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<a class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain" href="https://mondoweiss.net/2024/06/my-nuseirat/?ml_recipient=123753879317775483&ml_link=123753839785412216&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=2024-06-10&utm_campaign=Daily+Headlines+RSS+Automation">mondoweiss.net</a>
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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">My Nuseirat</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">Haidar Eid</div>
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<div class="gmail-reader-estimated-time" dir="ltr">June 9, 2024<br></div>
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<img src="cid:ii_lx94ej7a0" alt="080624_Nusairat_OSH_0032-1024x683.jpg" width="394" height="263"><br><p>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. </p>
<p>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 <em>fida’iyyin, </em>our supermen, and the Zionist “villains.” Stories of heroism and martyrdom in defense of the camp and a lost country called <em>Falasteen</em>
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<em> the </em>correct form of spoken Arabic for me; its <em>bortoqal</em>
(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. </p>
<p>I am writing this piece hours after genocidal <a href="https://mondoweiss.net/2024/06/i-heard-all-of-my-friends-last-breath-testimonies-from-the-nuseirat-massacre/">Israel killed 274 and injured more than 400 beautiful Nuseiraties</a>,
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. </p>
<p>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? </p>
<p>No, not enough.</p>
<p>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</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
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<p><strong>Haidar Eid</strong><br>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.</p>
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