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Children of Catastrophe: Journey from a Palestinian Refugee Camp to America Paperback – Illustrated, October 15, 2010
by
Jamal K. Kanj
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Print length208 pages
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LanguageEnglish
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PublisherGarnet Publishing
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Publication dateOctober 15, 2010
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Dimensions8 x 0.6 x 5 inches
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ISBN-101859642624
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ISBN-13978-1859642627
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Editorial Reviews
Review
Born ten years after the "Nakba" (the Arabic word for "catastrophe," denoting Palestinian refugee exodus that attended the creation of the state of Israel), Jamal Kanj was born and raised in Lebanon in the Nahr El Bared refugee camp, which was recently destroyed by the Lebanese Army during fighting with Fatah al Islam, before immigrating to the United States. In this memoir, he describes life growing up in the camp, focusing on both the daily life of Palestinians in the camp and on the politics of the refugees (Kanj himself became a member of the Palestinian Liberation Organization for a time). He also includes a chapter discussing the 2007 destruction of the camp.
Jamal Kanj’s story evokes all the emotions experienced through life’s trials, enhanced and exaggerated by it being experienced within a refugee camp that remained under continual stress from external forces. The book is well written and does not dwell on the deprivations, but instead emphasizes the successes of life within the camp, successes against many seemingly overwhelming odds. From that success, the success of survival and more, the Palestinian identity will remain strong within its own community. Children of Catastrophe helps explain that identity and brings it to life in a straight forward manner, for those beyond the borders of the community, to the larger community of global humanitarian awareness.
The Israel and Palestine conflict has shattered countless lives. "Children of Catastrophe: Journey from a Palestinian Refugee Camp to America" is a memoir form Jamal Krayem Kanj, as he reflects on his own journey through the conflict, and how from a refugee camp struggling to survive he found his way to America and made his own way in life. A unique story with a powerful message, "Children of Catastrophe" is a moving and thoughtful read that would do well in any international memoir collection.
Jamal Kanj’s story evokes all the emotions experienced through life’s trials, enhanced and exaggerated by it being experienced within a refugee camp that remained under continual stress from external forces. The book is well written and does not dwell on the deprivations, but instead emphasizes the successes of life within the camp, successes against many seemingly overwhelming odds. From that success, the success of survival and more, the Palestinian identity will remain strong within its own community. Children of Catastrophe helps explain that identity and brings it to life in a straight forward manner, for those beyond the borders of the community, to the larger community of global humanitarian awareness.
The Israel and Palestine conflict has shattered countless lives. "Children of Catastrophe: Journey from a Palestinian Refugee Camp to America" is a memoir form Jamal Krayem Kanj, as he reflects on his own journey through the conflict, and how from a refugee camp struggling to survive he found his way to America and made his own way in life. A unique story with a powerful message, "Children of Catastrophe" is a moving and thoughtful read that would do well in any international memoir collection.
About the Author
JAMAL KANJ was born in a Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon ten years after the creation of the state of Israel. He moved to the United States in late 1977, and has been active in various local and national political organizations. He is a cofounder of the Middle East Cultural and Information Center in San Diego and served as the Secretary General for the US chapter of the General Union of Palestine Students. Today, Kanj is a professional engineer who works on water infrastructure management.
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Product details
- Publisher : Garnet Publishing; 1st edition (October 15, 2010)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 208 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1859642624
- ISBN-13 : 978-1859642627
- Item Weight : 10.4 ounces
- Dimensions : 8 x 0.6 x 5 inches
-
Best Sellers Rank:
#2,979,305 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #295 in Lebanon History
- #2,320 in Historical Middle East Biographies
- #4,199 in Israel & Palestine History (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
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4.5 out of 5
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Reviewed in the United States on May 22, 2021
Verified Purchase
I got this book off Amazon. This is a great book and many people should read the truth of what's been going on between Palestine and Israel and how the People of Palestine are treated and still today they are treated this way. If you want to make sense of what’s going on now in Palestine/Israel, this book is an essential read! It's alway great to support a Palestinian. The whole world see's as if the Palestinian is in the wrong, but you should read this book and open your eyes and heart for these people. They have suffered for so long and still are today. I recommend this book, my best friend's father wrote this book. This a true story and things mentioned in the book are still happening today.
Reviewed in the United States on August 3, 2013
Verified Purchase
Children of Catastrophe by Jamal Kanj should be required reading for all. Jamal was a descendant of Palestinian refugees who were expelled from their homes in 1948. In 1958, Jamal came into the world in the refugee camp Nahr el Bared in Northern Lebanon. He was his parents' first born in a room and not a tent. The story tells of the crude structures that gradually replaced the tents. I hope one day his book will become a movie so that people can see what it was like to be a Palestinian refugee in Lebanon.
As I read his book, I was just amazed at how people can be so cruel. And how instead of celebrating differences and working together to advance humanity, we focus on differences and destroy it. At the end of the day, we all belong to the human race. We all want the same things for our children: a safe environment, a place to call home with a roof over our heads, education, freedom, love, happiness, a future, a world in which our children's worth isn't judged on their religion, race, color of skin or any other dividing factor and their basic needs are met.
As a Jewish American, I was taught that after the Holocaust, the Jews found a "land without a people for a people without a land" and made the desert bloom. When I first went to Israel, an Israeli told me that there were 21 Arab countries and the Palestinians needed to choose one as they didn't want them in Israel. I had no idea who he was talking about. I thought Palestinian was a synonym for Israeli and referred to the Jews who were in Israel before 1948. I thought it was like Persian and Iranian. How would I know otherwise when I was indoctrinated that we Jews found a land without a people? All we learned was how Israel was the safe-haven for Jews. We never understood what Zionism meant to the Palestinians. Our entitlement to the land was inculcated into our heads because of the Holocaust even though Palestinians weren't responsible for the Holocaust. We need to see what Zionism meant to Jamal and his people, the Palestinians. How one people's dream can be another people's nightmare. So often we only think of our own desires and not how what we want affects others. How would we feel if a non-Jewish religious group decides to claim a US state for themselves, banishing Jews from that state and telling us to choose from any of the other 50 US States for our new home?
Despite the overwhelming hardships, what I found so incredible was how his family could persevere as a unit under such conditions. Here in the US with the divorce rate is said to be around 50%, in a culture of instant satisfaction, people jump ship when things get difficult. I doubt many couples would remain together when faced with the hardships that Jamal's parents faced and yet, through thick and thin, his family lived for each other. They faced everything as a solid unit that could not be broken.
It also amazes me how resourceful children must become to survive. Although Jamal came into the world with the material bare minimum, a refugee in a country that did not want his kind, in anything but a stable political environment, throughout his life he had the love and encouragement of a unshakeable family that would do anything for each other. Where drinking and drugs are prevalent in our American society among our youth, Jamal and his friends were fighting to survive. I also noticed no sense of entitlement or laziness that we experience in the US among many of our youth. Instead I could see the deep desire to improve not only one's own life, but the lives of one's family members as well.
I stand in awe of the distance Jamal had to transverse as a refugee to make a new life in America becoming a registered professional engineer in California with graduate and post graduate degrees in civil engineering, management and executive leadership.
I also think it's important to read this story, not just as a Palestinian, but as a Muslim. With the prevalent Islamaphobia in America, I think it's important not to only focus on the extreme cases as we find those in every religion and culture. It is more important to see how other Muslims face injustice and overcome adversity. In the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr el Bared, the brutal environment motivated parents to stress the power of education to excel and succeed in life.
We need to hear these stories because awareness leads to understanding and understanding leads to change. By reading his story, we become aware of ourselves as human beings and the horrors we create for others. We cannot afford to be ignorant to the truth, holding onto fallacies. In the words of Stephen Hawkins, "The greatest enemy of knowledge isn't ignorance, but the illusion of knowledge." Through awareness we can put an end to these great injustices committed against the Palestinians. No one lives in peace when we condemn others to misery.
Michelle Cohen Corasanti, author of The Almond Tree
As I read his book, I was just amazed at how people can be so cruel. And how instead of celebrating differences and working together to advance humanity, we focus on differences and destroy it. At the end of the day, we all belong to the human race. We all want the same things for our children: a safe environment, a place to call home with a roof over our heads, education, freedom, love, happiness, a future, a world in which our children's worth isn't judged on their religion, race, color of skin or any other dividing factor and their basic needs are met.
As a Jewish American, I was taught that after the Holocaust, the Jews found a "land without a people for a people without a land" and made the desert bloom. When I first went to Israel, an Israeli told me that there were 21 Arab countries and the Palestinians needed to choose one as they didn't want them in Israel. I had no idea who he was talking about. I thought Palestinian was a synonym for Israeli and referred to the Jews who were in Israel before 1948. I thought it was like Persian and Iranian. How would I know otherwise when I was indoctrinated that we Jews found a land without a people? All we learned was how Israel was the safe-haven for Jews. We never understood what Zionism meant to the Palestinians. Our entitlement to the land was inculcated into our heads because of the Holocaust even though Palestinians weren't responsible for the Holocaust. We need to see what Zionism meant to Jamal and his people, the Palestinians. How one people's dream can be another people's nightmare. So often we only think of our own desires and not how what we want affects others. How would we feel if a non-Jewish religious group decides to claim a US state for themselves, banishing Jews from that state and telling us to choose from any of the other 50 US States for our new home?
Despite the overwhelming hardships, what I found so incredible was how his family could persevere as a unit under such conditions. Here in the US with the divorce rate is said to be around 50%, in a culture of instant satisfaction, people jump ship when things get difficult. I doubt many couples would remain together when faced with the hardships that Jamal's parents faced and yet, through thick and thin, his family lived for each other. They faced everything as a solid unit that could not be broken.
It also amazes me how resourceful children must become to survive. Although Jamal came into the world with the material bare minimum, a refugee in a country that did not want his kind, in anything but a stable political environment, throughout his life he had the love and encouragement of a unshakeable family that would do anything for each other. Where drinking and drugs are prevalent in our American society among our youth, Jamal and his friends were fighting to survive. I also noticed no sense of entitlement or laziness that we experience in the US among many of our youth. Instead I could see the deep desire to improve not only one's own life, but the lives of one's family members as well.
I stand in awe of the distance Jamal had to transverse as a refugee to make a new life in America becoming a registered professional engineer in California with graduate and post graduate degrees in civil engineering, management and executive leadership.
I also think it's important to read this story, not just as a Palestinian, but as a Muslim. With the prevalent Islamaphobia in America, I think it's important not to only focus on the extreme cases as we find those in every religion and culture. It is more important to see how other Muslims face injustice and overcome adversity. In the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr el Bared, the brutal environment motivated parents to stress the power of education to excel and succeed in life.
We need to hear these stories because awareness leads to understanding and understanding leads to change. By reading his story, we become aware of ourselves as human beings and the horrors we create for others. We cannot afford to be ignorant to the truth, holding onto fallacies. In the words of Stephen Hawkins, "The greatest enemy of knowledge isn't ignorance, but the illusion of knowledge." Through awareness we can put an end to these great injustices committed against the Palestinians. No one lives in peace when we condemn others to misery.
Michelle Cohen Corasanti, author of The Almond Tree
5.0 out of 5 stars
Kanj writes with a sense for justice & his heart pointing to the homeland he lost before he was born
Reviewed in the United States on September 11, 2011Verified Purchase
The parents of Jamal Kanj, the author, were alongside 800,000 other Palestinians, evacuated from their villages and towns by Israeli terrorist groups, an ethnic cleansing that was supported by the founding Israeli Government and overseen by the former British occupiers of Palestine. One of these terrorist groups, the Haganah, served as the foundation of the now official army of Israel, the Israeli Defence Force (IDF).
Jamal wasn't yet born when his family was pursued through the upper Galillee and into Southern Lebanon. He was born a refugee in the Nahr al Bared refugee camp in Lebanon where his family was placed with several thousand other Palestinians. The rights afforded to other Lebanese nationals: the rights for travel and education and self-determinacy were stripped from him and his family. Through no fault of their own, the Palestinians were now exiled from their homeland.
This book describes the life of Jamal. He lives his whole childhood in the square mile refugee camp. What starts off in 1949 as a shelter for Palestinian refugees set up with basic tent facilities, transforms over time to a vibrant town supporting its own community through trade and development. It is also a story of a victim that keeps getting punished. The camp is continuously targeted by Israeli forces in retaliation attacks for crimes committed elsewhere or through acts of aggression aimed at instilling fear in the population, trying to extinguishing any flailing hopes left of them one day returning to their homeland. Jamal leaves the camp at 16 or 17 to study in Baghdad and soon after is accepted to an american university.
Much of the book is interspersed with political events of the time and of historical background. This is the history that wasn't taught to students at school and wasn't taught to me at Jewish school, nor is it taught to Israeli teenagers before they are put into fighter jets and their thumbs hover over the trigger. It is an uncomfortable history. The praised leaders of Israel are quoted here expressing imperialistic sentiment, expressing indiscriminate hate and disregard for the natives of Palestine.
The Lebanese government, especially the Christian-Right ruling party, is also attacked for harassing and limiting the Palestinian refugees. The camp suffered almost total destruction in 2007, a sad situation for the Palestinians who for 2nd or even 3rd time have been forced to leave their home. Out of the ashes comes new hope though. Stated in the last chapter of the book is the slogan for the committees responsible for rebuilding the camp, "We will rebuild Nahr el Bared and we shall return to Palestine". Let us hope for the sake of humanity that they succeed.
Jamal wasn't yet born when his family was pursued through the upper Galillee and into Southern Lebanon. He was born a refugee in the Nahr al Bared refugee camp in Lebanon where his family was placed with several thousand other Palestinians. The rights afforded to other Lebanese nationals: the rights for travel and education and self-determinacy were stripped from him and his family. Through no fault of their own, the Palestinians were now exiled from their homeland.
This book describes the life of Jamal. He lives his whole childhood in the square mile refugee camp. What starts off in 1949 as a shelter for Palestinian refugees set up with basic tent facilities, transforms over time to a vibrant town supporting its own community through trade and development. It is also a story of a victim that keeps getting punished. The camp is continuously targeted by Israeli forces in retaliation attacks for crimes committed elsewhere or through acts of aggression aimed at instilling fear in the population, trying to extinguishing any flailing hopes left of them one day returning to their homeland. Jamal leaves the camp at 16 or 17 to study in Baghdad and soon after is accepted to an american university.
Much of the book is interspersed with political events of the time and of historical background. This is the history that wasn't taught to students at school and wasn't taught to me at Jewish school, nor is it taught to Israeli teenagers before they are put into fighter jets and their thumbs hover over the trigger. It is an uncomfortable history. The praised leaders of Israel are quoted here expressing imperialistic sentiment, expressing indiscriminate hate and disregard for the natives of Palestine.
The Lebanese government, especially the Christian-Right ruling party, is also attacked for harassing and limiting the Palestinian refugees. The camp suffered almost total destruction in 2007, a sad situation for the Palestinians who for 2nd or even 3rd time have been forced to leave their home. Out of the ashes comes new hope though. Stated in the last chapter of the book is the slogan for the committees responsible for rebuilding the camp, "We will rebuild Nahr el Bared and we shall return to Palestine". Let us hope for the sake of humanity that they succeed.
5 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on January 18, 2016
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Excellent product, very happy with this vendor. I would use again. Thank you.
Reviewed in the United States on September 12, 2010
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I highly recommend this book. Most Americans know nothing about what happened to the Palestinians in 1948, thanks to a highly successful censorship and disinformation process here in the United States. This book shows one small piece of a massive human tragedy that has been completely ignored by Hollywood.
7 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on April 17, 2013
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Very detailed, give Gestalt of the impact of the eviction of Palestinians from their homeland and relentless persecution of them since 1948.
One person found this helpful
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