My Nuseirat

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.

"I was born in the Nuseirat refugee camp and it made me who I am. The Nuseirat massacre will not be the last in Gaza, but like all massacres committed by colonialists, it will be a signpost in our long walk to freedom that will not be forgotten..."

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, 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.

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