palestine

“We carry your memory like fire in our veins”: 77th Nakba Day 

Whenever someone asked me my name, it was always followed by: “Are you a refugee or a citizen?” As a child, I would ask: “What is a refugee?” On this year’s Nakba Day — May 15, 2025 — an Al Jazeera article by Ruwaida Amer in Gaza describes the 1948 displacement of her grandparents from their razed village of Beir Daras to Khan Younis, where she was born in a refugee camp. Her grandfather was fifteen years old during the Nakba, married and with a baby son. The baby — Amer’s uncle — died as they fled. He was just…

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“Ongoing return”: A living archive of Palestine

To cast my net I found the waves Some laughing, some crying The wave asked me ‘what’s the matter?’ I said ‘I’ve lost my beloved’ Truly, I’ve lost my beloved Partition, a film directed by McGill anthropology professor Diana Allan, begins with an Arabic song confessing to the sea. The lyrics ring against granulated black and white footage of the sloping hills and winding roads of Gaza, 1917. The scenes shift to British soldiers marching in synchrony and to explosions – grainy, soundless, and distorted.  Sleep, my son, sleep The slumber of gazelles in the wilderness  Oh Lord, may my…

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A protestor with a Palestinian flag. Photo taken by Moses Odida.

“Western racism is its DNA”: Talk by Palestinian scholar Saree Makdisi on genocide in Gaza

Originally published at The Socialist on April 16th, 2025 On Wednesday, March 19, Dr. Saree Makdisi presented at Western University for a public lecture titled, “Gaza and the Question of Palestine.”  Dr. Makdisi is the Chair of the Department of English at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), a prominent scholar of romantic literature, and public intellectual who authored Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation (2008) and Tolerance is a Wasteland: Palestine and the Culture of Denial (2022).  He is also the nephew of the late scholar Edward Saïd, who is responsible for foundational work in postcolonial theory. Saïd’s seminal work, Orientalism (1979) describes the West’s…

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Doing Philosophy After Gaza

The following piece, written by Western University philosophy graduate student Farid Saberi, emerged from personal reflections of despair surrounding the genocide in Gaza. He shares his thoughts on what this scale of violence means for his field of study.  History is going through one of its darkest hours. Since October 2023, a defenseless population in Gaza has been the victim of an ongoing assault that Amnesty International and reputable scholars of international law have described as  genocide. The storm of misinformation and propaganda has been ruthless. The facts are quite straightforward: there is an occupying apartheid regime backed by Western…

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“There’s no Pride without Palestine”: Perspectives on pinkwashing 

On Tuesday, March 18th, two Israeli youth spoke to a Queer Theory class at Western University about queer feminist critique of Israeli militarism and pinkwashing.  “Pinkwashing” refers to the portrayal of Israel as “more humane, modern, and accepting” than the Arab world when it comes to embracing the queer community, and using this portrayal currently to morally justify the ongoing genocide in Gaza.  Einat Gerlitz, twenty-one years old, and Tal Mitnick, nineteen years old, refused to enlist in the Israeli military on grounds of pacifism. Both were imprisoned by the Israeli military and faced a slew of death threats and…

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Young Israeli dissidents: “Do anything you can to stop the genocide”

On Tuesday, March 18th, an Al Jazeera article by Maram Humaid from Gaza begins:  “It wasn’t a nightmare, it was real. The war had returned just like that, without warning. The clock read 2:10am when we woke up in terror to the deafening sound of air strikes. A violent noise shook everything around us. My daughter, Banias, woke up screaming in fear: “Baba! Mama! What’s happening?” For the last four days, Al Jazeera notifications stormed phone screens.  At least eight Palestinians killed, including children, as Israel carries out “extensive” air attacks on the Gaza Strip – follow live Dozens of…

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Western community protest: demanding divestment, accountability, and policy changes

This Tuesday, March 18th, Western University students and faculty members gathered on concrete beach to protest the preceding night’s deadly raid in the Gaza Strip — a raid in which over 400 Palestinians were killed by Israeli strikes. This attack sparked global outrage as many — including local health officials in the Strip — recognize it as a violation of the current ceasefire (effective January 19th, this year). The rally was composed of students from the Western Divestment Coalition, members of Independent Jewish Voices, amongst students and faculty. The protestors had two demands. Fourth year Psych student and Palestine activist…

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“A small window into dehumanization”: Palestinian-Canadian doctor on the destruction of healthcare in Gaza

“Do you know how hard a kid fights when you bring a needle to their face and start cutting into it? Do you know how much strength they suddenly have? You can’t believe where it even comes from? Can you believe the screams that they deliver, when you try to suture them up? It’s crazy, it’s haunting. Truly, truly haunting,” says Palestinian-Canadian doctor Tarek Loubani. “The Israelis were always selective about painkillers. They’d never let painkillers through.” Loubani remembers suture rooms in Gaza full of wailing children. Half of Gaza’s population are children; they are the majority of those injured…

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“Six of us, stuffed into one ambulance, to go to a hospital. When we got there, it was sheer chaos”: A Harrowing Story of Getting Shot in Gaza

The following is a partial transcription, edited for brevity, of a talk given at King’s University College on February 24th, 2025 by Tarek Loubani, a Canadian doctor who has been involved in humanitarian medical missions in Gaza. Dr. Loubani recalls the time he was targeted and shot by Israeli forces while treating peaceful protestors during the Great March of Return protests of 2018-2019. He discusses how Israeli forces deliberately target Palestinian medical infrastructure and prohibit medicine and medical practitioners from entering Gaza. I was shot in 2018 in Gaza. When I was shot, and I kind of fell to the…

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“Where Olive Trees Weep”: Roots of injustice and resilience in the West Bank  

“I felt anger towards what the people on the screen were going through. Anger that this injustice – all of this – is still happening. Anger that all of this exists,” says Western University student Kamil Zerdoumi after viewing a film screening of Where Olive Trees Weep at King’s University College on November 29th, 2024. “It made me more aware of this huge, huge imbalance between [the] rights that Israelis and Palestinians have, and made me more fervent in Palestinians getting more rights and equal treatment and more justice, and less forgiving in any attempts to try and be a…

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