“A Palestine for Our Own History”

With a presentation mediated by the director of the Center for Palestinian Studies, Arlene Clemesha, researchers Nur Masalha and Ahmad Alzoubi concluded an intensive week of lectures, debates, and book launches that led diverse audiences into a deep exploration of the ancient and universal roots of the Palestinian resistance we witness today.

All the modern war technology and the vast economic power sustaining the Zionist massacre of the past century have failed to deter the Palestinian people from their determination to return to their destroyed homeland and rebuild it—except through the elimination of lives and mass imprisonment—and even that has not resulted in surrender.

To understand the depth of the existential richness that the Palestinian people so strongly defend, it is important to view Palestine as a crystal, shaped by many facets and forms of knowledge passed down to us to this day. This crystal has taken so long to form that it demands we open a pathway to the past and, within it, find the very saga of our civilization. This is what Nur Masalha does in his books, which range from Sumerian clay tablets to the Zionist domination of Palestine. It is also part of the memory carried by Palestinians across the Latin American diaspora, as investigated by journalist Ahmad Alzoubi.

Both scholars completed a series of daily meetings with diverse audiences—including community members, activists, journalists, students, and academics—at events that were always open to a growing number of people interested in the themes of Palestinian resistance.

The lectures and public debates began on Tuesday at the Al Janiah Cultural Space and Restaurant, a venue that brings together both refugees and activists, as well as regular patrons in solidarity with Palestine.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Monitor do Oriente (@monitordooriente)

They continued on Wednesday at the São Paulo Journalists’ Union, with journalists and activists who have come to see the union as a space for resistance against genocide and for denouncing the killings of journalists attempting to cover events in Gaza.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Monitor do Oriente (@monitordooriente)

The week concluded at the Auditorium of the Japanese Cultural Center, in an event organized by the Center for Palestinian Studies (CEPAL), which brought together students and researchers from fields such as history, anthropology, education, and focused studies on Palestine—both past and present.

On Monday, the Latin Palestinian Forum had organized the first meeting between Nur Masalha and the Palestinian community of São Paulo, held in the hall of the Brazil Mosque.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Monitor do Oriente (@monitordooriente)

Gaza, Center of the Ancient World and of Our History

There are four thousand years of history in this land, and just as many years of production, reproduction, and sharing of knowledge and culture. If we consider that the Mediterranean was once the center of the ancient world, then Gaza was the center of the universe—connecting Europe, Africa, and Asia through trade routes, the exchange of information, agricultural techniques, oils and wines, philosophy, medicine, and art. The School of Gaza brought to the world a revolutionary understanding of education: nothing can be learned without the joy of learning—something only great educators like Paulo Freire would come to teach centuries later, and which still has not been learned by those who try to impose military discipline on children.

If Hellenic philosophy has reached us through preserved works, it is important to understand that many of them only survived thanks to Arabic translations at a time when Europe had shut itself off from knowledge.

The one who opens this pathway to the depths of Palestinian existence—focusing on local records and the references made to the land by foreigners over the millennia—is the historian Nur Masalha. During the events, the content of each of his three books published in Brazil by MEMO publishers was explained, all three translated into Portuguese by Leo Misleh. The most recent release, Palestine Through the Millennia – A History of Letters, Learning, and Educational Revolutions, is richly dedicated to Palestine’s love of knowledge and its transmission. It features a foreword by researchers Muna Odeh and Bárbara Caramurú, who praise Masalha’s long-term research and its importance in understanding both the legacy and the present of the Palestinian saga.The previous book, Palestine – 4,000 Years of History, includes a Brazilian foreword by Salem Nasser, who asserts that “if someone had to choose, based on objective criteria, a geographic region of the world that could be seen as its core, there would be nothing excessive or absurd in choosing the Middle East, and specifically, the Levant.”

The book that precedes these two volumes, Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of “Transfer” in Zionist Political Thought, 1882–1948 , was written 30 years ago by the young researcher, and yet it is frighteningly relevant today. Nur is a Palestinian born in northern Galilee, where he learned Hebrew and conducted research at an Israeli university. It was there, during the First Palestinian Intifada, that he decided to investigate the development of Zionism prior to the 1948 Nakba. These Zionist documents revealed that, from the moment Palestine was chosen as the future Jewish homeland, the immigration plans already included the expulsion of Palestinians—forcing their transfer to other countries and establishing a Jewish state on the land. Nur’s book from the past explains the intentionality behind the genocide we are witnessing today.

From Forced Expulsion to the Latin American Diaspora

The violent expulsion during the Nakba of 1948 and the forced exodus during the Naksa of 1967 brought waves of Palestinians to Latin America—some with the intention of reaching the United States but remaining here by mistake, and others seeking the support of early families who had migrated during the time of the Ottoman Empire. It is the descendants of this migration that Ahmad Alzoubi investigated in his doctoral research at the Methodist University of São Paulo.

His book, Palestinian Diaspora in Latin America – Media and Identity Studies, with a foreword by the international director of the Middle East Monitor, Daud Abdullah, explores the preservation of identity and Palestinian ties among the children and grandchildren of Palestinians now living in Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Honduras, and El Salvador. In these countries, Alzoubi notes that many belong to the political and economic elite and hold right-leaning positions on various issues, but with few exceptions—such as El Salvador’s far-right president, Nayib Bukele—they all remain connected to the Palestinian cause. A significant number still maintain channels of support and communication with their extended families—the current generation of relatives who remained in Palestine.

In his research, Alzoubi focuses on communication—on how Latin American Palestinians get informed and engage with the current situation in Palestine. Unfortunately, he finds that this does not happen through local media in the countries studied, as they replicate the long-standing problem denounced by the MacBride Report in 1980—a report so serious it led to the dissolution of the MacBride Commission itself: that media concentrated in the northern hemisphere powers shape both the media landscape and narrative in the global south. “The urgent need to break this monopoly cannot be overstated,” warns Daud Abdullah in his foreword.

Escaping Myths and Distortions

The reality sought by the diaspora in Arab media contrasts sharply with Western mainstream coverage of Palestine—limited to isolated events, stripped of context, and minimizing the ongoing genocide. Any effort to counter this narrative through documented evidence is thwarted by Israel’s targeted killings of journalists—the deadliest in wartime history—a point emphasized by the writer. These cases were recalled by Thiago Tanji, president of the Journalists’ Union, who led a debate with a media-savvy audience, many working in public and alternative journalism.

As a researcher in Humanitarian and Peace Journalism (HumanizaCom Group/UMESP), Alzoubi argues that the media can and must “play a vital role in defending human rights and social justice,” a point also made by Kamal Andrés Cumsille Marzouka, director of the Center for Arab Studies at the University of Chile, in his introduction to the book.

Nur Masalha warns that omissions about Palestine appear across various forms of media, contributing to erasure—in maps, libraries, and public discourse. His book on Zionist documents advocating ethnic cleansing was written thirty years ago but is only now being published in Brazil, through a press committed to Middle East coverage and the Palestinian liberation cause.

The books presented and discussed this week in São Paulo are essential for those seeking to free themselves from the narrative constraints of mainstream media, to journey through Palestinian history—and that of humanity itself—and to recognize the Palestinian resistance echoing even here, in Latin America.

Once again, Palestine connects to the rest of the world by challenging the very principles of the international institutions created after WWII—institutions meant to uphold peace and protect peoples from colonial occupations and genocide. It’s not only our shared civilizational past—through alphabets, mathematics, and more—but also what we do now in the face of genocide that will become part of history—not just of Palestine, but of all of us.

Brazil: MEMO hosts Foundational Works on Palestine