A White Lie

by Madeeha Hafez Albatta, Barbara Bill (Editor), Ghada Ageel (Editor), Salman Abu Sitta (Foreword by)

Overview

This first narrative in the Women’s Voices from Gaza Series turns the clock back more than ninety years and invites readers on a journey of reimagining a once-upon-a-time in Palestine. Madeeha Hafez Albatta’s story recounts a life of happiness, uncertainty, loss, and also, ultimately, of pride, resistance, and hope. Weaving together many narrative threads, A White Lie unearths a version of history long excluded from mainstream discourse, illuminating a vibrant culture, rich community relations, old traditions, and grand resistance. Madeeha was born and raised in Khan Younis, a town in the southern part of the Gaza Strip, and her life took her, along with her family, across mandatory Palestine to Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Tunis, the United States, Germany, Greece, Austria, and Canada. In 1938, Madeeha had to resort to tricking her family into allowing her to attend college. That "white lie" changed her life forever. She became a teacher while still in her teens and then the principal of a school while in her early twenties. As a teacher and headmistress, a campaigner for rights, an activist and community organizer, a mother, and a champion of dignity, Madeeha witnessed some of the most turbulent periods of Palestine’s recent history. Her narrative preserves minute details of distinctly Palestinian individual and collective life through different eras and regimes. It depicts a vibrant culture, old traditions, customs, and other critical features of Palestinian society that readers rarely encounter.
The Women’s Voices from Gaza Series honours women’s unique and underrepresented perspectives on the social, material, and political realities of Palestinian life.
Foreword by Salman Abu Sitta.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781772124927
Publisher:	University of Alberta Press
Publication date:	10/13/2020
Series:	Womens Voices from Gaza Series
Pages:	236
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.39(d)

About the Author

Madeeha Hafez Albatta (1924-2011), born in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, became a teacher while in her teens and a principal in her mid-twenties, the youngest in Gazan history. She was among the pioneers to rally the Palestinian community to guarantee the right to education for thousands of refugee children arriving in Gaza after the destruction of their homeland in 1948. The events of her life took her and her family across mandatory Palestine to Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Canada. Barbara Bill lived and worked in Gaza for six years and currently resides in New South Wales, Australia. Ghada Ageel is a visiting professor of political science at the University of Alberta, a columnist for the Middle East Eye, and the editor of Apartheid in Palestine (UAlberta Press).

Table of Contents

Preface ix

Foreword xv

Acknowledgements xxiii

Introduction xxv

A white lie

1 Childhood Days 3

2 School Days 23

3 Marriage 39

4 Massacre 51

5 Occupation 65

6 Black September 87

7 1973 War 103

8 Waiting for the Curtain to Rise 111

Chronology of Events in Palestine 129

Notes 149

Glossary 167

Bibliography 171

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"What an extraordinary project! We don't hear enough from Gaza. Through the oral histories of Palestinian women who have lived, witnessed, and built lives and futures for their families and communities—in the face of devastating force and continuing injustices—we learn Palestinian History through the intimate daily ways individuals have lived and made it."—Lila Abu-Lughod, Joseph L. Buttenwieser Professor of Social Science, Columbia University

"Gaza City is one of the most ancient cultural centres on the Mediterranean, and its people have long been a backbone of the Palestinian national movement. How Gazan women describe their lives under continual siege and military attack reveals their capacity for bearing hardship and undertaking initiatives in the public sphere. Ghada Ageel, a Gazan, and Barbara Bill have ably used oral history to bring readers the lived reality of women of different backgrounds, ages, and occupations."—Rosemary Sayigh, anthropologist and oral historian

Editorial Reviews

"What an extraordinary project! We don't hear enough from Gaza. Through the oral histories of Palestinian women who have lived, witnessed, and built lives and futures for their families and communities—in the face of devastating force and continuing injustices—we learn Palestinian History through the intimate daily ways individuals have lived and made it." Lila Abu-Lughod, Joseph L. Buttenwieser Professor of Social Science, Columbia University
"Gaza City is one of the most ancient cultural centres on the Mediterranean, and its people have long been a backbone of the Palestinian national movement. How Gazan women describe their lives under continual siege and military attack reveals their capacity for bearing hardship and undertaking initiatives in the public sphere. Ghada Ageel, a Gazan, and Barbara Bill have ably used oral history to bring readers the lived reality of women of different backgrounds, ages, and occupations."—Rosemary Sayigh, anthropologist and oral historian
"[A White Lie] should urge academics to consider whose voices they include and how they include them when writing about and theorising Palestine. It demonstrates the power of centring female voices and detailed histories to understand intersections between temporality, place, and gender and the material, social, and political realities of Palestinian life." Olivia Mason, Gender, Place & Culture [Full review at https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2021.1971899]
"In A White Lie, Madeeha Hafez Albatta recounts her life as a teacher, mother and activist in Gaza... By preserving Albatta’s extraordinary life, this book makes a significant contribution to Palestinian history and politics." Nancy Janovicek, Alberta Reviews, 05/01/2021 [Full review at https://albertaviews.ca/white-lie-womens-voices/]
"A White Lie is the first in a series of oral histories from a woman’s perspective living through events – modern history – occurring in Gaza and regionally. As history is usually written by old white men at the end of a certain epoch or episode in history, people’s voices, women’s voices in particular, are seldom if ever heard." Jim Miles, Palestine Chronicles, August 4, 2023 [Full article at https://www.palestinechronicle.com/womens-voices-from-gaza-a-white-lie-book-review/]

From the Publisher