Nora Barrows-Friedman
The Electronic Intfada / October 9, 2023
“The whole room is filled with gunpowder. … We don’t deserve this. We’re not animals like the Israelis think. Our kids deserve better.”
This is what our contributor Refaat Alareer, an academic and writer in Gaza City, told us on a special livestream broadcast of The Electronic Intifada Podcast.
Alareer spoke to us on Monday evening from his home, as relentless Israeli bombs exploded in the background.
You can watch the entire broadcast above.
Israel pounded the Gaza Strip from air, land and sea overnight Sunday as a major confrontation that began with a surprise assault launched by Hamas stretched into its third day.
The health ministry in Gaza said that there were at least 413 fatalities in the territory by the end of the day on Sunday.
Israel killed multiple members of several families when it bombed their homes over their heads without warning, rights groups said.
Meanwhile, Israel’s war minister Yoav Gallant promised more genocidal attacks and collective punishment against Gaza’s population and infrastructure, which are war crimes.
“It’s very bleak, it’s very dark, there’s no way out,” Alareer added.
“If there is no water, there is no way out of Gaza. What should we do, drown? Commit mass suicide? Is this what Israel wants?”
“We believe that if we give up, then everybody is going to say, ‘Look at the Palestinians. They gave up. Why don’t you behave like the Palestinians? Why don’t you bow down?’” he said.
Alareer was joined by our executive director Ali Abunimah, along with academic Abdaljawad Omar in the occupied West Bank and journalist and researcher Jon Elmer to analyze the current situation as well as the Palestinian resistance’s military capabilities thus far.
Activist and educator Shahd Abusalama, who grew up in the Jabaliya refugee camp in Gaza and now lives in London, also described the trauma of Israel’s attacks – and how she has been unable to reach her family members back home.
“My family, like all survivors in Gaza, are literally waiting for their destiny,” she said.
“There is no discrimination between homes, hospitals, mosques, stones, trees. … Everyone is a target and there is no place that is safe.”
Nora Barrows-Friedman is a staff writer and associate editor at The Electronic Intifada, and is the author of In Our Power: US Students Organize for Justice in Palestine (Just World Books, 2014).
