Children in the reading club

All of the children from Batn el-Hawa neighborhood [in Silwan East Jerusalem] are under the risk of forced displacement by home demolitions… or homes being taken over by Israeli settlers. Children witness their homes being destroyed by Israeli bulldozers or their parents forced to tear down their own homes.
—Bayan Abbasi, Madaa Silwan Creative Center

Six-year old Ruqaya Nassar from the besieged East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan slept in the car with her teddy bear while her father demolished their home with his own hands Otherwise, Israeli authorities who forced the demolition would make him pay for the “services.”
Families in Silwan have been facing attacks from Israeli authorities and Israeli settlers for years, but the violence against the residents of this neighborhood of East Jerusalem has become more severe in the past few months. Bayan Abbasi, from Madaa Silwan Creative Center, MECA’s partner organization in Silwan, East Jerusalem (quoted above) says that on top of the destruction there’s “all the violence that accompanies such acts. Israeli forces repressing and violently detaining Palestinians for protesting these home demolitions and evictions.”

For more than a decade MECA has been supporting the work of the Madaa Silwan Creative Center, including legal, academic, and psychological support for children who are arrested and detained, along with a library, women’s mosaic project, community café, a playing field, and more. Last year the Madaa library became part of the growing network of public libraries in Palestine named for the great Palestinian scholar and activist Edward Said.

The library has become a safe haven for both the children and their families in these extremely hard times. While taking the necessary COVID-19 measures, the library has become an educational center for children, with tutoring, book discussions for various age groups, and a mothers’ group. The library is currently run by the amazing Abeer Abbasi, who organizes lessons for children who need help in various subjects, English and computer courses, book discussions, and arts activities. The library recently introduced the Film Lab Initiative with the youth-led Power Group that makes Palestinian films available to the public and organizes discussions with Palestinian filmmakers.

Of course, books and libraries cannot compensate for the loss of a home and a lifetime of memories, but the Edward Said Library has become yet another home where the children of Silwan and their families can build new memories and a sense of community, until there is a time where no family must lose their home.

Many thanks to Joining Hands and all those who made donations for books for the Edward Said Public Library in Silwan.

Gifts of Joy and Knowledge from Joining Hands
Two years ago, Joining Hands, a women’s solidarity group in the San Francisco Bay Area held a fundraising event to purchase more than 500 books for the Madaa Center’s Edward Said Library in Silwan, East Jerusalem. The librarians wanted books that would attract different groups of people to the library and, after much discussion and debate about book selection, they made many trips through checkpoints to visit Tanween Bookstore in Bethlehem.

The Silwan librarians purchased picture books for Madaa’s nursery to be read aloud to young children, books for new readers in elementary school, teenagers and youth, as well as books for adults. Many books currently popular with young readers and books concerned with issues facing women had to be special ordered. The new books included Harry Potter in both Arabic and English; the entire collection of the gorgeously illustrated Usborne Encyclopedia in Arabic; books for Madaa’s arts and drama programs, and books about changemakers like Nelson Mandela, Yasser Arafat, and other Palestinian activists. The library will add books about young leaders like Greta Thunberg and Malala Yousafzai when they become available in Arabic.