For Bisan and all the history keepers.
Palestine will never die.
Bisan is a 25-year-old Palestinian. She was born and raised in Gaza. Before October 7 her Instagram videos show walks through Palestinian fields and by the sea; on planes and exploring Gaza and European cities. She talked about harvesting and the construction of the international airport. She interviewed everyday people in her city and shared her perspective on Gaza life, history, and culture.
In a May video, she stands inside a shop. “Hello, this is Bisan. You can call me Hakawatia,” she begins in Arabic. “And today, we are trying Palestine! Today we are visiting an antiques shop, which was operating for more than 35 years in the old city of Gaza. This is uncle Abu Jameel, the owner of the shop.” She interviews the uncle, who describes how his shop grew from a love for collecting coins, old books, antiques, and stamps.
Even before October 7 she is a filmmaker, storyteller, historian, and reporter. She is so young and happy and thoughtful and fun.
On October 7 Israel begins bombing.
They have bombed and displaced, with foreign support, for 75 years.
In 1948, the Nakba occurred. The ethnic cleansing was done to reduce the Palestinian population and to take over their lands. Militia groups, which became part of the Israel Defence Force created in May 1948, raided and massacred Palestinian communities, villages, and homes. Hundreds of villages were destroyed, and over 700,000 Palestinians were displaced. Despite occupying these lands for hundreds of years, Palestinians were forcibly and violently displaced and replaced with foreign settler homes, parks, and resorts.
The Nakba also included destroying Palestinian schools, museums, art galleries, bookshops—anything that contained physical artifacts of their history, identity, culture, and writing. In Palestine: A Socialist Introduction, Sumaya Awad and Annie Levin write that following 1948, “remembering the Nakba became a punishable crime, ‘Palestinian’ became synonymous with ‘terrorist,’ and history was written to erase not just the identity of Palestinians but their humanity as well.” They write that understanding and naming the Nakba is directly related to the Palestinian struggle we are witnessing today. To reject the Israeli settler-colonialist narrative—and its connection to the censorship we are seeing worldwide—we must actively learn and uplift Palestinian history and struggle.
We must understand how the violence we have witnessed this last month is part of “a continuous and complex struggle against occupation, against apartheid, against erasure.”
Since October 7, Bisan documents this latest round of Israel’s ongoing genocide.
Since October 7, over 10,000 Palestinians have been killed, at least 3,600 of them children. Over 30,000 are wounded. Palestinians are running out of food, water, and medical supplies. Israel bombed homes, hospitals, refugee camps, and churches. They cut off the internet and power. They drop white phosphorous, a chemical, solid substance that burns the skin and eyes, affects the respiratory tract, and can cause cardiovascular failure. They blocked aid from Egypt into Palestine.
In the West Bank, soldiers and settlers are capturing and torturing Palestinian men.
It is the Palestinian men and boys we see pulling children and bodies from the rubbles left by US-made bombs. Uncles and brothers and sons who bury children, women, men in trucks or graves, who hold and soothe babies injured and shocked by explosions. Who love and pray over the dead.
Bisan shares images and videos of death after hospitals and ambulances are bombed. After a refugee camp is bombed. She describes waiting in line for food and water, the strangers who give her a small piece of bread, or the little boy, desperate, who steals the only water she has one day. How the city is running out of food. How Israel targets specific infrastructure around the city; and the weight of bombs dropped over a church. She shares a video of Dareen Mahdy, an injured baby who loses her entire family.
Her captions on social media are clear, urgent, desperate, demanding headlines:
“Tonight!!!!! Walllllllllahy we thought it was the end of the world!!!!!!!”
“Might be the last updates from Gaza!!”
“#ceasefire now.. we are dying!! +10000 have been killed so far!”
“Ambulance are prevented to reach Egypt with the injuries! Prevention using bombing!”
“Everything is targeted in Gaza, and the most after (civilians) of course is (infrastructure)”
Twice, she has almost died.
On November 5, Bisan shared six videos on Instagram. They are all 30 seconds because, once again, Gaza’s internet is cut off. She is not sure she will survive, she states in the first video. She describes how Israel is targeting anything people might be using to survive. “After bombing the infrastructure and any way to obtain water or bread, after bombing any way to obtain electricity for the hospitals or for any place, they, tonight, dropped between 100-300 white phosphorus over Al-Shati camp,” Bisan reports. She adds that she and others around her are feeling the effects of the phosphorus. After the gas fell, papers dropped from the sky, informing the people in Gaza that they must evacuate to the South.
Other people reporting from the frontlines include Plestia Alaqad, Hind Khoudary, Motaz Azaiza, Saleh Aljafarawi, and Wael Al Dahdouh. Wael’s wife, children, and grandson were killed in the Israeli airstrike on Nuseirat camp on October 13. Israeli media has also started targeting some of the journalists, along with Palestinian activists. On November 6, Israeli forces arrested activist Ahed Tamimi.
Thirty-seven journalists have been killed since this latest round of Israeli-U.S. aggression began last month.
Despite this, Bisan, Wael, all the storytellers and history keepers, continue reporting, surviving—resisting.
Palestinian resistance is felt worldwide.
People have organized, gathered, marched, and shut streets down in New Zealand, Australia, Malaysia, India, Pakistan, Puerto Rico, Yemen, Iraq, Greece, Poland, Mauritania, Nigeria, Egypt, South Africa, Chile, Peru. Two million gathered at Jakarta’s National Monument last weekend. In Washington, D.C., over 300,000 gathered. Pro-Palestinian rallies, marches, and actions have occurred in at least 40 U.S. States, where hundreds are protesting outside the offices of politicians, outside embassies, and on cargo ships carrying weapons to Israel.
Since October 7, interfaith rallies and teach-ins have happened almost daily across New York City. Organizations shut down Grand Central, Union Square, the streets outside Barclay Center, the Brooklyn Bridge, and the Statue of Liberty, led by groups like Within Our Lifetime (WOL), a NYC-based Palestinian-led community organization, and Jewish Voice for Peace, a US-based leftist anti-Zionist organization. And across the state, pro-Palestinian rallies have been held in Binghamton, Buffalo, Rochester, Ithaca, and Syracuse.
All are calling for a ceasefire and an end to US-funded genocide.
The bombs must end. The white phosphorous must end. The bullets and torture and psychological warfare must end. Immediately.
Our brothers and sisters in Palestine are saving and feeding and loving and burying themselves—amid ethnic cleansing and land displacement. Their survival and resistance are striking. It pulls us away from our dissonance, from our comforts, forcing us to look at the American empire, hegemony squarely in its violent face. In their martyrdom, love for self, God, community, and land, they tell us their stories and deaths. They demand we look at them, awakened and raw and full of grief and anger. Full of purpose and clarity.
Our fight and struggle must witness, carry, and hold Palestinians’ anger, humanity, and struggle to survive. We fight for a liberated Palestine in our lifetime because we understand that all our struggles are connected.
From Palestine: “The future of Palestine is woven into this fabric of despair and resistance. The liberation of Palestine is bound to the struggle against the global capitalist system: its local governments, states, and imperialist forces.”
No one is free until we are all free.