Unpacking the Phrase “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free” | Maha Nassar
This conversation offers a brief history of Palestine and its peoples, a look at the Palestinian experience both in exile and within modern-day Israel. Professor Maha Nassar – author of Brothers Apart: Palestinian Citizens of Israel and the Arab world – talks us through the daily indignities, state repression, and racism faced by Palestinians in Israel. She unpacks the origins and meanings of the phrase "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" and how she goes about dismantling false narratives.
This episode was recorded on Friday, November 24 at 5pm Palestine Time. Please note that we're recording special podcast episodes relevant to understanding the historical context of what is happening in Palestine. Make sure to check out the other highly informative conversations with guests from completely different disciplines who are generously sharing their time and insight in these dark times.
Maha Nassar is an Associate Professor of Modern Middle East History and Islamic Studies at the University of Arizona. Specifically, she is a cultural and intellectual historian of the 20th century Arab world with a focus on Palestinian history. Nassar's research looks at the intellectual constructs of social, political and cultural identities to trace the circulation of political vocabularies that construct as well as contest nationalist narratives.
Nassar's book "Brothers Apart: Palestinian Citizens of Israel and the Arab World" examines how Palestinian cultural producers in Israel during the 1950s and 60s positioned themselves within an Arab and "Third World", social, cultural and intellectual milieu that extended far beyond the confines of the Israeli nation state. By mapping the strategies they deployed, her book demonstrates the importance of Arabic newspapers and literary journals in traversing national boundaries and in creating transnational and transregional communities of solidarity. In 2018 Brothers Apart received a Palestine Book Award for academic titles.
This Is Not a Watermelon
This podcast series is a celebration and documentation of Palestinian history and culture. We interview experts from various disciplines to help us better understand the facts about Palestine – the land and the people.
