During Israel’s lengthy 2014 assault on Gaza, voices worldwide rose in stunned protest. Using numerous creative means, Palestinians and their allies bore witness to the Israeli attacks—and to the siege that has strangled Gaza ever since. Gaza Unsilenced foregrounds the words and images with which Gaza Palestinians recorded the pain, losses, and dislocations of the attacks, the continuing punishment of the siege, and their community’s resilience and dignity.
The book includes original contributions from the editors themselves along with essays, reportage, images, and poetry from Gaza and elsewhere. Contributors include Ali Abunimah, Ramzi Baroud, Diana Buttu, Belal Dabour, Chris Hedges, Rashid Khalidi, and Eman Mohammed.
What People Are Saying
“Israel takes the hammer to Gaza, but it cannot snuff out Palestinian voices. These continue to testify to the inhumanity of the Israeli occupation. There are also silences—the book ends with a list of the names of those killed in Israel’s 2014 bombing of Gaza, human beings who cannot tell us their stories. This book tries to fill that gap.” Vijay Prashad, author of The Death of the Nation and the Future of the Arab Revolution
“The editors of this remarkable collection ask, ‘after the smoke clears, who will remember the dead?’ Their answer, and that of their dozens of writers, poets, journalists and analysts, is ‘we will.’ We, they said, Palestinians of Gaza who survived the slaughter, we Palestinians from elsewhere in Palestine and refugees in far-flung exile, we allies and friends from around the world, we will not let the world forget. During the fifty days of Israel’s 2014 assault on Gaza, Tel Aviv’s best efforts to keep the world in the dark and to keep the West believing the lie of self-defense, all failed. They failed because Palestinians did not all die, and those who lived were determined to tell their story in their own voices: their poetry, their memories, and their children. This extraordinary book joins the narrative of Palestine’s witness—of oppression, brutality, and death, but also of life reaffirmed and resistance reclaimed.” Phyllis Bennis, Institute for Policy Studies
“Readers will find this rich anthology highly informative, evocative, and inspirational. They will find in it culture, creativity, and commitment. And they will also find it painful, emotional, and overpowering, such is the unremitting cruelty with which Palestinians are treated. But read it they must. It equips us all, even the best-informed, with the facts, figures and human stories of steadfastness not just in Gaza but also in the West Bank and amongst the Palestinian citizens of Israel. It enables us to communicate, even more powerfully, why justice is needed, and needed now—and why Israel must be brought to justice. If any book is a must read by the Prosecutor and judges at the International Criminal Court, this book is it.” Nadia Hijab, executive director of Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network
“Gaza Unsilenced is an outstanding collection of short essays that discuss different aspects of Israel’s murderous assault on Gaza in the summer of 2014. Given the ability of Israel and its American defenders to propagandize and distort the historical record, it is imperative that books like this be published and widely read. Israel cannot be allowed to create a false history about the horrors it has inflicted on the people of Gaza and the Palestinians more generally." John J. Mearsheimer, R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago
About the Editors
Refaat Alareer was the coeditor of Gaza Unsilenced, editor of Gaza Writes Back, and author of If I Must Die. A native of Gaza City, he received his M.A. in Comparative Literature from the University College of London (UK) and his Ph.D. in English Literature at the Universiti Putra Malaysia. He taught world literature, comparative literature, and creative writing (fiction and non-fiction) at the Islamic University of Gaza and cofounded the organization We Are Not Numbers. He was killed on December 6, 2023, by an Israeli airstrike in northern Gaza.
Laila El-Haddad is coeditor of Gaza Unsilenced, coauthor of the award-winning ethnographic cookbook The Gaza Kitchen: A Palestinian Culinary Journey, and the author of Gaza Mom. She is a talented writer, analyst, and social activist, and a policy advisor for Al-Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network. Born in Gaza, El-Haddad currently lives in Columbia, Maryland.