ella

“After the Holocaust, it has become almost impossible to conceal large-scale crimes against humanity. Our modern communication-driven world, especially since the upsurge of electronic media, no longer allows human-made catastrophes to remain hidden from the public eye or to be denied. And yet, one such crime has been erased almost totally from the global public memory: the dispossession of the Palestinians in 1948 by Israel. This, the most formative event in the modern history of the land of Palestine, has ever since been systematically denied, and is still today not recognised as an historical fact, let alone acknowledged as a crime that needs to be confronted politically as well as morally.”
― Ilan Pappé, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine

“The thing is, when you can’t speak, people assume you can’t hear either.”
― Layla AlAmmar, Silence Is a Sense

“I have a box too. In my head. It’s where I keep the things that are too much, the things that don’t make sense. Images and sounds and smells and textures languish in boxes, stuffed and secreted, stacked up in a room in my mind. They fill the corners, rise higher and higher, box over box, to the ceiling. At times, the room bulges and heaves like a belly in labor. Sharp edges poke at my mind. It’s hardly ever quiet in there.”
― Layla AlAmmar, Silence Is a Sense

“The orders came with a detailed description of the methods to be employed to forcibly evict the people: large-scale intimidation; laying siege to and bombarding villages and population centres; setting fire to homes, properties and goods; expulsion; demolition; and, finally, planting mines among the rubble to prevent any of the expelled inhabitants from returning.”
― Ilan Pappé, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine