The Palestine Literature Festival just completed its five day run, and they have now compiled their Twitters, text and pictures, in a single page:
Sponsored by the British Council and the United Nations Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization, this festival brought writers from around the world to different locations in Palestine. They held panels, cocktail parties, and poetry readings. They were shut out of their opening and closing nights in Jerusalem by Israeli police, because their activity is political and therefore illegal under the occupier's rules.
Too bad for the military, because with YouTube, Twitter, Flickr and Facebook, the world could follow along and see for themselves what it looks like to try to have culture when your occupiers want you to shut up and disappear. Doesn't make for great public relations for Israel, does it? What do they say, 'the only democracy in the Middle East?' If that's democracy, then I'm a Republican.
The sign of hope: never give up. Never, ever, ever give up. And poetry can live no matter how brutal the prison.
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