Personal Info
- Country of residence: Palestine
Information
Carl
Issa Khalil Sabbagh (1942-) is a British writer, journalist and television
producer of Palestinian origin. He is the son of the Palestinian journalist
Issa Sabbagh.
Origin
and upbringing
Carl
Sabbagh was born in Worcestershire, England in the early 1940s. His father was
the Palestinian Christian broadcaster Issa Sabbagh, at the time working for BBC
Arabic; His English mother, Pamela Graydon, was of Irish-American descent. His
parents divorced shortly after his birth, and his father later lived in the
United States, but Carl remained in England with his mother. He is married to
Sue Heber Percy and they have four children.
his
business
His
work is mainly non-fiction, as he has written books about historical events and
produced documentaries for both British and American broadcasters. Sabbagh has
produced programs for the BBC and PBS networks, which dealt with many fields as
diverse as physics, medicine, psychology, philosophy, anthropology and
technology. Sabbagh also wrote articles for several newspapers and magazines.
He
was a producer of the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, George Porter's
'Natural History of Sunbeams' in 1976 and Carl Sagan's 'Planets' in 1977.
Sabbagh’s
book “Palestine: A Personal History” (2006) is a book that blends the history
of Palestine from the eighteenth century, with an account of his paternal
family, who were prominent Christian members of the Palestinian community in
the Galilee throughout that period, and settled in the city of Safed at least
from the beginning of the century 19. The book contains a critical account of
the Zionist settlement that definitively usurped and seized Palestine in the
first half of the twentieth century.
Palestine
Book: A Personal History
Carl
Sabbagh said that his book “Palestine: A Personal History,” published by the
Arab Institute for Studies and Publishing, is a family story, but it reveals
secrets in the Palestinian tragedy that official histories do not talk about.
It also reveals much of the falsity of Jewish claims on the ground, especially
those related to the history of ordinary people and its impact on their
destinies. He also went to Palestine in the year 2004, to the city in which his
family lived, which is the city of Safed, where he found Arab homes occupied by
Jewish immigrants, and the Arabic inscriptions above the doors had been
distorted to change landmarks and disguise the facts. Sabbagh explained that
the Palestinians are usually mentioned in Western media without people knowing
anything about the State of Palestine and its history, although an integrated
society has been established in the land of Palestine in which the Arabs formed
more than ninety percent of the total population.
The
author’s family was part of this social fabric, and one of his ancestors,
Ibrahim Sabbagh, was a minister under Zaher al-Omar who ruled Palestine in the
eighteenth century and was known as the “First King of Palestine.” Sabbagh
believed that the establishment of the Israeli entity in Palestine inflicted
grave injustice on the Palestinians, because This entity has risen by spreading
a series of official lies, which have not been interrupted until this moment.
In this book, Sabbagh reveals, through his family's personal history, the
absurdity of Israel's claim that Palestine was a land without a people, pointing
out that his grandfather, Khalil Sabbagh, was a lawyer in Tulkarem, and that
his relatives were businessmen and commerce, and there were social and
civilizational links between Palestine and the East. Arabi.
Sabbagh
wrote the book in 2006, benefiting from the history of Palestine since the
eighteenth century, and the intersections between his personal family history,
which was one of the most prominent Christian families in the Palestinian
community in the Galilee throughout that period, and they settled in the town
of Safed at least since the beginning of the nineteenth century. . The book
includes a description criticizing the Zionist settlement and the Jewish
takeover of Palestine in the first half of the twentieth century. The author
depicts stages of the development of Palestinian Arab society in towns and
cities, with the accompanying developed cultural and political life as well. He
points to the good relations between many Arabs and Jews before 1948.
Sabbagh
believes that the problem between the two parties is a political problem and
not of another kind. It began with the advent of Zionism and its claim that the
land of Palestine belongs to it. Sabbagh explains that the Palestinians at that
time were suffering factional divisions, and their leadership did not have a
strategic plan for confrontation, nor a unified military command, and that the
Israelis exploited the situation to distort the facts about the 1948 war, as
evidenced by the writings of some Israeli historians. Jonathan Miller says in a
speech on the cover of the book, "This book demonstrates the
qualifications possessed by Carl Sabbagh, through which he was able to provide
us with a documented record of a geographical area subject to a painful
conflict, and at the forefront of these qualifications are the Sabbagh family's
deep-rooted relations in the region, dating back to the year 1700.
Carl
Sabbagh succeeded in refuting the allegations claiming that Palestine was a
land without inhabitants, and that it was awaiting the return of its original
inhabitants who gave themselves the legitimacy of return through artificial
sanctity. The least Carl Sabbagh does in this book is that he provides the
reader with what we need for a rational settlement For this devastating
conflict for both parties alike, the book was translated by Muhammad Zaidan and
reviewed by Dr. Hussein Yaghi, and the book is located in 336 pages of large
pieces. It is noteworthy that Sabbagh is a writer and television producer who
has published many books, including; Vivo (1984, with Christian Bernard),
Skyscraper (1989), Magic or Medicine (1993), with Rob Bockman), 21st Century
Jet (1996), Power in Art (2000). Remembering Our Childhood: How Memory Fails Us
(2009), among others.
Authors
The
Living Body (1984; with Christian Barnard).
Skyscraper:
The Making of a Building (1989) (the story of the construction of One Worldwide
Plaza)
Witchcraft
or Medicine?: An Inquiry into Healing and Healers (1993; with Rob Bockman) (An
Inquiry into Alternative Medicine)
Airplane
for the 21st Century: The Making and Marketing of the Boeing 777 (1996)
The
Rum Case: A True Story of Vegetarian Fraud (1999) (about vegan fraud committed
by John William Heslop Harrison)
source
Achievements and Awards
- Years in active
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