Khalil al-Sakakini

 

Khalil al-Sakakini (خليل السكاكيني; January 23, 1878 - August 13, 1953) was a distinguished Palestinian Christian, Arab Orthodox, educator, scholar, poet, and Arab nationalist.

Early life

Khalil Sakakini was born into a Arab Christian family in Jerusalem on January 23, 1878. He received his schooling in Jerusalem at the Greek Orthodox school, at the Anglican Christian Mission Society (CMS) College founded by Bishop Blyth, and at the Zion English College where he read Literature.^[1]

Later, Sakakini travelled to the United Kingdom and from there to the United States to join his brother Yusif, a travelling salesman in Philadelphia. During his nine-month stay in America, he was active translating and contributing to the Arabic literary magazines of the East Coast, and translated for Professor Richard Gottheil at Columbia University, while he supported himself by teaching Arabic and working in a Maine factory and as a street vendor. Upon his return in 1908, he worked as a journalist for the Jerusalem newspaper al-Asmai' and taught Arabic at the renowned Jerusalem Salahiyya school and to expatriates at the American Colony.^[1][2]

Career

In 1909, he founded the Dusturiyyah school, which became known for its Arab nationalism. He pioneered a progressive education system he was to use later: there were no grades, prizes or punishments for students, and there was an emphasis on music education and athletics. He also worked to revamp the method in which the Arabic language was taught, introducing simple style and replacing Turkish with it as the primary language of instruction. ^[2] Sakakini led a movement to reform and Arabize what he saw as a corrupt Greek Orthodox Church of Jerusalem, and wrote a pamphlet in 1913 titled "The Orthodox Renaissance in Palestine", which led to his excommunication. Ottoman authorities arrested him on the last day of their rule in 1917 after he sheltered Polish-American Jew and fellow Jerusalemite Alter Levine, and jailed the two in Damascus. Levine was labelled an enemy when the United States joined the Allies of World War I, and the two became close friends during their incarceration.^[3] After his release, Sakakini boarded for a brief time with Musa Alami, a former pupil, and then joined the ranks of the Arab Revolt, the anthem of which he composed.^[4]

In 1919 Sakakini and his wife were appointed to work for the Educational Authority of Palestine in Jerusalem, and he was made head of the Jerusalem Teachers’ College. He went on to be appointed Inspector for Education for Palestine, a post he held for 12 years, until his resignation in protest at the appointment of a Jew as High Commissioner of the Palestine Mandate, Herbert Samuel.^[5] Returning in 1926 from being a school principal in Cairo, he assumed the position of Schools' Inspector, an occupation that allowed him to export elements of his educational philosophy to the just literate rural villages. At the same time, he wrote political commentaries for the newspapers al-Muqtataf, al-Hilal and al-Siyassa al-Usbu'iyya, composed a number of patriotic poems and spoke at political rallies. In 1925, he founded the Wataniyya school, and in 1938 the Nahda College in Jerusalem. From May 1934, Sakakini committed a great deal of time and effort to building a new house in the Katamon neighbourhood, moving in three years later in May 1937.^[6]

Later life

Khalil Sakakini's wife, Sultana, died in October 1939 and was buried in the Greek Orthodox cemetery on Mount Zion. He mourned her for the rest of his days, and wrote a number of poems eulogizing her, and authoring the epitaph on her tombstone: We will never accept the judgement. His son, Sari, had meanwhile returned with his Master's degree from the University of Michigan to work at the American consulate. Sari embraced his father's unique ideas of strength and masculinity, and was romantically involved with a local taxi-driver.^[7]

During combat in Jerusalem during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, the Sakakini family found themselves to be one of the last Arab families remaining in the Katamon neighbourhood. During the fighting he tried to establish a moral code of conduct with Arab commander Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni, though Husayni did not take to it. A few days before the city was divided between Israeli and Jordanian forces, the Sakakini family fled due to Israeli mortar attacks. They left with only their personal effects and drove to Cairo, where Sakakini was nominated by the Egyptian writer Taha Hussein to join the prestigious Arabic Language Academy.^[8]

Sari Sakakini's sudden death of a heart attack in 1953 at the age of 39 devastated his father; Khalil Sakakini died three months later on August 13, 1953.^[9] Sakakini's two daughters, Dumya and Hala, lived together in Ramallah until their deaths about a year apart in 2002 and 2003. The two sisters had long careers in education. Hala edited her father's journals, published in 1955, and also wrote two memoirs in English, Jerusalem and I and Twosome.^[10]

Palestinians
Demographics & geography
Definitions · Palestine Palestinian people · Palestinian diaspora Palestinian territories · Refugee camps Geography of the Gaza Strip Geography of the West Bank Electoral Districts · Governorates · Cities in the West Bank & Gaza Strip East Jerusalem ·
Politics
PLO · PNC · PLC · PFLP PNA · PNA political parties Palestinian flag Politics of Palestine
Religion & religious sites
Christianity Al-Aqsa Mosque · Dome of the Rock Churches: Nativity · Holy Sepulchre · Annunciation History of the Levant
Culture
Art · Costume & embroidery · Cuisine Dance · Language · Literature · Music
Notable Palestinians
Hany Abu-Assad· Ibrahim Abu-Lughod Yasser Arafat · Hanan Ashrawi Mohammad Bakri . Rim Banna Mahmoud Darwish · Emile Habibi Nathalie Handal · Mohammed Amin al-Husseini Faisal Husseini · Abd al-Qader al-Husseini Ghassan Kanafani · Ghada Karmi Leila Khaled · Rashid Khalidi Walid Khalidi · Samih al-Qasim Edward Said · Khalil al-Sakakini Elia Suleiman · May Ziade

Beliefs

Throughout his life Sakakini was exceptional in his embrace of European culture, and shared those affinities with the Europeans in the Jewish community, while still feeling a tension with the Arab culture he felt was his. At one stage he embraced the Greek heritage of his grandmother, a Greek native of Istanbul, and learned modern Greek profanities, admired Greek music and Greek philosophy, and even nicknamed himself "Socrates".^[11]

Sakakini often expressed humanistic ideas, and even had a business card made out to read "Khalil Sakakini: human being, God willing". At the same time, he was inclined to define himself as primarily Arab, and is counted among the founding fathers of Arab national consciousness in the region. Like many such activists, he was an advocate of Pan-Arabism, and desired a Palestine united with Syria. He believed that Zionism was a great threat, that the Jewish right to the land had expired while the Arab right was "a living one".^[12][13]

During the 1936-1939 Arab revolt, he applauded the Arab attacks on Jews; worried that the rebellion's violence looked bad in the public eye because 'the Jews controlled the newspapers and radio', he concluded that 'the sword was mightier than the book'. On the grenade attack of a Jewish civilian train, he praised the "heroes" responsible.^[14] After the attack on Jerusalem's Edison cinema that left three dead, he wrote:

"There is no other heroism like this, except the heroism of Sheikh al-Qassam".^[15]

Yet the terrorism still bothered him at times:

"I feel the pain of the troubles, whether they fall on Arabs or on the English or on the Jews. For that reason you will sometimes find me on the side of the Arabs, at others times on the side of the English, and still other times on the side of the Jews. And if their were animals who suffered from even a faint whiff of these troubles, I would sometimes be on the side of the animals.^[16]

The humanist educator Sakakini also came to believe that Nazi Germany might weaken the British and 'liberate Palestine from the Jew', so he supported the Nazis. He wrote that Adolf Hitler had opened the World's eyes to the myth of Jewish power, and that Germany had stood up to the Jews and put them in their place as Mussolini had done to the British.^[17]

Sakakini vehemently disagreed with the idea that Holocaust survivors should be allowed into Palestine, arguing that a human problem needed to be solved by all humanity. While saddened by events like the sinking of the Jewish refugee ship Struma, he felt that the passengers were in fact invaders that an independent Palestinian Arab government could have used force to prevent from landing, and he felt that while elderly Jews could come to live out their last years as in generations past, a thriving community under British protection should be forbidden.^[18] He believed that the Holocaust was being exploited parasitically by Jews demanding a homeland in Palestine, who he said would throw the Arabs out as soon as they got it. Due to Jewish influence in the United States, he believed that their right to vote should be revoked in that country.^[19]

Aside from his strong Arab nationalism, Sakakini was a lifelong advocate of social reform. He tried to inculcate the schools principles of students' liberation, sex education, socialist and other progressive ideas, and believed in the free mixing of the sexes. A sceptical nationalist of sorts, he was pained by the thought of his children living in Palestine, even though he also wrote of the country as a Garden of Eden. He documented that he would like his children to live in a nobler country, and of how he would emigrate if he could. Palestinian Arab culture held values "of honour and family connections, of let us eat and drink and grow strong and attack" he asserted, rather than of "let us sacrifice and forgive and respect and have compassion".^[20]

Legacy

Khalil Sakakini's published work includes educational works, poetry collections, literary, ethical and political essays and a journal. A street and a school in Jerusalem were named after him, as well as the Jazzar mosque's library in Acre and a Cairo street. His papers are now at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is buried at the Mar Gerges Cemetery in Cairo, his house and the schools he ran have been converted to other purposes.

In 2001, the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Centre successfully petitioned the municipality of Ramallah to rename the main thoroughfare nearest the centre after Khalil Sakakini. The same year, the centre began editing and publishing the diary of Khalil Sakakini, which he kept from 1907 to 1952. The first volume of the projected eight came out in 2003. The same year, Sakakini's heirs bequeathed the centre his valuable papers, books, and personal effects. They are currently displayed in the centre's foyer, while a room is to be dedicated to the display as well as to his life.

References

External links

• Salim Tamari: A Miserable Year in Brooklyn; Khalil Sakakini in America, 1907 - 1908, in Jerusalem Quarterly,
• Salim Tamari: The Vagabond Café and Jerusalem's Prince of Idleness, in Jerusalem Quarterly,
• City of Ramallah Homepage
• Khalil Sakakini Cultural Centre

Donate to Wikimedia