Summer Reading

Every summer I like to find myself a new book to tackle. For most of my life I conquered The Harry Potter series without fail, This year is different.

The Author Elizabeth Laird visited my school (Queen Elizabeth's Girls') in 2002 (I think) when I was 12 years old. To my delight, she began to talk about Palestine. I never imagined that any English lady would talk about such a subject. I scurried to her at the end of her speech and told her my Grandmother was Palestinian. She recommended that I read her book "A Little Piece Of Ground"

"I first visited Israel in 1968, and enjoyed a warm welcome from many Israeli friends. Later, I lived in Beirut with my husband and son during the civil war there, and became aware for the first time of the tragedy of the Palestinian refugees. I visited both Gaza and Ramallah, in the occupied territories, in 2002, while leading workshops for Palestinian writers. I was appalled by the circumstances in which people were living, and became aware that we in the west know very little of what life is like for Palestinians living under military occupation.

I have written A Little Piece of Ground in collaboration with Sonia Nimr, a Palestinian archaeologist, storyteller, writer and translator, who lives in Ramallah. We have tried to make our story as true to life as we can"

I ended up buying her book but never got round to reading it. I lost it while moving homes and recently re-discovered it. Now that I have it in my mits I most certainly will be reading it. i am older and wiser on the subject and will enjoy it a whole lot more.

http://lairdelizabeth.blogspot.com/

Inspiration: Children Of Gaza

Picture courtesy of Channel4.com

Coming from an extremely mixed heritage is something to confuse a child highly. I, out of anyone, should know this. I grew up as a little Armenian girl in London, simple enough? nope.
As I grew older I had to tackle the incredibly annoying task of having to explain myself whenever I met someone new.
"But you look Muslim!" they would tell me...
"How can you look Muslim, It's a religion not a nationality" That shut them up for a while :)
I hated the fact that I knew exactly what they meant. Don't get me wrong there is nothing wrong with looking that way at all, but when you grow up as a Christian white Caucasian, it gets a little annoying when people constantly assume what you may or may not be.
Anyway, as the years went by I found out I was in fact a quarter Palestinian. My grandmother was a Christian Palestinian. She met my Armenian Grandfather in Palestine. His family had moved out of Armenia way before the genocide (that is why I am here)
I got so annoyed with my family growing up, the constant frustration of not knowing who I was lead me to get incredibly touchy.

But these 'troubles' are nothing compared to that of the Children in Gaza.
I came across a program on television not too long ago named 'Dispatches: Children Of Gaza' on Channel 4. Of course no other station would dare broadcast this, with our mainstream media controlled by biased idiotic human beings.
"In December 2008, the Israeli Defence Force unleashed a campaign to destroy the ability of Hamas to launch rockets and mortars into Israel. Around 300 children were among the 1,300 Palestinians that were killed.

After the ceasefire, BAFTA-winning filmmaker Jezza Neumann arrived in Gaza to follow the lives of three children over a year."

After watching the show, I got inspired to a new level. I enrolled myself on the animation module of my course (2d animation that is) and wanted to work on a project about the children of Gaza. Palestine has become a big part of my life, not only because it is my heritage, but because anyone who doesn't believe what is happening is wrong is utterly insane.

Here is a badly photographed picture of the 1st frame of my animation: