Light in Gaza
Writings Born of Fire
Edited by Jehad Abusalim, Jennifer Bing, and Mike Merryman-Lotze
PAPERBACK, 280 PAGES
ISBN: 9781642596991
August 2022
$24.95
$9.99 FREE 100% off
==
Product description
About the Author
Jehad Abusalim is the Education and Policy Associate of the Palestine Activism Program at the American Friends Service Committee. He is completing his PhD in the History and Hebrew and Judaic Studies joint program at New York University.
His main area of research is Palestinian and Arab perceptions of the Zionist project and the Jewish question before 1948. An accomplished speaker and writer, Jehad combines his passion for history with his commitment to activism and policy change work. Jehad’s family continues to live in Gaza.
Jennifer Bing has worked with AFSC’s Palestine-Israel Program since 1989. Based in Chicago, she organizes events, national speaking tours, exhibits and trainings, and coordinates AFSC’s education and advocacy work on the campaigns Israeli Military Detention: No Way to Treat a Child and Gaza Unlocked. In this role, she works closely with faith organizations and human rights groups throughout the U.S.
Jennifer has appeared in numerous media outlets including Truthout, Worldview/WBEZ, Mondoweiss, Electronic Intifada, Alternet, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Reader, Friends Journal, and The Washington Post. She is also a regular contributor to AFSC’s Acting in Faith and News and Commentary blogs.
Jennifer is a Quaker and an active member of the Quaker Palestine Israel Network.
Mike Merryman-Lotze is the American Friends Service Committee’s Palestine-Israel Program Director. He coordinates AFSC’s Israel and Palestine focused advocacy and policy programming, working closely with AFSC’s offices in Jerusalem, the West Bank, Gaza, and throughout the US.
From 2000 through 2003 Mike worked as a researcher with a human rights organization in the West Bank, and from 2007 through 2010 he worked in Save the Children UK’s Jerusalem office managing child rights and child protection programming. Between these two experiences he worked for an international development NGO managing community and local government development programs in Lebanon, Jordan, and Yemen.
--This text refers to the hardcover edition.
==Imagining the future of Gaza beyond the cruelties of occupation and Apartheid, Light in Gaza is a powerful contribution to understanding Palestinian experience.
Gaza, home to two million people, continues to face suffocating conditions imposed by Israel. This distinctive anthology imagines what the future of Gaza could be, while reaffirming the critical role of Gaza in Palestinian identity, history, and struggle for liberation.
Light in Gaza is a seminal, moving and wide-ranging anthology of Palestinian writers and artists. It constitutes a collective effort to organize and center Palestinian voices in the ongoing struggle. As political discourse shifts toward futurism as a means of reimagining a better way of living, beyond the violence and limitations of colonialism, Light in Gaza is an urgent and powerful intervention into an important political moment.
Reviews"Light in Gaza is a strong, honest presentation of today’s Gazans, a necessary read that provides a good understanding of the humanity of the Palestinians in Gaza." —Palestine Chronicle
"There are so many beautiful passages in this collection that, even though I generally like to keep my books pristine, I have highlighted entire pages in this volume." —Mondoweiss
"This Collection of 15 essays and poems, introduced by lead editor Jehad Abusalim, was conceptualized as a platform to humanize Gaza and show that the besieged territory is more than a place of destruction and impoverishment. Light in Gaza is ultimately successful in bringing Gazans to life, showing the dignity, integrity and creativity with which they endure life’s many hardships….This is a deeply personal book for the contributors…. The essays convey how exhausting and frightening it is to live in Gaza. Subjected to periodic brutal assaults, Gazans (70 percent of whom are refugees) live in a state of “permanent temporality,” a term Shahd Abusalama uses to describe living in a state of suspension, while waiting to return home." —Washington Report on Middle Eastern Affairs
"This book is rich in insights from Gazans living under Israel’s brutal siege as well as those living abroad. The editors and authors are determined to start a conversation about Gaza and to break “the intellectual blockade” imposed on it. From Jehad Abusalim’s introduction to the last word, these compelling works move from personal reflections to political and economic analysis. They capture the reader and pull them through a journey that is as uplifting as it is heartbreaking that it should have to be lived at all. It will not leave you unmoved and will reinforce your determination to strive for Palestinian freedom." —Nadia Hijab, co-founder and honorary president, Al-Shabaka: the Palestinian Policy Network
"Because of Israel's blockade, I've only been able to go to Gaza once. Everyone I spoke to there could tell me about the unimaginable hardship and trauma they'd experienced. But what stayed with me most was something I hadn't expected: The unquenchable optimism and humor of Palestinians there. Reading Light in Gaza a decade after my visit brought that feeling flooding back. This brilliant, funny, inspiring collection of stories and essays by writers in Gaza was exactly what I needed to reinvigorate my hope and determination to work for a future that uplifts us all.” —Ali Abunimah
“A must read for anyone interested in learning about Gaza, from the Palestinians of Gaza themselves. Powerful and engaging.” —Laila Elhaddad
"Gaza is often referred to as an 'open-air prison,' because it is so hard for messages, images or bodies to get out, or for resources to get in. Light in Gaza breaks through the prison walls and gives us a unique opportunity to hear and learn from those living under Israeli occupation in Gaza. Their voices are filled with pain, loss, frustration, anger, but most of all, hope. This powerful and beautifully crafted collection is one that readers must engage with heads and hearts wide open." —Barbara Ransby, historian, author, activist
"An emotionally and intellectually sophisticated collection that is deep, processed and enlightening." —Sarah Schulman
"A book that embodies the central paradox all Gaza-watchers are aware of: while Israel - aided by Egypt and tolerated by the international system - constantly sharpens tools to control and brutalize Gaza, Gaza insists on its agency, its dignity and its imagination. Read these writings - literally “born of fire” for the wealth and variety of their ideas and for their grounding of the aspirations and dreams of Palestinian Gazans. " —Ahdaf Soueif
"Light In Gaza is essential reading, not least because it reflects the voice of a people who are routinely and egregiously robbed of their basic humanity. It also represents a profound challenge to anyone who reads it. One author asks, "Can a story or a poem change the mind? Can a book make a difference?" The answer, as ever, is up to us all." —Rabbi Brant Rosen, Founding Rabbi of congregation Tzedek Chicago
"As Mahmud Darwish wrote as early as 1973, "we do injustice to Gaza when we turn it into a myth". This is why "Light in Gaza", through its insightful collection of essays and poems, offers such a unique picture of the Palestinian experience in a territory cut off from the world for a decade and a half." —Jean-Pierre Filiu, author of Gaza: A History
"The poignant first-person essays in this wide-ranging anthology have the greatest and rarest of virtues: they are portraits--brave, tender, resilient--of life in Gaza by the people who actually live it." —Nathan Thrall, author of The Only Language They Understand
"Light in Gaza presents the images and voices of a wide range of people from the Gaza Strip who tell us about things rarely reported in the Western media – the Edward Said Public Library, the Parkour team, new architectural technologies to repair damaged homes, manufacturing airless tires to subvert Israel’s ban on import of pneumatic tires, and of course, poetry. These signs of inspiring vitality and creativity under the worst possible conditions show us that a better future for Gaza is possible. We should amplify these images and voices and insist as forcefully as we can that the people of the Gaza Strip deserve to live with dignity, justice and equal rights." —Joel Beinin
===
Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire
Reviewed by Max L. Carter
October 17, 2023
Edited by Jehad Abusalim, Jennifer Bing, and Michael Merryman-Lotze. Haymarket Books, 2022. 280 pages. $45/hardcover; $24.95/paperback; $9.99/eBook.
Buy from Publisher
A plaque in a classroom at Earlham School of Religion where courses on the Bible are taught states, “Context is everything.”
In his poem “Harlem,” Langston Hughes asks, “What happens to a dream deferred? // Does it dry up / like a raisin in the sun? . . . // Maybe it just sags / like a heavy load. // Or does it explode?”
I was reminded of these quotes when I learned of the assault by Hamas on Israeli targets earlier this month and Israel’s retaliation. Quaker peacemaking asks the question, what are the seeds of war, and how may they be removed before they sprout and grow? In other words, what is the context out of which the current cycle of violence emerged?
And what might those deferred dreams be that led to the result of an explosion? Certainly for Israel it was the shattered dream of a military and intelligence operation that afforded a sense of security and safety. What was it for Gaza?
Light in Gaza is an antidote to many misconceptions about Gaza as it helps explain the context out of which the current explosion has occurred. Along the way, it describes what chef Anthony Bourdain, himself, found during the filming of his Parts Unknown cable show in Gaza in 2012: “Regular people doing everyday things . . . but robbed of their basic humanity” (paraphrased from Bourdain’s acceptance speech for an award from the Muslim Public Affairs Council).
Three American Friends Service Committee staff members who have worked on issues of Palestine and Israel for a combined total of more than 50 years have skillfully gathered and edited essays by 11 Gazans that explore far more details about life in the Strip than media sound bites provide. The purpose of the anthology is to show how Gaza is typically described through an oppressive occupier’s lens as it attempts to erase the history of the occupied. As the contributors reveal the reality of an ongoing Nakba (“Catastrophe”), they seek to break the intellectual blockade of Gaza, just as activists continue to seek an end to the physical blockade imposed on it.
I once asked an Israeli soldier about an assault on Ramallah that I witnessed, wondering why there were more than 50 armored vehicles and hundreds of soldiers for an operation to blow up one uninhabited apartment. He responded, “Everything like that is meant to be a statement.” In a chapter on growing up in Gaza through several Israeli assaults, Refaat Alareer describes how the violence and targeted killings made such statements, and what the impact was of losing more than 30 family relatives through Israeli attacks since 2001. Yet as a professor of English literature in Gaza, he taught Jewish characters in Shakespeare sympathetically.
Asmaa Abu Mezied’s chapter presents the realities of everyday life in Gaza that counter the dominant narrative, and contrasts the myth of “a land without a people for a people without a land” by describing Palestinians’ rootedness in the land and the flourishing agriculture they have practiced. Shahd Abusalama gives a history of the more than 530 Palestinian villages destroyed in Israel’s creation and describes the ongoing confiscation of Palestinian land and spread of settlements as a continuation of a settler-colonial project that Palestinians have a right to resist—as much as Ukrainians have the right to resist Russian occupation.
Salem Al Qudwa’s chapter explores the implications for structural design of buildings given constant attacks and the difficulty of getting materials. Suhail Taha shares about the creative ways Gazans deal with Israel’s control of two-thirds of the Strip’s electricity and the darkness that prevails when power is available only four hours a day. Nour Naim writes in her chapter about Israel’s use of artificial intelligence to control Palestinians and how Gazans themselves could utilize AI in their own resistance.
Mosab Abu Toha writes about the devastation of his university in the 2014 attack on Gaza, how both Israel and the Palestinian Authority ban books critical of their policies, and how Jewish author Noam Chomsky sent books to replace those destroyed in the assault. Dorgham Abusalim recounts in detail living through the “fifty-one dreadful days” of the 2014 attack, even capturing one of the Israeli strikes on his mobile phone; watching it years later, he’s overwhelmed “with the fear I felt for my life and for my family.” Yousef M. Aljamal’s chapter explores travel restrictions as “continuing Nakba” and how the “Oslo Accords, the so-called peace accords,” led to a fragmentation of Palestinian community.
In his chapter, Israa Mohammed Jamal shares personal stories of the ethnic cleansing in 1948 and his own childhood trauma from the assaults on Gaza. Basman Aldirawi presents three possible scenarios for the future: (1) no solution and a continuation of the status quo, (2) a two-state resolution that would continue to impose restrictions on Palestinians’ lives, and (3) one democratic state in which Gazans are able to live like anyone else. In light of the current response by Israel to the Hamas attack, the fear is that a “solution” will be a wholesale destruction of Gaza and trauma that will last for decades for both Gazans and Israelis. Already there is talk of how this war may push Israel finally to accept some form of a two-state solution simply to “separate” from Palestinians. Unfortunately, the option of a one-state solution now looks more remote than ever.
Gazans living like anyone else. It is what Anthony Bourdain found in 2012 that the people of Gaza could be—if not robbed of their humanity. Context is, indeed, everything. And, yes, if dreams, hopes, and aspirations are deferred, they explode.
Max L. Carter is the retired director of Friends Center at Guilford College. His book Palestine and Israel: A Personal Encounter (Barclay Press) chronicles his long association with Quaker work in the Middle East. He is a member of New Garden Meeting in Greensboro, N.C.
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4 thoughts on “Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire”
George Gore
Chicago Area, IL, October 18, 2023 at 5:38 pm
The root of the problem seems to be that after WWII, the UN (allied forces) forced Israel into Palestinian lands, apparently without paying for the lands. The backwards tradition of stealing land by force rather than mutual consent of buying land continues to cause problems like Ukraine. Another challenge is clear global definitions of what is the least-force needed, and when do military actions shift from defense to offense. Ultimately, stronger traditions of forgiveness (without being requested) amongst both Jews and Muslims would also help tremendously.
Reply
Gary S.
Saint Louis, October 18, 2023 at 10:53 pm
I would like to feel more sympathetic, but I’m afraid the events of the past weekend have left me shocked and cold. Do not the Quaker values of peaceful resistance apply to the Palestinians? Why do liberals always make excuses for terrorism when it is directed against Israel? Funny that you have posted no articles decrying the antisemitic demonstrations on American campuses this week and the threats made against Jewish students. The hypocrisy is hard to believe.
Reply
Blair Roberts
North Andover Mass., November 8, 2023 at 7:12 pm
I commend you efforts to bring to light the life of ordinary Palestinians in Gaza. However I am both distressed and disappointed by your inaccurate presentation of the context of these events and as a Jew and a pacifist with many years of Quaker education I am particularly troubled by your biased view of “the context out of which the current cycle of violence emerged.” Does that context not also include the clearly stated aims of Hamas to kill all Jews with no distinction between civilian or soldier and their aim to annihilate the Jewish state ?Are not the centuries old history of antisemitism culminating in the Holocaust or the war initiated by Arab countries to prevent a Jewish state in 1948 also part of the context out of which this cycle of violence emerged?
Blair R
Reply
Ron Hogan
Queens, NY, November 9, 2023 at 4:53 pm
Let’s accept, for the moment, the proposition that Hamas’ stated intent of killing all Jews and dismantling the Jewish state justifies Israel’s killing of Hamas members whenever and wherever they find them. If that’s the case, then out of the 4,300+ Palestinian children who have been killed by the Israeli military’s assault on Gaza over the last month, how many should we say were likely to have been members of Hamas whose deaths are morally acceptable?
(Note that, at the moment, children represent nearly half (roughly 43 percent, to be slightly more precise) of the total Palestinian deaths; that percentage is likely to fluctuate as more civilians in Gaza die.)
Or perhaps we don’t believe ANY of the dead Palestinian children were members of Hamas, but that a certain amount of collateral damage in the killing of Hamas members is regrettable, but understandable and acceptable. I can’t imagine what that certain amount would be, but 4,300 dead children in the space of a month seems rather high, perhaps high enough to call the entire methodology of the Israeli military into question.
Reply
Leave a Reply
Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire
Reviewed by Max L. Carter
October 17, 2023
Edited by Jehad Abusalim, Jennifer Bing, and Michael Merryman-Lotze. Haymarket Books, 2022. 280 pages. $45/hardcover; $24.95/paperback; $9.99/eBook.
Buy from Publisher
A plaque in a classroom at Earlham School of Religion where courses on the Bible are taught states, “Context is everything.”
In his poem “Harlem,” Langston Hughes asks, “What happens to a dream deferred? // Does it dry up / like a raisin in the sun? . . . // Maybe it just sags / like a heavy load. // Or does it explode?”
I was reminded of these quotes when I learned of the assault by Hamas on Israeli targets earlier this month and Israel’s retaliation. Quaker peacemaking asks the question, what are the seeds of war, and how may they be removed before they sprout and grow? In other words, what is the context out of which the current cycle of violence emerged?
And what might those deferred dreams be that led to the result of an explosion? Certainly for Israel it was the shattered dream of a military and intelligence operation that afforded a sense of security and safety. What was it for Gaza?
Light in Gaza is an antidote to many misconceptions about Gaza as it helps explain the context out of which the current explosion has occurred. Along the way, it describes what chef Anthony Bourdain, himself, found during the filming of his Parts Unknown cable show in Gaza in 2012: “Regular people doing everyday things . . . but robbed of their basic humanity” (paraphrased from Bourdain’s acceptance speech for an award from the Muslim Public Affairs Council).
Three American Friends Service Committee staff members who have worked on issues of Palestine and Israel for a combined total of more than 50 years have skillfully gathered and edited essays by 11 Gazans that explore far more details about life in the Strip than media sound bites provide. The purpose of the anthology is to show how Gaza is typically described through an oppressive occupier’s lens as it attempts to erase the history of the occupied. As the contributors reveal the reality of an ongoing Nakba (“Catastrophe”), they seek to break the intellectual blockade of Gaza, just as activists continue to seek an end to the physical blockade imposed on it.
I once asked an Israeli soldier about an assault on Ramallah that I witnessed, wondering why there were more than 50 armored vehicles and hundreds of soldiers for an operation to blow up one uninhabited apartment. He responded, “Everything like that is meant to be a statement.” In a chapter on growing up in Gaza through several Israeli assaults, Refaat Alareer describes how the violence and targeted killings made such statements, and what the impact was of losing more than 30 family relatives through Israeli attacks since 2001. Yet as a professor of English literature in Gaza, he taught Jewish characters in Shakespeare sympathetically.
Asmaa Abu Mezied’s chapter presents the realities of everyday life in Gaza that counter the dominant narrative, and contrasts the myth of “a land without a people for a people without a land” by describing Palestinians’ rootedness in the land and the flourishing agriculture they have practiced. Shahd Abusalama gives a history of the more than 530 Palestinian villages destroyed in Israel’s creation and describes the ongoing confiscation of Palestinian land and spread of settlements as a continuation of a settler-colonial project that Palestinians have a right to resist—as much as Ukrainians have the right to resist Russian occupation.
Salem Al Qudwa’s chapter explores the implications for structural design of buildings given constant attacks and the difficulty of getting materials. Suhail Taha shares about the creative ways Gazans deal with Israel’s control of two-thirds of the Strip’s electricity and the darkness that prevails when power is available only four hours a day. Nour Naim writes in her chapter about Israel’s use of artificial intelligence to control Palestinians and how Gazans themselves could utilize AI in their own resistance.
Mosab Abu Toha writes about the devastation of his university in the 2014 attack on Gaza, how both Israel and the Palestinian Authority ban books critical of their policies, and how Jewish author Noam Chomsky sent books to replace those destroyed in the assault. Dorgham Abusalim recounts in detail living through the “fifty-one dreadful days” of the 2014 attack, even capturing one of the Israeli strikes on his mobile phone; watching it years later, he’s overwhelmed “with the fear I felt for my life and for my family.” Yousef M. Aljamal’s chapter explores travel restrictions as “continuing Nakba” and how the “Oslo Accords, the so-called peace accords,” led to a fragmentation of Palestinian community.
In his chapter, Israa Mohammed Jamal shares personal stories of the ethnic cleansing in 1948 and his own childhood trauma from the assaults on Gaza. Basman Aldirawi presents three possible scenarios for the future: (1) no solution and a continuation of the status quo, (2) a two-state resolution that would continue to impose restrictions on Palestinians’ lives, and (3) one democratic state in which Gazans are able to live like anyone else. In light of the current response by Israel to the Hamas attack, the fear is that a “solution” will be a wholesale destruction of Gaza and trauma that will last for decades for both Gazans and Israelis. Already there is talk of how this war may push Israel finally to accept some form of a two-state solution simply to “separate” from Palestinians. Unfortunately, the option of a one-state solution now looks more remote than ever.
Gazans living like anyone else. It is what Anthony Bourdain found in 2012 that the people of Gaza could be—if not robbed of their humanity. Context is, indeed, everything. And, yes, if dreams, hopes, and aspirations are deferred, they explode.
Max L. Carter is the retired director of Friends Center at Guilford College. His book Palestine and Israel: A Personal Encounter (Barclay Press) chronicles his long association with Quaker work in the Middle East. He is a member of New Garden Meeting in Greensboro, N.C.
November 2023 Books
Previous BookNext Book
Donate to Help Spread Quaker Content
4 thoughts on “Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire”
George GoreChicago Area, IL, October 18, 2023 at 5:38 pm
The root of the problem seems to be that after WWII, the UN (allied forces) forced Israel into Palestinian lands, apparently without paying for the lands. The backwards tradition of stealing land by force rather than mutual consent of buying land continues to cause problems like Ukraine. Another challenge is clear global definitions of what is the least-force needed, and when do military actions shift from defense to offense. Ultimately, stronger traditions of forgiveness (without being requested) amongst both Jews and Muslims would also help tremendously.
Reply
Gary S.Saint Louis, October 18, 2023 at 10:53 pm
I would like to feel more sympathetic, but I’m afraid the events of the past weekend have left me shocked and cold. Do not the Quaker values of peaceful resistance apply to the Palestinians? Why do liberals always make excuses for terrorism when it is directed against Israel? Funny that you have posted no articles decrying the antisemitic demonstrations on American campuses this week and the threats made against Jewish students. The hypocrisy is hard to believe.
Reply
Blair RobertsNorth Andover Mass., November 8, 2023 at 7:12 pm
I commend you efforts to bring to light the life of ordinary Palestinians in Gaza. However I am both distressed and disappointed by your inaccurate presentation of the context of these events and as a Jew and a pacifist with many years of Quaker education I am particularly troubled by your biased view of “the context out of which the current cycle of violence emerged.” Does that context not also include the clearly stated aims of Hamas to kill all Jews with no distinction between civilian or soldier and their aim to annihilate the Jewish state ?Are not the centuries old history of antisemitism culminating in the Holocaust or the war initiated by Arab countries to prevent a Jewish state in 1948 also part of the context out of which this cycle of violence emerged?
Blair R
Reply
Ron HoganQueens, NY, November 9, 2023 at 4:53 pm
Let’s accept, for the moment, the proposition that Hamas’ stated intent of killing all Jews and dismantling the Jewish state justifies Israel’s killing of Hamas members whenever and wherever they find them. If that’s the case, then out of the 4,300+ Palestinian children who have been killed by the Israeli military’s assault on Gaza over the last month, how many should we say were likely to have been members of Hamas whose deaths are morally acceptable?
(Note that, at the moment, children represent nearly half (roughly 43 percent, to be slightly more precise) of the total Palestinian deaths; that percentage is likely to fluctuate as more civilians in Gaza die.)
Or perhaps we don’t believe ANY of the dead Palestinian children were members of Hamas, but that a certain amount of collateral damage in the killing of Hamas members is regrettable, but understandable and acceptable. I can’t imagine what that certain amount would be, but 4,300 dead children in the space of a month seems rather high, perhaps high enough to call the entire methodology of the Israeli military into question.
Reply
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