Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, September 1998, page 108

Northwest News

Palestinian Quilt, Palestinian Films Exhibited in Portland

By Kinga Bernàth

Palestine Quilt Exhibit Shown in Portland’s Central Library

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), Palestine Arab-American Association, Muslim Educational Trust, Oregon Peace Institute and the Middle East Study Center presented a Palestinian quilt exhibit “Palestine: 50 Years of Dispossession” from July 7 to July 31 at the central branch of the Multnomah County Library in Portland, Oregon. The event was also supported by the Ecumenical Ministries and the Friends of Sabeel Committee.

The quilt is composed of 418 squares, each to commemorate a different Palestinian village destroyed at the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. After being unveiled in New York City on May 15, the national quilt tour reached Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Houston, Dallas, Jacksonville, Detroit, Toledo and Cleveland, culminating in a Capitol Hill rally in Washington, DC on June 14.

Chris Barghout, who is of Palestinian descent and a member of ADC, came up with the idea of the Portland event at a recent exhibit hosted by the County Library in celebration of the 50th anniversary of Israel. He thought that this event is needed “so that Palestinians and Americans and people who are sympathetic could see what happened and educate people through a point of view which is not often seen in this country.” He added that “the Library is the most central part of Portland and you have many hundreds and thousands of people walking through here every day...It’s an opportunity to let our side, the Palestinian side, have a voice, without having the filter of journalists’ analyses, which tend generally to do us an injustice.”

Barghout said that while organizing the exhibit, he received a lot of volunteer help from other organizations and individuals from the community who supplied refugee art pictures, antique Palestinian dresses shown at the exhibit, and donated their time “to help piece [the event] together.”

Palestinian Film Festival at Portland State University

From June 30 to July 2 Portland State University (Portland, OR) hosted a Palestinian Film Festival to commemorate the Palestinian experience of the 50 years of Israeli statehood. The event was organized by Jam’iya, a new Middle East student club at PSU, and the Palestine Arab-American Association. Students, staff and faculty gathered to watch the movies “Native Sons: Palestinians in Exile,” “Children of Fire,” and “Jerusalem: An Occupation Set in Stone?” The film sessions were followed by discussions led by Marlene Eid Malik, professor of psychology at Portland Community College, and Dr. Jan AbuShakrah, professor of sociology at the same institution.

Born and raised in Jerusalem, Professor Eid is an American citizen today. In 1990, she went back to the Middle East for a year to help psychiatrist Eyad El-Serraj set up a mental health program in the Gaza Strip. She said that although the whole Palestinian population experienced the intifada, she focused her treatment on the children, as they were the ones most affected.

These children were suffering from phobias, post-traumatic stress syndrome, and some unclassifiable psychological conditions, all related to the violence they encountered during their parents’ struggle for freedom. Most of them had an obsession with death as the ultimate goal of life since they couldn’t be free alive. Death, they thought, would also bring them closer to friends and family members whom they had lost in the fighting.

However, Professor Eid pointed out, the intifada had positive effects on the psyche of the Palestinians, too. It offered them an outlet and a feeling of empowerment, while reinforcing their identity.

In the discussion following the viewing of the movie “Jerusalem: An Occupation Set in Stone?,” Dr. AbuShakrah talked to the audience about Palestinian issues of property and housing today. Professor AbuShakrah, former director of the Palestine Human Rights Campaign office in Jerusalem, described how the Israeli government has misused the absentee property law to expropriate land from its legitimate Palestinian owners.

Jam’iya is founded and led by Michelle Strausbaugh, a graduate student of Middle East history and of Arabic and Hebrew languages, at Portland State University.