A Gazan Memory for Forgetting
For Mahmoud Darwish, while memory serves as a tool of resistance against the erasure of existence, it also represents another form of symbolic death for identity and history. This is because it enforces a kind of stagnation and immersion in old pain, trapping the individual in a cycle of grief and reflection on past losses. In his reading of "Memory for Forgetfulness," Ra'ad Abu Sa'ada questions, as a Gazan, the role of memory in the ongoing Palestinian struggle and in the collective Israeli identity, with a view toward the Holocaust, the besieged Beirut of 1982, and Gaza today.
