Cassandra Voices

Tag: Ramona Wadi

  • Archiving Gaza in the Present

    Review: Archiving Gaza in the Present: Memory, Culture and Erasure. Edited by Dina Matar and Venetia Porter (Saqi Books, London, November, 2025). 

    While Israel has made Gaza synonymous with its genocide, a rich cultural heritage, now largely destroyed, paints a completely different picture. The introduction to Archiving Gaza in the Present: Memory Culture and Erasure states that the book serves as “a reminder that Gaza as we see it today in the media’s live-streaming coverage of the war, miserable, shattered and deformed is not the Gaza that saw the unfolding of many civilisations.”

    The book is a compilation of papers and visual material presented at a two-day conference in November 2024 in London, a little over a year since Israel unleashed its genocide in Gaza. The level of annihilation and erasure – not only of Gaza’s infrastructure but also of its historical sites – made archiving and preservation more urgent. Palestine’s historical and cultural heritage is presented in the book through the contributions of various artists, historians, lawyers, curators, archaeologists, poets and journalists. Described as an ‘archive of Gaza in the present’, the book illustrates the process of archiving even as Israel continued to wage its destructive campaign.

    There is also an urgency to archive. In 2024, halfway through the genocide before the ceasefire announcement, which Israel has now violated hundreds of times, the world was witnessing a replica of the 1948 Nakba. This time they were using sophisticated military technology resulting in unprecedented destruction of Palestinian lives, culture and heritage in Gaza. For example, camps established in the aftermath of the 1948 Nakba, during which thousands of Palestinians fled to Gaza, were bombed in Israel’s genocide: “The names of camps are becoming those of mass graves.”

    With each massacre, Israel erases a part of Gaza. The compilation of essays and visual material in the book show not only the magnitude of destruction, but how much of that destruction is unknown to the West.

    Salman Abu Sitta, for example, notes that Gaza is the only place in Palestine which never took down the Palestinian flag since before the Nakba. Gaza was also the first to play a central role in the anti-colonial struggle and refugee political organisation. Gaza’s traits are largely overlooked due to the colonial impositions inflicted on it. Indeed, as Abu Sitta notes, the term ‘Gaza Strip’ is a product of this recent colonisation.

    An aerial photo of displaced Palestinians waiting in northern Nuseirat to return to their homes in Gaza. © 2025 UNRWA Photo by Ashraf Amra

    A Decolonial Act

    Archiving Gaza is a decolonial act, happening at a time of political and demographic erasure. Many artists in Gaza have had their studios destroyed in Israel’s bombing, their work decimated, yet continue to express themselves and their wider communities in Gaza.

    Thus, art became a way to document the genocide, using whatever materials were available. Some artists directed their efforts towards art therapy. One particular collection of images that stands out in the book is Ahmed Muhanna’s art work, drawn on the packaging of humanitarian aid boxes: “He began drawing on them, incorporating the stamped warning ‘Not for Sale or Exchange’ into his compositions – reframing it as an artistic and philosophical element.”

    Several artworks now deal with memories of genocide, memories of Palestinians killed by Israel, memories of being still alive amid the erasure. Maisara Baroud states: “In my work, I express the story beyond the official narrative. It is the story of war that produces a tremendous capacity for harm, conquering distance, geography, and even the speed of sound to bring death to more people in less time.”

    Prior to the genocide, Gaza was a thriving art hub, with residencies, art programmes, exhibitions and grants for artists. The art department at the Al-Aqsa University in Gaza was established in 1995, the same year the university was recognised, and it played a major role in promoting art through academic programmes. In 2021, recognising the restrictions as well as earlier destruction, the concept of the Sahab Museum (The Museum of the Clouds) was implemented, preserving material and digital works in a curated virtual space that is also an act of resistance. It decolonises Gaza through Palestinian memory, “providing an attempt to respond to the destruction of cultural archives, which lies at the heart of colonial policy.”

    The book also documents Gaza’s deceased artists. One example is Fathi Ghaben, who died after inhaling white phosphorus. His paintings are synonymous with Palestinian resistance,  depicting the Palestinian flag as well as other cultural symbols in his art, leading to his arrest and detention by Israel in the 1980s. Another Palestinian artist from Gaza, Mahasen al-Khatib was killed in October 2024, just hours after publishing her last artwork depicting Sha’ban al-Dalou, who was burnt alive following a strike on the tents outside al-Aqsa Hospital.

    The striking discrepancy between Ghaben’s paintings and the art produced during the genocide illustrate both devastation and displacement. Apart from the bombed buildings, burnt vehicles, what stands out is Gaza and its population as a multitude of barely discernible figures. Masses of people awaiting food, landscapes of tents. Upon viewing the images, one pauses to think of the population’s individual identities in the midst of these scenes, and that is where the horror surges through.

    Fathi Ghaben 1947-2024.

    Rich Cultural Heritage

    Shifting from past to present and back to the past again, the essays in the book attest to both Gaza’s rich cultural heritage, ancient civilisations and Israel’s erasure. Six thousand years of history have been battered into oblivion by Israel to sustain the myth of a barren land ripe for colonisation. Hosting two hundred archaeological sites, Israel targeted Gaza prior to the genocide in a bid to assert its fabricated narrative of ownership over the land through archaeology and excavations. The first archaeological discovery was made before the British Mandate in 1879 in Nuseirat – a statue of Zeus which now forms part of the Istanbul Archaeological Museum. From 1967 onwards, excavations were carried out by the Israeli military.

    Jawdat Khoudary, a Palestinian from Gaza, started his own private collection of antiquities after finding an Islamic glass coin. With over 3,000 artefacts dating back from 2000 BC to the Ottoman Empire, Khoudary eventually decided to establish the region’s first archaeological museum in 2008. In February 2024, the museum was completely obliterated by Israel.

    The book refers to Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin who coined the word genocide and who identified eight dimensions: political, social, cultural, economic, biological, physical, religious and moral. Israel’s eradication of Gaza illustrates how each of these components is intertwined in the systematic erasure of land and generations of people.

    The erasure also limits the Palestinians people’s struggle for self-determination. Israel destroyed numerous libraries in Gaza during the genocide, but before that, it had already looted most of Palestine’s archives during the 1948 Nakba, which are now held in Israel’s State Archive and the National Library. Quoting Palestinian scholar Mezna Qato, the book notes that Palestine’s history is under Israeli state surveillance: “To tell a history of Palestine now often requires seeking access through Israeli state keepers.”

    The Islamic University of Gaza in 2021.

    As a result of Israel’s colonial violence, Gaza’s exclusion from the rest of the world is amplified in several ways. Education is one example – Western universities do not engage with Gaza’s universities, as Israel’s colonial narrative is increasingly upheld in academic institutions. The exclusion of Gaza can also be traced back to the British Mandate and the 1948 Nakba, during which the entirety of Palestine faced restrictions on curriculum expansion and resources. Since October 2023, however, Israel moved from destruction to annihilation of Gaza’s education system. Other parts of Gaza’s history are also overlooked and largely unknown to the world, such as the history of aviation in Gaza and how this was also linked to Zionist colonial violence.

    Archiving Gaza in the present, as the book title states, represents quite a contradiction. Archiving in the face of erasure primarily presents one dilemma, as the book states in the case of archaeology, “Given the ongoing humanitarian, economic and environmental crises in Gaza, identifying new archaeological sites is not currently a priority.” However, the altered landscape requires an urgency to channel efforts towards preservation.

    But altered land presents a major problem. As the book shows, so much of Gaza has been lost that its very survival as a distinct entity has been placed in peril. Amid striving to safeguard their own survival in a land reduced to rubble, Palestinians are also aware of the necessity of preserving what can be salvaged, at a time when they are also preserving their own history of the genocide. International humanitarian law has failed Palestinians, as the book asserts. A Palestinian oral history thus becomes not only central but imperative. As the international community rallies behind the U.S. 20-point plan for Gaza, which upholds the Zionist narrative of a barren land in the current genocidal erasure, reclaiming Gaza in recollections, and wider Palestinian narratives, is an important part of decolonisation.

    In complete defiance to the Zionist narrative, this collection of essays and photos stand as testimony to Gaza as Palestinians know and remember it.

    Feature Image: Forced Displacement of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip devastated by Israeli bombing, January 29, 2025.

  • Review: Displaced in Gaza: Stories from the Gaza Genocide

    Gaza’s history since the Nakba of 1948 is punctuated by waves of forced displacement. The enclave has been the epicentre of Palestinian refugees since 1948, having welcomed Palestinians from all over the colonised territories. Since Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza began in October 2023 its entire population of over two million, in a territory of just 151 km2, has been rendered internally displaced persons.

    Displaced in Gaza: Stories from the Gaza Genocide, Edited by Yousef M Aljamal, Norma Hashim, Noor Nabulsi, and Zoe Jannuzi (Haymarket Books, 2025) is a collection of twenty-seven testimonies of Palestinians living in Gaza enduring the genocide. An immediate response upon reading through the chapter titles is: to what extent have we become desensitised as spectators or activists? And, moreover, what is the link, or disconnect, between this wider perception of a genocide occurring and a person living through it?

    It begs the question, when reading through the testimonies, after more than two years how much can our mind take before the experiences themselves, narrated by survivors, merely become background noise? With the daily recounting of Israel’s kill toll being reduced to statistical data – a roll call similar to the reporting of Covid cases that gradually desensitised the listener – can our minds link back to the human tragedy?

    Of course we should. For the chapter titles speak of a shattered, mundane reality. Birthdays morph into atrocities. Education is ruptured by bombs. A woman is widowed by targeted assassination. A husband is killed while searching for food. Entire families are wiped out. The details are so mundane, so quotidian, yet genocide is an immense, unforgivable laceration in both its experience and the memory if it. That memory should, and must, extend to the rest of us. Narratives can combat desensitisation, as long as we know what to prioritise.

    In the foreword to the book, Ahmad Alnaouq writes:

    Everyone on Gaza is now a citizen journalist, determined more than ever to confront and challenge the Western media narrative – the demonising and dehumanising of the Palestinians, the lack of agency recognised, and the distortion of truth.

    This collection of testimonies directly challenges the Western hegemonic narrative which, even while reporting the official genocide kill toll, still finds ways of sanitising bloodshed and diminishing the humanity of Palestinian survivors. The kill toll is represented in two ways – as a statistic that either supports sporadic calls for accountability or offered in support of Israel “finishing the job.”

    Yousef Al-Jamal references the Palestinian poet and academic Refaat Alareer, who was killed by Israel in 2023, and for whom storytelling was an integral component of Palestinian history.

    A Poem for Refaat Alareer

    ‘For centuries,’ AL-Jamal writes, ‘Palestinians have tended the rich oral history of Palestine, preserving cultural heritage, including folktales and stories about the land.’ This collection of narratives from the Gaza genocide is a contribution to Palestine’s oral history, and one that, due to its international dissemination, cannot be destroyed by Israel.

    The personal narratives in this book speak of a disrupted simplicity, but not a disrupted normality. This includes death or killing, displacement, hunger, the tribulations of living and enduring life under a highly militarised genocide. We find the disruption of education and attempts to teach, as well as the full spectrum of forced displacement including of a Nakba survivor, along with attempts to rebuild a semblance of normality even as Israel destroys Gaza’s infrastructure. Even before the genocide, Palestinians in Gaza faced immense hardships and restrictions which were normalised into manageable deprivation, even by international institutions.

    For many Palestinians, as evidenced by several contributors to this anthology, the large scale killing meant that families were welcoming other relatives into their midst. At times it was orphaned children, as was the case with Aisha Osama Abu Ajwa, a mother of four children who began taking care of two children whose parents were killed when Israel bombed an entire residential block. In her description of forced displacement, Abu Ajwa writes, ‘The children witnessed dozens of martyrs’ bodies strewn on the ground. They cried intensely, while blood covered the streets.’

    ‘I hope war ends soon. Eight months of continuous killing exhausts us,’ writes Fidaa Fathi Abu Yousef, whose son was killed while riding a bike just 800m away from the family home.

    Another recurring horror is Palestinians fleeing to supposedly safe zones, while Israel bombs move in the direction the displaced are heading, leaving not only a trail of displacement but bloodshed. The killing of Palestinian children, as described by the narrators of this genocide, encompass all ages. The visibility of Israel killing children is magnified when the writers note the dead children’s ages. Thus removed from the general term, the children take on meaningful identities; allowing the reader to recognise how Israel has attempted to obliterate Palestinians through its killing of the younger generations. Children killed on their birthday, children killed while sleeping, the tragedy is portrayed through the eyes of the living, bereaved and those unable to process their loss due to a perpetual quest for survival.

    Their attempt to persist in living instead of perishing at times makes the writing of these recollections and experiences become slightly devoid of emotion. Emotion almost becomes a luxury when surviving a genocide, but the almost matter-of-fact narratives in this collection make grief all the more important, not only to grasp but experience. Israel has not only wiped entire families out and lacerated others beyond repair, it has also obliterated entire psychological processes that are necessary when experiencing traumatic events. In the midst of a genocide, Palestinians are unable to experience the grieving process.

    Incessant worry about family members displaced in different locations around Gaza is another hardship Palestinians must endure. Without means of communication for the most part, relatives receive no news of each other. ‘Gaza is small, yet we have not seen each other since the war began. We have not reunited. I know nothing of my sons. My life’s dream is to reunite with them in one home before my death,’ Yusra Salem Abu Awad states in her narrative.

    The script flips to a twelve-year-old boy, Youssef Qawash, writing about how he has lost his father and uncle in a bombing and not knowing whether his father’s remains will ever be discovered. ‘My uncles have searched in Deir al-Balah and Maghazi, but no one knows where my father is buried,’ Qawash ponders, noting that his father might still be buried under the rubble of destroyed houses.

    Ireland and Palestine: A Crucial Vote Awaits

    The ramifications of starvation are reflected in Najlaa Al-Kafarna’s story. Her husband was killed while searching for food for the family on the third day of the genocide, which was their second day of forced displacement. Six other relatives were also massacred in their search for food. Her special needs son, Muhammad, is malnourished and lacks medication and physical therapy sessions.

    Throughout most of the narratives in the book, the cry for food recurs. So does the lack of basic necessities, and the wearing of the same clothes through different seasons. We find the rationing of flour, and the shelling of a school while forcibly displaced Palestinians are baking bread. The deprivation is exacerbated by employment being almost non-existent during the genocide. Profound mental health issues as a result of ongoing trauma (Palestinians cannot speak of post-traumatic stress disorder) are also a common experience.

    ‘This war is larger than the 1948 Nakba. I am 91 years old,’ Mohammed Abdul Jabbar Abu Seif says. Aged fifteen, he experienced the first Zionist ethnic cleansing of Palestine and he notes the differences between the specific targeting of Zionist paramilitaries in 1948, and the widespread destruction of the current genocide in Gaza. One of the few remaining survivors of the Nakba, he narrates his experience of displacement in 1948 and how his family settled in Gaza in the Nuseirat camp. ‘My testament to my children and grandchildren is to never leave Gaza. We cannot leave Gaza, and we cannot migrate again,’ Abu Seif asserts, noting the miscalculation in 1948 of an eventual return and of leaving to save their lives.

    Narrating the Israeli colonial aggressions he has experienced throughout his life, he describes the genocide as ‘a war of extermination and destruction of humans and nature.’ The description is far more tangible than the word genocide will ever be, particularly now that the international community has diluted its meaning to preserve Israel’s impunity. A destruction of humans and nature is something that anyone anywhere in the world can easily envisage. This narrative brings the consequences of destruction, as well as fear, to the reader’s mind.

    The entirety of this anthology also serves to highlight what a vibrant society Palestinians in Gaza had created before the genocide. Education stands out in particular as one of their achievements. Indeed the tenacity to attempt to study and teach throughout the genocide is remarkable. Ambitions are currently stilted, but dreams are still cherished, An awareness of the many hurdles to overcome in order to create a healthy society post-genocide is also to the fore in many narratives in this collection. As the UNSC hands over the rebuilding of Gaza to the U.S. administration, thus prolonging the genocide, these testimonies will stand in opposition to the U.S.-Israeli narrative. More importantly, they are a sliver of testimony from Palestinians that neither the U.S. nor Israel, have the power to annihilate.

    Feature Image: Ahsanul Haque Z

  • Grandmothers’ Fight for Stolen Generation

    Review: A Flower Travelled in my Blood: The Incredible Story of the Grandmothers who Fought to Find a Stolen Generation of Children by Haley Cohen Gilliland.

    Between 1975 and the first half of 1978, it has been estimated that the Argentinian dictatorship under Jorge Rafael Videla killed and ‘disappeared’ 22,000 people. As far back as 1984, the National Commission of the Disappeared People (CONADEP) estimated that between 10,000 and 30,000 people were disappeared by the dictatorship from 1975 to 1983.

    The rationale that “If they were taken, there must be a reason,” employed by Argentinians during the dictatorship in a bid for personal safety is immediately imparted in Haley Cohen Gilliland’s book, A Flower Travelled in my Blood: The Incredible Story of the Grandmothers Who Fought to Find a Stolen Generation of Children (Avid Reader Press, 2025). The book tells the story of the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo – a group of grandmothers whose sons and daughters were disappeared by the dictatorship, and whose grandchildren were kidnapped and illegally adopted by members of the dictatorship’s state institutions.

    The book opens with the kidnappings of Jose Manuel Perez Rojo and his wife Patricia Roisinblit, who were both involved in left-wing activism and resistance with the Montoneros against the right-wing turbulence in Argentina that culminated in General Jorge Rafael Videla’s dictatorship. Jose and Patricia’s toddler Mariana was taken to her grandparents by the parents’ kidnappers. In her late stages of pregnancy, Patricia gave birth to a boy while detained at the School of Naval Mechanics, known as ESMA.

    The book focuses on the Roisinblit family as it traces both Argentina’s dictatorship history and that of the Abuelas. Rosa Roisinblit, who passed away in September this year at the age of 106, was one of the Abuelas’ founding members. For Rosa, the disappearance of her daughter and abduction of her grandson altered her existence from a person who completely avoided mention of politics to a driving force behind the organisation that openly challenged the dictatorship. At first through persistent presence and silent protest at Plaza de Mayo, the Abuelas would find themselves at the helm of exposing the systematic disappearances of dictatorship opponents and their stolen children.

    Lieutenant General Jorge Rafael Videla swearing the Oath as President of Argentina, 29 March 1976.

    Videla’s dictatorship attempted to avoid the scrutiny which the Chilean dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet ignited. Argentina obscured its description of opponents, and by doing so widened its net to encompass not only those involved in resistance but also anyone remotely linked to the disappeared detainees. The author notes, “For the junta, these covert abductions were the perfect tool: brazen enough to incite fear, but subtle enough that Argentines could pretend they weren’t happening.” As the “disappeared” started making its way into conversations and rhetoric, Videla himself utilised the word in a press conference to bolster dictatorship impunity: “The desaparecido is an unknown … they are an unknown entity, neither dead nor alive, they are disappeared.”

    Of Jewish descent but born in Argentina, Rosa at first turned to Jewish organisations and even the Israeli embassy for help, but none was forthcoming, despite the fact that many Jewish people had been detained and disappeared by the military dictatorship. Videla’s manipulation of Christian values to justify atrocities was also either tolerated or supported by the Catholic clergy in Argentina, leaving the mothers and grandmothers of the disappeared with little recourse. It was during one such futile meeting that Azucena Villalfor, the mother of a disappeared detainee, determined to stage a protest at Plaza de Mayo – a gathering for relatives of the disappeared to recognise and know each other.

    Fourteen women gathered for the first meeting and the group later called themselves the Madres de Plaza de Mayo. It was from this group – the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo – that the Abuelas formed their own distinct group, as they were looking for both their disappeared children and grandchildren.

    The Plaza De Mayo in Buenos Aires, where the grandmothers have consistently protested since 1977.

    When Rosa joined the group of women, she realised that some stories of the disappeared children held some commonality – some women were also looking for their grandchildren. As support for their mission grew, some people came forward to report that their neighbours suddenly were raising babies, despite no earlier signs of pregnancy. The first inklings that the junta in Argentina had systematically abducted their grandchildren came when two Uruguayan children were located in Valparaiso after being abducted from Buenos Aires in 1976. The transnational operation was linked to Operation Condor – a US-backed plan that sought to eliminate all Communist and socialist influence in South America, and in which Argentina also participated.

    Alfredo Astiz, a naval officer who worked as ESMA, was tasked with infiltrating the group, posing as the brother of a disappeared detainee. The bodies of two mothers and a nun, supportive of their cause, were discovered decades later in a mass grave as a result of this operation.

    The Abuelas followed up on clues to piece together the broken narratives that could shed light on the disappearances and illegal abductions, since it was clear that no help from the state would be forthcoming. The military would not divulge information about the disappeared and it was through contacting other human rights organisations and a breakthrough in genetic testing that the Abuelas were able to prove the identity of the stolen children they eventually tracked down, and those of the children who came forward after the fall of the dictatorship in 1981.

    Cohen Gilliland gives a detailed account of the forensic anthropology that was employed to identify the remains of the disappeared buried in mass graves, as well as the setting up of Argentina’s National Genetic Data Bank in 1987. American geneticist Mary King devised a grandpaternity test that would allow the analysis of DNA samples from the grandparents and grandchildren to prove their family lineage. Cohen Gilliland writes: “In many cases, such as Rosa’s, the Abuelas were looking for grandchildren who had disappeared while still in their mothers’ wombs.” Following the return to democracy, the grandpaternity test became accepted as evidence in court cases relating to the abducted and illegally adopted children of the disappeared.

    Argentina’s truth commission report noted the abduction of the disappeared’s children, stating: “When a child is torn from their legitimate family to be placed in another family environment chosen according to an ideological notion of ‘what is best for their salvation,’ a vile usurpation of roles is being committed.” The report also lauded the Abuelas’ work and determination to establish not only the identities of the stolen children, but also the contribution of their efforts towards seeking justice for crimes against humanity committed by the dictatorship.

    “When a child is torn from their legitimate family to be placed in another family environment chosen according to an ideological notion of ‘what is best for their salvation,’ a vile usurpation of roles is being committed.”

    Despite the scientific success of genetic testing, several of the abducted grandchildren who came forth, as well as the Abuelas, did not anticipate the ramifications that disappearances and abductions would have on the affected families. Amid campaigns to discredit the Abuelas, and lawsuits contesting custody, the book illustrates how the dictatorships tore families apart and created new ones founded on torture, disappearances, abductions and lies. Reconciliation with biological family at times came at a cost, where justice was achieved at the expense of psychological trauma. Justice did not necessarily ease the endured past.

    This trauma is highlighted in the book through Rosa’s story and her search for her abducted grandson, Rodolfo, who was given the name Guillermo by the couple who raised him. While Guillermo – as he is referred to in the book – swiftly seeks out the truth about his identity, he is also faced with the repercussions of the decision. The psychological and emotional toll is evident as he navigates through two distinct realities: one in which the dysfunctional and abusive family he grew up with disintegrated, and the other in which he sought to reconcile himself with the history of his biological family, which should have belonged to him.

    One memory Guillermo narrates is his adoptive mother asking him, at the age of eight, what would happen if another woman claimed to be his mother. As memories of his past contend with the present, and the contradictions arise, particularly the discrepancies in his upbringing, Guillermo faces a major identity crisis. “You kidnapped the grandson of the vice president of the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo,” he told Francisco Gomez, his adoptive father who worked for the military.

    Yet Gomez’s eventual arrest and its effects upon his adoptive mother brought a new round of implications for Guillermo, who found it difficult to distinguish emotionally between healthy and traumatic bonds. Even within his biological family, Guillermo and his sister became estranged over the rupture caused by the dictatorship’s abduction, despite the fact that Guillermo went on to become a lawyer and participate in bringing the dictatorship perpetrators to justice alongside the Abuelas.

    Milei shaking hands with Donald Trump in February 2025.

    Cohen Gilliand’s book is particularly important at a time when Argentina’s right-wing government is resolutely waging war against memory institutions in the country. Argentina’s quest for justice already faced hurdles during Mauricio Macri’s presidency, but current President Javier Milei has exceeded Macri’s measures since the start of his tenure, attacking not only sites of memory but also directly targeting the Abuelas. In a decree that was rejected by the Chamber of Deputies in August this year, Milei sought to remove the autonomy of the National Genetic Data Bank. This book treats the delicate subject of disappearances and abductions with dignity, yet with the clarity and sense of justice that must be employed against dictatorship oblivion.

    Feature Image: The mothers and grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo enter the former Navy Petty-Officers School of Mechanics detention center.