to live, that people are going to be living in tents now. The Palestinians have been refugees for generations over and over.”
As writers, Elgrably and Scheer both see through the distortion of these stories in the subtle ways that penetrate Western society’s perception of people like Palestinians and Muslims in general. “Arabs and Muslims have been convenient stereotypes and clichéd, two-dimensional characters in Hollywood movies, in our imaginations, especially since 9/11, and Israel exploits this because they don't refer to Palestinians, they refer to them as terrorists,” Elgrably said.