[News] My Nuseirat

[Anti-Imperialist News]

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My Nuseirat
Haidar Eid
June 9, 2024
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[image: 080624_Nusairat_OSH_0032-1024x683.jpg]

I was born in the Nuseirat refugee camp; all my siblings were born there
too. My father, together with my sister and brother, are buried in two of
its cemeteries. Almost the entire Eid clan still lives there, and those
butchered by genocidal Israel’s killing machine are buried there. Hundreds
of my students are from there. I know almost every single street of the
camp; I am familiar with the faces of its residents, all of whom are
refugees from towns and villages erased by apartheid Israel in 1948.

Nuseirat, one of Gaza’s eight refugee camps, has become a major component
of my national and class consciousness, a place of both destitution and
revolution. In the early 1970s, I was a small child when I heard of the
clashes between the *fida’iyyin, *our supermen, and the Zionist “villains.”
Stories of heroism and martyrdom in defense of the camp and a lost country
called *Falasteen* were discussed by family, relatives, neighbors, and
friends — all refugees from the south of the “Land of Sad Oranges,” as
referred to by our intellectual giant, Ghassan Kanafani. A connection was
created by the village of Zarnouqa, from which my parents were expelled by
Zionist thugs together with thousands of other villagers in 1948, and
Nuseirat. The Zarnouqa/Nuseirat dialect became* the *correct form of spoken
Arabic for me; its *bortoqal* (oranges), I was told, were the best in the
whole wide world (sometimes the speaker would acknowledge “second to
Jaffa’s”!) Those orange orchards were replanted around Nuseirat until
apartheid Israel decided to uproot them all during the First Intifada of
the late 1980s and early 90s.

I am writing this piece hours after genocidal Israel killed 274 and injured
more than 400 beautiful Nuseiraties
<https://mondoweiss.net/2024/06/i-heard-all-of-my-friends-last-breath-testimonies-from-the-nuseirat-massacre/>,
many of whom are my relatives, friends, and students — only to rescue four
of its captives. 64 of the victims were children, and 57 were women. Those
who were brutally murdered were either going to or coming back from Camp
Souk, having their breakfast, playing in the street, going to the Al Awda
hospital, cooking food, and visiting relatives and friends, i.e., the
timing was chosen carefully in order to kill as many people as possible.

When will genocidal Biden be satisfied? How many more children have to lose
limbs, or be killed? How many mothers have to be murdered or lose their
little ones in order to convince the colonial West, led by the United
States, that it is time to have a ceasefire? Obviously, the 36,800 killed,
including 15,000 children and 11,000 women, with more than 11,000 under the
rubble, are not enough. How about the destruction of 70 percent of the
entire Gaza Strip? The killing of hundreds of its academics, doctors, and
journalists? The erasure of whole families from the civil registry? The
closure of its 7 gates? The starving to death of those who refuse to leave
or die?

No, not enough.

Gaza is being annihilated in real-time in front of the eyes of the world.
In fact, Gaza has ushered in the beginning of the end of “human rights” as
defined and monopolized by the colonial West. Neither the International
Court of Justice nor the International Criminal Court or the United Nations
General Assembly and its Security Council have been able to stop the
genocide and protect my Nuseirat. And why? Only because some brown native
Palestinians managed to break out of Gaza after over a decade and a half of
living under a total land, air, and sea blockade in the largest open-air
prison on earth! How dare they shatter Israel and the colonial West’s image
of military invincibility

Nuseirat is a microcosm of the genocide. The lives of four white Ashkenazi
Israelis are equivalent to the lives of 274 native mothers, doctors, and
children. The white world is celebrating this “victory” regardless of the
“collateral damage,” as long as the victims are not like “us,” the white
gods of this unjust world.

The Nuseirat massacre is not a moment of victory after which Benjamin
Netanyahu and his gang of fascist thugs can call it a day. There will be
more massacres committed by the same bloodthirsty colonizers. But Nuseirat,
like all massacres committed by colonialists, whether in Algeria, South
Africa, Ireland, or other settler colonies, will be a signpost in our long
walk to freedom. Only those who stand on the right side of history can read
the signs.
------------------------------

*Haidar Eid*
Haidar Eid is Associate Professor of Postcolonial and Postmodern Literature
at Gaza’s al-Aqsa University. He has written widely on the Arab-Israeli
conflict, including articles published at Znet, Electronic Intifada,
Palestine Chronicle, and Open Democracy. He has published papers on
cultural Studies and literature in a number of journals, including Nebula,
Journal of American Studies in Turkey, Cultural Logic, and the Journal of
Comparative Literature.
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