Gaza’s Academics Face Censorship in Classroom

[King_David]

“I was completely bereft when he pulled me by my hand and embraced me. … I felt warmth emanating from his chest.” This sentence in a short story titled “Love in War” was enough for Gaza's Al-Aqsa University to launch an investigation into faculty member Dr. Khoder Mahjez. Mahjez teaches a course titled “Literature and Modern Criticism” at the Faculty of Arts in Al-Aqsa University. The investigations began following a complaint filed by a female student, who claimed that the professor used obscene words during the lecture.

In an interview over the phone with Al-Monitor, Mahjez said that the obscene words — which he was accused of using by the investigation commission during the interrogation attended by the dean of the Faculty of Arts and a legal advisor — were present in a story he had used as an example in his book, which carries the same name as the course. He added that there had been objections to the use of certain words — such as "women," "sons of a bitch" and "Jews" — as opposed to using terms with ideological connotations that are preferable to the university, such as "sons of monkeys" and "pigs."

"They hate poetry, literature and all that has to do with creativity and life," he said.

Mahjez added that although he retired last year, it is customary for retired teachers to continue to be allocated a few hours of teaching. Yet he was blackmailed, he said, by the University Board of Directors, who threatened to publish a statement that would tarnish his reputation if he did not leave the university. Thus, he resigned.


Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/04/gaza-academics-universities-increasing-restrictions.html#ixzz2RWtMIWg7

[delrem]

1. A courageous and progressive Palestinian journalist.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2010/12/gaza-hamas-asma-al-ghoul

"Palestinian feminist Asma Al-Ghoul...

"During the 2007 civil war, Asma attended a journalism course in South Korea, where she published a scathing Arabic article titled, "Dear Uncle, Is This the Homeland We Want?" The article recalled fond childhood memories of her father's brother, a Hamas military leader—then assailed him for turning against his own people and using the family home to interrogate and beat Fatah activists. In response, Asma's uncle threatened to kill her. A year later, Asma wrote her way through the trauma of the 2008-2009 war between Israel and Hamas militants, which claimed the lives of 13 Israelis and about 1400 Gazans. Often, she slept at her office for fear of getting killed on the way to her home, a mere five-minute walk away.

"I felt as if Israeli military planes were blind," Asma recalled. "They attacked everything and everybody. I saw dead children...As a woman and as a human being, I don't believe in revenge, because it just brings more blood. But people said to me during the war, ‘You see? This is your peace.'"

While Asma has befriended liberal Jewish activists in Gaza, she has never entered Israel. In 2003 and again in 2006, the Israeli government denied her permission to travel through Israel to the West Bank, which is territorially separate from Gaza, to receive awards for her writing."