“Israelis celebrate their Independence Day,” Dareen Tatour explains, “but it comes with celebrating the suffering of our ancestors, the displacement of our people and the memory of massacres perpetrated against us over the years.”
A poet who was repeatedly detained in Israel for her words, Tatour now lives in Sweden where she is the recipient of an ICORN residency as well as the Norwegian Writers’ Union Freedom of Expression award for “break[ing] the silence on the conditions of Palestinians.” She uses her literary work to encourage Palestinian women to speak up against all forms of abuse and human rights violations.
In 2019, while still living within the Zionist state, Tatour declared that she could hear the sirens mark the beginning of Israel Independence Day, a holiday commemorated by the occupiers while the occupied are still “deeply rooted in [their] homeland.” For her, the day marks the initiation of ethnic cleansing, the
— source palestinechronicle.com | Benay Blend | May 5, 2022