Summary
Author of Chapter 8 of From the River to the Sea, “On why we still hold onto our phones and keep recording” (2022), excerpted from Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire (Haymarket Books, 2022) (From the River to the Sea: Essays for a Free Palestine, lines 573-604).
Details
- Palestinians hold onto their phones and record because documenting their experience keeps the Palestinian narrative alive and theirs, against an erasure she illustrates with Hagar Shezaf’s account of Israeli Defense Ministry teams removing historic documents from Israeli archives (line 588).
- Recording is done “not for their sake but for ours” — not to prove Palestinian humanity to Western media that portray Palestinians as terrorists, violent people or numbers (lines 590-592).
- What is recorded includes prayers to survive, children’s joy at intact toys and living pets, targeted olive trees and stolen livelihoods, and a plea for humanity’s help to end “this horror, which is more than our cameras can bear” (lines 598-602).
Related pages
From the River to the Sea: Essays for a Free Palestine, Gaza, Memoricide