“At a time when the world desperately needs hope and guidance toward habitable futures, these moving visions of a decolonized, democratic and free Palestine will resonate wherever collective yearnings for freedom have survived. Palestinian intellectuals, activists, and artists are a beacon both for the future of Palestine and the destiny of our globe.”
—ANGELA DAVIS, American activist, author and professor known internationally for her ongoing work to combat all forms of oppression in the US and abroad
“This landmark book will destroy any doubt that Palestine can be freed. Its multiple truths and dimensions will strike fear into those who conspire to destroy the possibility of a resurgent Palestine from the river to the sea. The Palestinian voice and vision articulated in this masterpiece of lived experiences and intellectual memory possesses the strength, culture, intellect, organizational creativity and dynamism that foreshadows a vision of liberation that will triumph—because it is rooted in the indestructibility of a people’s just cause. Read this book and you will be strengthened and inspired. It’s a death knell to the Zionist fantasy and imperialist domination. Every page breathes the scent of freedom—sooner than is thought. This is an ode to joy, freeing us all from colonialist horror, and an uplifting glimpse into the possible future.”
—RONNIE KASRILS, South African author, politician and anti-apartheid icon
“This book deserves a warm welcome. It celebrates the achievements of Palestinians and the rich diversity of their culture. Clearly, their spirit of resistance is alive and well. The book’s implicit challenge is to all who care for justice and the rule of law—free the Palestinians from their cruel oppression by Israel.”
—KEN LOACH, renowned British filmmaker (his works include Kes and I, Daniel Blake)
“There is eloquent, optimistic logic to this outstanding anthology edited by Ilan Pappé and Ramzy Baroud. It is that Palestine will be free when, like a seed beneath the snow, the power of a universal movement emerges from below: truly a people’s liberation matched by our solidarity.”
—JOHN PILGER, acclaimed Australian journalist, writer, scholar and documentary filmmaker
“It is so important to pay attention to the brave and smart voices of Palestinians, those particularly who are active every day to bring decency and justice into a world getting uglier by the day. This book carries these voices, Palestinian voices, but also voices that echo inside our heads, voices that urge us on, tell us to go out there onto the streets to make the world by marching.”
—VIJAY PRASHAD, Indian historian, editor, journalist and director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research
“The first-hand testimonies in this collection of essays send a clear message to the racist apartheid occupiers of Palestine: your attempts to obliterate us have failed. Here we stand. Here is the evidence of the culture, the archeology, the history and the land that you have tried to persuade yourselves and the world that didn’t exist, here we stand as living proof of the presence you could not erase even after more than a century of trying.
These essays underscore the continuing strength of resistance to the totalitarian nature of the Zionist enterprise. It was not just the people who had to be removed, the villages destroyed, the land taken and shorn of its native growth but Palestine in its totality, so the day would come when future generations would not even know it ever existed.
Yet even after a century, this goal has not been reached and now, with more Palestinians between the river and the sea than their oppressors, clearly, it never will be.
These essays take the reader deep into personal Palestinian experiences. An archeologist, imprisoned women, weavers of tapestries, college professors, an agriculturalist, journalists, poets, musicians, cineastes and exiles living far from their homeland are united in the twin messages sent to their oppressor: defiance and the unshakeable certainty that one Palestine will again be free.”
—PROFESSOR JEREMY SALT, author of The Unmaking of the Middle East: A History of Western Disorder in Arab Lands
“This is a fascinating, great book.”
—ROGER WATERS, world-famous English songwriter, musician, bassist and singer, founding member of progressive rock band Pink Floyd and lifelong anti-apartheid, human rights, and pro-Palestine activist
In the reading of this great book
I came across Mahmoud Darwish’s ID Card poem from 1964
I have a message for my dead master
And my dead mother, and my dead father
And the land they fought for.
So, so you think you can tell
Heaven from hell
Blue skies from pain
And can you tell a green field
From a cold steel rail
A smile from a veil
Do you think you can tell
And did they get you to trade
Your heroes for ghosts
Hot ashes for trees
Hot air for a cool breeze
Cold comfort for change
And did you exchange
A walk on part in the war
For a lead role in a cage
No, you didn’t Mahmoud
And neither did my mother and father
And neither will I
We will all be here
Living and dead
Shoulder to shoulder
Side by side
Until Palestine is Liberated.
Roger Waters*
December 22, 2021
*Roger Waters’ father, Eric Fletcher, was killed in the battle of Anzio in the Second World War, fighting against Fascism and Nazism; it is this memory that he brings to the fore, when thinking of those who fought, and are fighting, for the liberation of Palestine.