As part of the Long Reads podcast on Jacobin Radio, we’ve produced a miniseries called Red Star Over Palestine: Histories of the Palestinian Left. The six episodes of the series look at the impact of left-wing ideas on Palestinian politics and culture from the 1920s to the present day.
The experiences of the Palestinian left in its various forms are a crucial part of the wider Palestinian story. For the last quarter century, the rivalry between Fatah and Hamas has dominated the political stage in Palestine under the shadow of Israeli occupation. But as recently as the first intifada during the late 1980s, the main challenge to Fatah’s leadership of the Palestinian national movement came from the Left rather than groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
Along with their impact on the Palestinian national movement, left organizations have influenced the development of Palestinian cultural life. Some of the great Palestinian writers, such as Emile Habibi, Ghassan Kanafani, and Mahmoud Darwish, came out of this political milieu.
The series is about the histories rather than the history of the Palestinian left, because there isn’t a single movement or party that has been able to channel all of these energies. That fragmentation reflects the wider division of the Palestinian people into separate political and geographical spaces: the Palestinian minority inside Israel itself; the population of the occupied territories, divided in turn between Gaza and the West Bank; and the diaspora in countries like Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon.
Our first episode covers the…
Auteur: Daniel Finn
