Allison Deger is the assistant editor of Mondoweiss.
Ayah Bashir, an Al-Shabaka policy member, holds a Master’s degree in Global Politics from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). She is a member of the steering committee of PACBI (The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel), the Gaza-based organizing committee for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel, and One Democratic State Group.
Belal Dabour, a recently graduated doctor in Gaza, Palestine, blogs at belalmd.wordpress.com.
Beth Staton is a journalist whose work has appeared in Al Jazeera, Palestine Monitor, Salon.com, Newsweek, and Middle East Eye.
Bushra Shanan is a Hebron-based graphic designer.
Charlotte Silver, an independent journalist in the San Francisco Bay area, was previously based in the West Bank.
Chris Hedges is the author of 12 books, including Death of the Liberal Class and War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning.
Diana Buttu, a Canadian-Palestinian human rights lawyer and analyst based in Palestine, is a frequent commentator on Palestinian affairs and has appeared on major international news outlets including BBC, Al Jazeera, and CNN, among others. She was a legal adviser to Palestinian negotiators in 2000–2005.
Eman Mohammed is a photojournalist documenting the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Esther Rappaport is a clinical psychologist practicing independently in Tel Aviv. She is an anti-occupation activist with the Coalition of Women for Peace and a member of its board, as well as an activist with Psychoactive—Mental Health Professionals for Human Rights.
Ezz Al Zanoon is a freelance photographer based in the Gaza Strip. His work has appeared in many publications and outlets, including The Guardian, APA, Time, BuzzFeed, El Mundo, and Reuters.
Farah Baker is a high school student in Gaza.
Hana Baalousha, a Palestinian from Gaza, has a degree in English language from the Islamic University of Gaza, taught Arabic as a foreign language in the UK, and recently relocated to the United States. She is currently a stay-at-home mom of two little girls.
Hatem Bazian, PhD, is a senior lecturer and cofounder of al-Zaytuna College.
Hatim Kanaaneh, MD, MPH, a retired public health physician who practiced in Arrabeh, is the author of Chief Complaint: A Country Doctor’s Tales of Life in Galilee (2015) and A Doctor in Galilee (2008).
Jonathan Cook, winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism, is the author of many books, including Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books).
Joseph Massad is professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history. He is author of the forthcoming book Islam in Liberalism (University of Chicago Press).
Kim Jensen is a Baltimore-based writer, educator, and activist whose books include The Woman I Left Behind, Bread Alone, and The Only Thing that Matters.
Laila El-Haddad was Al Jazeera English’s online correspondent in Gaza from 2003 to 2006. Originally from Gaza, she now lives in Maryland, where she works as a writer, media activist, and public speaker.
Lena Khalaf Tuffaha is an Arab-American poet of Palestinian, Jordanian, and Syrian heritage.
Lina H. Al-Sharif writes poetry and is currently working on a master’s degree in creative writing at Lancaster University.
Lynda Franken (the pseudonym of Linda de Veen) is a Dutch national and former journalist at the Palestine Monitor who is a project coordinator at EIRENE NL.
Mahmoud Alarawi is an artist and a graphic designer who is interested in oil painting, sculpture, and three-dimensional graphic design.
Mariam Elba is a writer on social justice in the United States and the Middle East, particularly Egypt.
Maureen Clare Murphy, a solidarity activist based in Chicago, is the managing editor of the Electronic Intifada and has covered cultural production for the site since 2003.
Michael Schwartz is a Distinguished Teaching Professor, Emeritus, of sociology at Stony Brook State University, and the author of many books and articles on popular protest and insurgency, corporate dynamics, and political policy, including War Without End: The Iraq War in Context.
Mohammed Asad is a photojournalist who lives in Shuja‘iya. His photograph “Unbreakable,” of a Gaza girl whose face was badly scarred by Israel’s 2014 bombing, won the Grand Jury prize in the photography competition organized by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the Middle East and North Africa.
Mohammed Sulaiman is a Palestinian from Gaza, currently working on his PhD in Australia. He has a master’s degree in Human Rights from the London School of Economics. Mohammed’s work has appeared on the Huffington Post, Al Jazeera English, open Democracy, the Electronic Intifada, and other publications. Mohammed also worked for Al Mezan Center for Human Rights in Gaza.
Mouin Rabbani is a Senior Fellow with the Institute for Palestine Studies and co-editor of Jadaliyya (www.jadaliyya.com).
Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian is the Director of the Gender Studies Program at Mada al-Carmel and is a professor at the Faculty of Law, Institute of Criminology and the School of Social Work and Public Welfare at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Nathalie Handal is a Palestinian writer. Her latest collection, The Invisible Star, is the first contemporary collection of poetry that explores the city of Bethlehem and the lives of its exiles in such broad geographic spaces.
Ned Rosch is an activist and yoga instructor who lives in Portland, Oregon.
Nour ElBorno did not find poetry; poetry found her when she was a child, and ever since she could not be anywhere without inspiration in her heart and a pen in her hand.
Omar J. Sakr is an Arab-Australian poet whose work has been published in many literary journals, including Meanjin, Overland, Cordite Poetry, and Carve Magazine.
Patrick O. Strickland, an independent journalist who focuses on human rights and social justice issues, is a regular contributor to Al Jazeera English, AlterNet, and the Electronic Intifada.
Rami Almeghari is the editor-in-chief of the Gaza-based Palestinian Information Service, part-time lecturer on the media at Islamic University of Gaza, and a contributor to the Electronic Intifada.
Ramzy Baroud, a PhD scholar in People’s History at the University of Exeter, is the Managing Editor of Middle East Eye, the founder of PalestineChronicle.com, and the author of My Father Was a Freedom Figher: Gaza’s Untold Story (Pluto Press).
Rania Khalek is an independent journalist reporting on the underclass and marginalized.
Rashid Khalidi is the Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University and the editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies. He was an adviser to the Palestinian delegation at the Madrid-Washington Palestinian-Israeli negotiations of 1991–93. His most recent book is Brokers of Deceit.
Refaat Alareer is the editor of Gaza Writes Back: Short Stories from Young Writers in Gaza, Palestine.
Richard Falk is an Albert G. Milbank professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University and a research fellow at the Orfalea Center of Global and International Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara. He was the United Nations special rapporteur on Palestinian human rights from 2008–2014
Rina Andolini is a UK citizen who has been living and working in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza since 2014.
Ron Gerlitz is the co-executive director of Sikkuy, the Association for the Advancement of Civic Equality.
Rosa Schiano is a volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement
Ruairi Henchy is an Irish writer and journalist with a special interest in Palestine.
Samah Sabawi is a Palestinian writer originally from Gaza.
Sami Kishawi, a Palestinian American currently studying biology and human rights as an undergraduate at the University of Chicago, heads the University of Chicago’s Students for Justice in Palestine and
serves on the executive committee of American Muslims for Palestine–Chicago chapter. His blog, Sixteen Minutes to Palestine, reports about everyday living in the occupied territories.
Sarah Algherbawi is a writer who worked with the International Solidarity Movement.
Sarah Ali is a Palestinian from the Gaza Strip who is currently working on a master’s degree in English Literature at Durham University (UK).
Shahd Abusalama, 23, is a Palestinian artist, a blogger from Gaza, currently working on her MA in Media and the Middle East at University of London, SOAS.
Sharif Abdel Kouddous is an independent journalist based in Cairo. He is a Democracy Now! correspondent and a fellow at The Nation Institute.
Sharif S. Elmusa is a scholar and poet who taught for many years at the American University in Cairo, Egypt, and is the author of several publications, including Flawed Landscapes: Poems, 1987-2008.
Steven Salaita is a scholar, activist, and author of several books.
Therezia Cooper is a boycott, divestment and sanctions activist and researcher. She has volunteered with various solidarity groups in Palestine and is the coauthor of Targeting Israeli Apartheid: A Boycott Divestment and Sanctions Handbook, published by Corporate Watch.
Tom Anderson is a boycott, divestment, and sanctions activist and researcher. He has volunteered with various solidarity groups in Palestine and is the coauthor of Targeting Israeli Apartheid: A Boycott Divestment and Sanctions Handbook, published by Corporate Watch.
Trevor Hogan is an Irish solidarity activist.
Yousef Al-Helou, a Palestinian journalist in London, is a Reuters fellow at Oxford University.
Zeina Azzam, a writer and educator, is the executive director of The Jerusalem Fund/Palestine Center in Washington, DC.
Acknowledgments
This project would have never happened were it not for the persistence of our wonderful publisher, Helena Cobban, and her trusted associates, Diana Ghazzawi and Ida Audeh. They set us straight where we flailed, and pushed us up when self-doubt threatened to derail us. Summarizing the cruelty of what happened was a burden that we felt we were not up to. How do we do justice to the victims? How can we compete (and should we) with so many compelling works on the topic? Ultimately, our humble goal was to be a venue for those who would speak up, educate others, inspire change towards justice and equality in Palesitne. Thank you, Ida especially, for reminding us of this important obligation, and to our families, for being our sounding boards and being our bedrocks of support.
A special thanks goes to the numerous contributors who allowed their excellent writing and art to be included in this book. Your work will serve as a record and testament. We would also like to acknowledge the invaluable contributions of the photographers—Mohammed Asad, Ezz Al Zanoon, Eman Mohammed, and Alaa Shamaly—whose enthusiasm and generosity inspired and humbled us. Many of them either declined payment or request nominal fees, asking only that their work move people to action.
And finally, our humble thanks to the people of Gaza for trusting us to convey your story to the world.
About the Editors
Refaat Alareer, editor of and contributor to Gaza Writes Back, is an academic living in Gaza. He received his M.A. in Comparative Literature from the University College of London (U.K.) and is currently working toward his Ph.D. in English Literature at the Universiti Putra Malaysia, though this has been interrupted by the travel restrictions on Gazans. He has also been teaching world literature, comparative literature, and both fiction and non-fiction creative writing at the Islamic University of Gaza since 2007.
Alareer is interested in emerging Palestinian writers and works very closely with many of them to help them develop their creative writing skills. His book, Gaza Writes Back, is a compilation of short stories written in English by young Palestinian writers living in the Gaza Strip. It shows a different side of the struggle to create a free Palestine, since it includes fictional work and is written by young people; it is Gaza’s creative reaction to Israel’s aggression, which eventually culminated in Operation Cast Lead in 2008-2009.
Laila El-Haddad is an award-winning author, public speaker, and parent-of-three from Gaza City. She is the author of Gaza Mom: Palestine, Politics, Parenting, and Everything In Between and co-author of the critically acclaimed The Gaza Kitchen: A Palestinian Culinary Journey. Through her work as a journalist, documentarian and media activist, she provides rare insight into the human experience of the region.
From 2003-2007, El-Haddad was the Gaza correspondent for the Al Jazeera English website and a regular contributor to the BBC and the Guardian as well as radio correspondent for Pacifica’s Free Speech Radio News. During this time, she co-directed two Gaza-based documentaries for Tourist with a Typewriter Productions, including the award-winning film Tunnel Trade.
She has been published in the Baltimore Sun, Washington Post, International Herald Tribune, The New Statesman, The Daily Star, Le monde diplomatique, and has appeared on CNN, NPR, and Al Jazeera. She was also featured in Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown episode “Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza” as his guide in the Gaza Strip.
A graduate of Duke and Harvard, she currently makes her home in Columbia, Maryland with her husband Yassine Daoud, and their three children.
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