Thinkers, intellectuals, writers, and writers from all over the world grapple with questions of liberation and independence in the present time, when the horizon is culturally open to all possibilities.

(Al Jazeera, Med Journey)

(Al Jazeera, Med Journey)

File introduction: 

After more than a century of Palestinian struggle to end the occupation and historical oppression that occurred since World War I, the events of the “Al-Aqsa Flood” of 2023 and the longest Israeli war on the Palestinian territories since 1948 sparked a broad global cultural shock that extended to discussing human destiny, questions of existence and life, and issues of colonialism and freedom.

On the occasion of the 6-month anniversary of the “Al-Aqsa Flood” and the Israeli war on Gaza, Al-Jazeera Net publishes a group of special dialogues and interviews that it conducted with thinkers, intellectuals, writers, writers, and artists from all over the world, in which it attempts to engage with the questions of freedom, justice, and independence in the present time, as the cultural horizon opens up to... All possibilities.

The Israeli war on Gaza sparked a large wave of protests in various parts of the world, and those protests included intellectuals and thinkers, including Arab and Western voices in solidarity with the rights of the Palestinians and rejecting the war, where “the true role of the writer exists in all the creativity he presents, defending freedom and embracing great values.” “As the Palestinian novelist and poet Ibrahim Nasrallah says.

Intellectuals, thinkers, and writers distributed on maps of creativity and geography are united in solidarity with the blood that irrigated the land of Gaza, the blood that is “a victim of Israel’s Zionist settlement project, and a victim of the projects of violence and darkness that this colonial project created in the region and justified its existence,” according to the description of the Lebanese writer and researcher Hoda Fakhr al-Din. Professor of Arabic Literature at the University of Pennsylvania in the United States.

In these interviews and special dialogues, more than 20 intellectuals and thinkers from more than 15 countries speak about a cultural scene that attempts to approach the horrors of what is happening in Gaza and Palestine on a humanitarian, moral, historical, and intellectual level. This file serves as an affirmation of the importance of the role of the intellectual in historical transformations, where knowledge and moral authority distance him from Subordination to authority or isolation in an ivory tower.

Interviews and dialogues in this file:

  • French thinker François Bourga: Islamophobia is behind Europe's criminalization of resistance and bias toward Israel

  • Algerian novelist Wassini Al-Araj: Gaza is an Israeli model of what could happen to the region

  • Israeli historian Avi Shlaim: The war on Gaza is meaningless and the West is biased towards Israel

  • A unified Arab position on normalization and genocide... Two thousand intellectuals sign a statement against the war

  • Italian writer Francesco Borgonovo: Islam is a religion of chivalry and enthusiasm that enjoys a popular incubator

  • Israeli historian Ilan Pappé: The violence of Zionism is permanent, and that is why I support the Palestinians

  • French thinker Olivier Roy: Israel lives in sacred ignorance

  • Swedish writer Joran Boren: The apartheid state Israel is responsible for the explosion of the situation

  • Moroccan philosopher Taha Abdel Rahman: The Palestinian resistance triumphed over the mind and morals of the occupation

  • Italian writer Davide Picardo: Italians stand with Palestine despite the biases of the elites

  • Italian writer Romana Rubio: The people of Gaza are not just numbers, and the Palestinians are the only ones who choose the means of resistance

  • French writer Alain Gresh: These are the reasons for the decline of the position of intellectuals regarding the ongoing genocide in Gaza

  • Canadian thinker Wael Hallaq: “The Al-Aqsa Flood” is evidence of the hypocrisy and racism of Western modernity

  • American academic Jeffrey Sachs: Israel is committing war crimes in Gaza and will fail militarily

  • British artist “Loki” and the mixture of languages ​​and singing arts in “Palestine Will Never Die”

  • Palestine, Gaza, and European culture... Two meetings with the Spanish Arabist Ignatius Gutierrez de Teran

  • “The Arabic language has made Palestine the issue of my life.” Bulgarian Arabist Maya Tsenova recounts her memories of Al Jazeera and the Iraq War

  • Tunisian thinker Abu Yaarub Al-Marzouki: “The Al-Aqsa Flood” liberated the youth of the West and demonstrated the fragility of Israel

  • Egyptian thinker Muhammad Salim Al-Awa: The Al-Aqsa flood is a driver for peoples, and societies have changed their view of Western values

  • Iranian-American academic Hamid Dabashi: The Al-Aqsa flood is a historic transformation and Israel has lost the academic community

  • American thinker Joseph Massad: Israel is an extension of the European occupation, and the freedom of Western universities is an illusion believed by the Arabs

  • Lebanese thinker Mustafa Hijazi: The Al-Aqsa flood changed the equations and changed the rules of the game

Source: Al Jazeera