We sat down with Dr. Dana Elborno to talk about how dreams of a free Palestine encompass dreams of climate justice, health justice and more.

In this talk, we unpack dreams of equal rights and climate justice. We discuss the intersectionality and solidarity of liberation movements, and Dana’s experience growing up in diaspora. Towards closing, we ruminate on what may be the biggest threat to an oppressive regime.

Please note: a free Palestine is a call for equal rights, safety and justice for everyone on the land, recognizing the disproportionate harm suffered by Palestinians over the last several decades.

Dr. Dana Elborno is a Palestinian from Gaza, who came to the US as a baby with her family seeking political asylum. She works as a medical doctor in OBGYN in Chicago and is deeply embedded with activism for health and human rights. Follow her work on Instagram @thegirlgyno.

Whitney Richardson (Turtle Island/USA) is a member of the story team and a founding board member of Climate Creativity. She is an intersectional environmental justice researcher whose work explores connections between human rights, nature’s rights, political ecology, colonialism and resistance movements.

The link between climate change and health

Whitney - How do you see Palestine as a case study for the link between health and climate justice and how integral liberation of an oppressed people is in both of those conversations?

Dana – So, colonialism is not only a violence against a people and their bodies - it’s a violence against our land, and the case of Palestine is a prime example of this. As written very eloquently by the Palestinian Environmental NGO Network: “A changing environment is intimately related to decades of planetary and resource exploitation of the occupation”, so working on combating climate change and its impacts cannot be separated from politics. Climate change is not just a natural phenomenon but a political one that exacerbates preexisting injustice and inequality.

“working on combating climate change and its impacts cannot be separated from politics. Climate change is not just a natural phenomenon but a political one that exacerbates preexisting injustice and inequality.”

This is particularly true when you look at health disparities. The Israeli occupation exacerbates health risks facing Palestinians and it makes them more vulnerable to climate related events and impacts their health outcomes negatively. I think the picture that we both want to paint is one of land sovereignty being a health justice issue and an environmental justice issue - and one that is really the center of any conversation about peace, equality and human rights.

Whitney - The climate crisis has roots in colonialism and its process of extraction - from extraction of land and materials and labor to dispossession of native peoples and more vulnerable residents.

I think when a lot of people hear the word colonialism, they think of old times, but colonization and its extractive methods haven’t ended. We can see this happening all over the world but it’s especially extreme today in the land that, for the purpose of this talk, we will call Palestine. Here we see military occupation, apartheid systems, forced demolitions and expulsions for illegal settlements, and ripping up of native olive trees that have been a staple crop of Palestinians for centuries.

All these cumulatively amount to what is called climate apartheid, where - in order to survive - Palestinians must navigate an unjust system that deprives them of their resources and prevents them from accessing the most fundamental necessities to survive in a world that must also adapt to the stresses of climate change, like rising sea levels, drought, heat intensity, and so on.

Dana - Replace “climate” with “medical” and that sentence would read the same. By no means am I a climate expert but, in the medical community, we are learning more and more about the way environmental change impacts our health and who is impacted the most. There is an intersection here that explores and links the struggle for climate justice, the struggle for medical justice to the liberation of the Palestinian people.

Whitney – Can you talk a little bit about some of the health concerns for Palestinians today?

Dana - Despite its responsibilities as an occupier under the fourth Geneva convention, Israel continues to deny Palestinians essential care and resources. The military occupation does the opposite. It obstructs access and actively bombards healthcare infrastructure and roadways, including the offices of Doctors Without Borders, PCRF, and the homes of several prominent doctors in Gaza. They also bombed the only clinic in Gaza that can do Covid testing.

“Israel continues to deny Palestinians essential care and resources.”

When you look at health outcomes, it just paints a picture that can make something that seems very complicated become very black and white. Who is suffering and why? Just answering those questions, you can learn a lot about human experience in this region.

Growing up in diaspora

Whitney - Can you talk a little bit about your story as a Palestinian in diaspora with us.

Dana - Growing up as a child in diaspora and a Palestinian, I was pretty ignorant. I did not know the political implications of my identity. I thought I could just be like any hyphenated American, like Italian-American, Greek-American – this is where I’m from, this is my language, my culture, my ancestors, my history. We arrived from a place across the ocean, we live in America, and that’s it – that’s really what I thought. But with time, the way that I saw my identity being received really thought me something about myself and that being Palestinian is inherently political.

The mood in the room would change when I would say, “I’m Palestinian American”. Immediately, I’m flooded with complex questions about history, archeology, politics, and current events. When I was a kid, I would be like, “I don’t know, I’m just from there”. It took me well into high school and early college before I learned what it meant to be Palestinian and really understand the tragedy of what is happening in Palestine today. I learned about it through reading, travelling in Lebanon and Jordan. I ended up working for a year in refugee camps in Jordan. These puzzle pieces that I gathered through life and put together paint the picture not only of who I am and where I’m from but made me ask why politics has been forced on us as an inherent part of our identity. What is this imminent danger and injustice that faces us as a population?

“I became a woman who is obsessed with fighting the inertia of injustice happening to Palestinians.”

Through time, I became a woman who is obsessed with fighting the inertia of injustice happening to Palestinians. I’ve been speaking about this and marching about it since I was 17, in Chicago and DC and Portugal and Cairo. I was really driven by this activist spirit and empathy for people who are like me. I really wanted to use the universal skills that I was gaining as a medical doctor, not just help people on an individual level, but leverage the health injustice that I see in my work, to advocate for political change and to help dismantle unjust systems that deprive millions of people of their human rights, which is really what brings me where I am today.

I still have so many dreams of working with Doctors Without Borders… Physicians for Human Rights… Those are all dreams that I still have and is part of what drives me every day as a Palestinian in diaspora.

Equal rights and climate justice

Whitney - Israel, and the political Zionist movement which led to the nation’s founding, claims rights over the land as the ‘birthright’ of the Jewish people. Now, if it’s the ‘birthright’ of a Jewish-identifying settler to come settle in Israel from wherever they are in the world - not just to live alongside Palestinians but at their expense - then, what is the birthright of a Palestinian?

Dana - I think about this question a lot. I have delivered over six or seven hundred babies at this point. With every child that I deliver, I think about what their life is going to be like and who they are going to be. This question just hits me in a very specific place because as a Palestinian the term ‘birthright’ has always been weaponized against us. Jewish people living all over the world have a birthright to this land, yet we are from there and we don’t have access to this land.

The reality is that everybody’s birthrights should be the same whether you’re Palestinian, Israeli, American – wherever you’re from you should have the same birthrights to freedom, to security, to safety, to access clean food and water. The sadness is that Palestinians currently don’t have those things. They don’t have access or sovereignty over their own land, electricity and water sources. They don’t have the ability to dream the same dreams because a lot of dreams require freedom of movement; dreams require statehood and citizenship and the ability to travel and study, and Palestinians don’t have that right now.

“everybody’s birthrights should be the same whether you’re Palestinian, Israeli, American – wherever you’re from you should have the same birthrights to freedom, to security, to safety, to access clean food and water.”

Right now, our birthright is to resist, to stand on the shoulders of the giants who raised us, to stand on the shoulders of the giants who have been leading this revolution in this resistance movement since its inception, and really to grow taller, stronger and more fearless to fulfill our duty to share our voices, to speak up for the voiceless until we achieve equality.

I hope that someday Palestinians can dream whatever they want, and fight for whatever causes they want, because their cause is no longer going to be one that requires a struggle for equal rights.

Whitney - The conception of birthright overlaps with the climate justice concept of intergenerational justice. It basically just means justice for future generations. Parallel awakenings have been occurring among younger generations around the world in the context of climate change and among Palestinian youth, both of whom are recognizing that no one else is coming to save them, both are saying that we must figure this out together ourselves, because no one else will. I would love to hear you talk a little bit about these parallel awakenings.

Dana - We are a generation that lives at a tipping point. We either save this planet for future generations or we don’t, and we either save Palestine for future generations or we don’t. We’re almost at a point of no return. I think that the younger generations are recognizing that.

“We are a generation that lives at a tipping point. We either save this planet for future generations or we don’t, and we either save Palestine for future generations or we don’t.”

Intergenerational justice and intergenerational trauma are talked about often in Palestine. When you look at the way in which colonial violence has attacked us as a people, has attacked our land, the way that they scorch our olive trees, scorch our villages and erase them, and how species of trees that are not indigenous or native to our land spread like crazy. This effort hides that we were there, that our villages were there. It changed not only our civil structure, but our ecosystem. This is something that impacted them at the time that it was happening, and impacts us now, and is of course going to remain as an impact for the generations of youth to come.

I think about documentaries that I have watched about climate change where you see these hordes of penguins and whales, flora and fauna - the beauty of this earth. Then they cut to a scene of one lone penguin and a barely surviving whale. It’s talked about with this imminence of nostalgia and action, like this is what it would be like, and if we don’t act now, it’s never going to be like that again.

It’s such a similar language that we use as a Palestinian people. We used to travel freely, we used to have civil society, we used to have freedom, safety, security, art and theatre - this established civilization. Then you can cut to images now of children living outside because their homes were demolished, our elders crying over their burning olive trees, people filling the streets, revolution and resistance.

I feel like what draws our struggles together, the Palestinian struggle for liberation and the struggle for climate justice, is that we are symptoms of the same problem. We must work together to reverse what’s happening to our planet earth, both in the way that our land, our people and their bodies are being attacked violently, and to restore justice. This restorative justice - back to the earth and the people; that’s what I think about all the time.

It rejuvenates your soul to think of ‘this is what it can be like again’ and to have the confidence that this is a ‘right now problem’ but it doesn’t have to be a ‘forever problem’ if we make change, if you take action. Hopefully our future generations will be able to inherit the dreams of our ancestors because of what we fight for today.

Dreams of a free Palestine

Whitney - I would love to invite you to read the story you wrote for us, and then expand on what a free Palestine would look like for you.

Dana – “Yesterday, Yehia and I were driving around our neighborhood and saw this beautiful, strange tree with pink leaves. We immediately started dreaming about what it could look like if his family could visit us from Gaza and see beauty beyond the cement prison Israel has trapped them in. We talked about someday beautifying Gaza again. Maybe I’d start a clinic for women with a garden out front – maybe he’d sell yellow beans to tourists on the shore of the Mediterranean.

This conversation happens all day long. No part of that conversation includes taking rights away from anyone or kicking anyone out. It is only a conversation about freedom, equal rights and safety for our families in addition to, not instead of, the Jewish citizens of Israel. This is what it sounds like when Palestinians dream of a free Palestine.”

“It is only a conversation about freedom, equal rights and safety for our families in addition to, not instead of, the Jewish citizens of Israel.”

When I wrote this, it was a random Wednesday. We had gone to brunch and had seen this tricolor beech tree. The leaves are this hot pink color. They are wild and beautiful and rare, and immediately upon seeing it, our next thought was to wish his family could see this. My husband’s family lives in Gaza, and my husband was born and raised there. Under the most unlikely of circumstances, he was able to escape and get out, and came here for school. His parents, his siblings, and his ten nieces and nephews, they’re all in Gaza. Starting from the time that I met him, it was a constant presence in our relationship that there’s a very real reality that we might not be able to see his family.

I would love to meet the family that raised the man I’m in love with and that I created this life with, but it was never even a question, there was no possibility, when we got married, no invitations were sent to his family. For Palestinians to get out of Gaza, there must be, like, an extreme medical circumstance for them to apply for a permit to be able to leave this open-air prison that they’re trapped in, and, even in those circumstances, 99 percent of the time they are denied. They can’t even get CT scanners into Gaza. You can’t even imagine being able to travel out of Gaza for a wedding.

It has always been a constant thread of dreams, ‘Oh my God, if it wasn’t for the siege his family would just be able to come here to see this pink tree because it was cool, and they would be able to have come to our wedding, and in the future, if we have kids, to meet our kids in person and not just on Facetime, to have a relationship with them in real life, for us to be able to attend our nieces’ and nephews’ weddings, and our life events would just be normal, but right now they are not.

The dreams that we have are always constricted by the reality of a siege. Our dreams are caged by what can and can’t happen according to the Israeli authorities. We have less rights, we have less freedom, we have less ability to live normally. I think I took it for granted that this is just our life, and this is what our reality is like. Then during Covid, when I saw how impacted everybody was to be like, ‘I haven’t seen my family in a year’, like ‘we couldn’t go to my sister’s wedding’ or ‘we couldn’t meet our niece who was born because of Covid’ and people were really impacted by that - like depressed, angry, resentful about this. For Palestinians, we’re told to just accept that; we’re told that this is just our reality. As Palestinians, that’s just what we have to accept. Our dreams are about expanding the cage that we live in and just being able to do normal things.

“The dreams that we have are always constricted by the reality of a siege.”

I think what I wanted to capture in that story is that we are never like, ‘Oh, we must cleanse the land of the people who have come and take back what was ours’. It’s never about that. We think in terms of rights, and we think in terms of freedom, and we think in terms of access and equality. That’s what our struggle and our fight is for.

People have been writing a lot online of what a free Palestine would sound like, and people are like, “Oh I’ve met my sister for tea in Jerusalem”, or “I take a train from Jerusalem to Gaza city for the weekend”, these things that if you typed it into Google maps today, like how to get from Gaza city to Jerusalem, it would just be like, “no, you can’t”. We want to build a world where you can. We want to build a world where Palestinians can be together, and see each other, and families can be reunited, and loved ones can see each other regularly. That’s the dream.

I’m sorry; that’s such a long-winded answer. It’s just so, it’s so provocative for us. It’s so ingrained in every aspect of our experience. So, if you ask us one thing, you’ll end up hearing our entire life story.

Whitney - I love listening to you, and I think it’s so important, because we’ve been told what we should think about Palestinians and what’s been happening in Israel, and those stories have usually erased the Palestinian experience, so every opportunity that we have to listen to the actual experience of someone who’s from Palestine, whether they were born there or not, is a story that needs to be told and listened to.

Dana - One of the things that often is the most provocative, is that Palestinians don’t necessarily want to be political. We have all kinds of people in Palestinian society: people who are sensitive, who are poets, and who are more introverts, and they too are equally forced into a situation where they have to resist an occupying regime.

When I think about a free Palestine, I think about getting to a day where we can write poetry about other things. Where our poetry isn’t one of imprisonment, isn’t one of revolution, isn’t one of resistance, but one of liberation, and one about the trees and how beautiful they are when they rustle in the Mediterranean winds rolling of the shores, and the sunsets and the birds, and the scent of the orange oil.

“When I think about a free Palestine, I think about getting to a day where we can write poetry about other things.”

There’s so much beauty in our ancestry and our history, but, unfortunately, right now it’s so subsumed by the past seven decades of political oppression and violence that has been forced on us. But it’s by no means more inherent in who we are than any other population on planet earth. If given the opportunity to be a liberated people with sovereignty over our lands, our state and our civilization, people will see that there is a million different ways to be Palestinian.

Right now, our people are oppressed. It’s the most oppressed people who are screaming the loudest for somebody to listen, because we have faith in humanity, that if people just knew what is happening to us, that something would change. So, whenever we’re trying to draw your attention to our experience, it’s because we believe in you: that you have a heart to not want humans to suffer. We believe in humanity to want equality for everybody, which is why we’ll talk to anybody who listens and try to share with them what is happening to our community.

We’re at a point in history now where we have to be political, and we have to talk about this all the time, but I also encourage people to explore Palestinian personalities beyond that and to learn our poetry, music and food - our food is so good - and to learn about our ancestors, our embroidery and our flora or fauna – what grows indigenous to these areas and how beautiful it is. Share with us the dream of what it can be again when it’s free from military occupations, where we can create a land that is filled with greenery again, not just cement rock; that wasn’t our choice. That’s not what we want our homes to look like.

The political is personal

Whitney - Everything you said very much relates to this poem that you shared:

In order for me to write poetry that isn’t political

I must listen to the birds

in order to hear birds

the airplane must be silent

by Marwan Makhoul

It’s important for people to recognize that what’s considered political is inherently personal because all political action has real world impacts that affects someone.

I would love to just hear you talk a little bit more about the idea of the political as personal and how this notion of not wanting to engage in politics has impacted any of your interpersonal relationships.

Dana - In May, when we were living with this trauma and this terror of watching Gaza being bombed, knowing that our entire family lives there, and watching the house were they live undergo a military assault, that building being blown up. That was so traumatizing and terrorizing to me.

Trying to talk to family and friends about it, it was received so different by people who aren’t Palestinian. They’re not talking to me just like their friend or a human that they know and love and care about. It was so dehumanizing. When you talk to a non-Palestinian about it, their responses are like, “It’s challenging for everybody there”, “times are hard for all”, these weird, vague responses that are just desperate to be politically correct and desperate to sound ‘even’. It’s being neutral, which is really frustrating to people who are living in something that is by no means neutral and it’s by no means normal.

We’re not allowed to just be sad, and be mad, and be angry at our circumstances. We are not allowed to suffer and talk about it. I think that defines the Palestinian struggle. People see what Palestinians are going through and they want to wash it with neutrality, but if they just emphasized, just felt, and tried to imagine how they would feel if it was them in those shoes. I think that would be a huge turning point in our liberation movement.

Intersectionality and solidarity between movements

Whitney - How can people get engaged to support the struggle for Palestinian equal rights, and what is the role of popular resistance and solidarity movements in this in this struggle?

Dana - Just put yourself out there, go to protests, reach out to Palestinian community centers. Just meet people, talk to them and ask them what is happening to your family who lives there, and they’ll tell you. We don’t have anything to hide. We’ll never respond to you that ‘it’s too complex, don’t involve yourself in it, you’ll never understand’. We are really a people who believe that if you heard what is happening to us: 1) you’d understand it; 2) you would care; and 3) you would help change the inertia of injustice.

Second, I would say is that there are a lot of links between what is happening to Palestinians and the injustice experienced by other communities experiencing oppression globally, whether that’s looking at Black communities in the US or Indigenous populations in the US and Canada. There is a real link between policies that affect them on a day-to-day basis, whether that’s looking at their disenfranchisement, loss of land sovereignty and health impacts, or the disproportionate way that they are vulnerable to climate change.

If you’re somebody who posted a black square last year, I think you need to look at what the Black Lives Matter statement is on Palestine and look at the links that movement draws to our struggle for liberation. I think you need to look at the Palestinian struggle for liberation position on Black Lives Matter because the two movements have found incredible strength and community in their intertwined experiences.

If you’re somebody who’s interested in learning more about Native American Indigenous populations in the US and first nations in Canada, their erasure, their genocide, their colonization, their sterilization – then look at the scholars on the topic of solidarity between the Native American population and Palestinians.

Obviously, the South Africans have been very vocal for the liberation of Palestinians. Nelson Mandela was quoted saying that the liberation of the South Africans is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinian. I think that that’s just a small example of the link between justice movements across the world.

“Nelson Mandela was quoted saying that the liberation of the South Africans is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinian.”

I think removing these things from being in silos and being like, ‘Oh, that is just something happening over there, it has nothing to do with me’ is important, because it has everything to do with the systems of oppression that exist in your immediate circles, and don’t think for a second that oppression happening across the world isn’t going to have an effect in your immediate community. When we liberate one people, we liberate everybody.

Whitney - What are some of the organizations that come to mind that have been working on this? I always think of Jewish voice for Peace.

Dana - I really want to highlight what you said about some of the biggest organizations that are doing this in the name of Judaism. When you are part of the activist circles for Palestine liberation, you will find as it’s not just Palestinians, and that the movement is deeply intertwined between Palestinians, allies, and of course the Jewish community, because there is a deep love and a deep connection between people who are out and saying: ‘This is not what the relationship between our two communities should look like’. There is not supposed to be a position of power and powerlessness between US Palestinians and US Jewish communities. We are supposed to be standing shoulder to shoulder, working hand in hand for the beautification and protection of this holy land - not for the destruction and militarization of this land.

I’ve marched next to holocaust survivors. Hedy Epstein is somebody’s name that you need to google. She spent her entire life working for the liberation of Palestinians. There was recently an open letter written by over two hundred rabbis from the UK saying essentially that what’s happening under the Zionist regime and that the expense of Palestinians’ human rights is directly against laws and the spirit of the Torah and should not be happening within Judaism. That was a very beautiful letter.

If you are open to learning and you step into these circles, you will find that you are met with love. Then, some day in the future when Palestine is free - and it will be free because our cause is just, so justice is around the corner - you can stand and say I tried, I was a part of the movement, and your grandkids are going to be so proud of you. This is happening today, and it’s something that you can do something about, and we’d love to have you.

The biggest threat to an oppressive regime

Whitney - That reminds me a lot of this quote talking about how a dinner conversation about what’s happening to Palestinians is never going to be as uncomfortable as the daily experience of a Palestinian. If you’re afraid to talk about these things, it’s totally normal. It can be scary to talk about horrible things because no one wants to imagine that it’s real life, but it’s an essential part of change. If we don’t talk about it than we can’t move forward and show up in support of those who are experiencing that kind of oppression.

Dana - Of course, I mean, I’m afraid to talk about it - to say who I am and what my family is experiencing - because I don’t want to be pegged as all these terms that they’ll throw at us to silence us. Whether they call you antisemitic, racist, or a terrorist. Before we started this talk even Yehia, my husband, was like, “You’ve really got to tone it down and be neutral; try to find terms of neutrality”, and I was like, “How can we do that when what’s happening is so extreme?” I think it’s impossible for us to talk about this in a way that’s not going to make people feel uncomfortable.

Whitney - I think it’s important for those who are uncomfortable but want to speak up to remember that courage is a discipline. I have recently stepped into the notion that courage isn’t something we’re all born with. I definitely fall into the shy category of human beings, but it’s important that we show up anyway, and that we do our best, and are honest and vulnerable and authentic. It’s scary, but we survive - at least in this context, we get to survive. And it’s important to use the time that we have in a way that aligns our choices and words with our values.

“I think it’s important for those who are uncomfortable but want to speak up to remember that courage is a discipline.”

I’m so happy that we got to do this again today (this interview is a transcription of parts of an IG Live that refused to upload the first time, most likely because of Instagram censorship on Palestinian issues).

Dana - We tried, and we did our best. Neither you nor I would say that we’re extremely confident speaking in front of a camera. We just wanted to explore the topic together and to spark a curiosity in anyone who want to listen and hopefully people leave this and search some of the terms that we used to learn more about it, and, if nothing else, to just have humanity in their hearts when they read the news and imagine the experiences of the people who are living that reality.

Put yourself in the circumstances of the Palestinians and ask yourself: Is this really a conflict? Is it a war? Is it a clash? Or is this a situation where people are powerless to change the circumstances of their own segregation and occupation? And if it’s the latter, then you have a duty to do something about it.

I appreciate so much this opportunity to talk about it, and that we’re trying again, despite the weird censorship that happened to us last time. We are the least threatening in terms of even getting to a broad audience, but also on the topic. We’re talking about whales and trees. But I also understand that in a lot of ways that is the most threatening, because I think people want Palestinians to be painted as angry and unrelatable, and looking so different from you, and not being educated or having eloquence or the words to describe the circumstances of their sufferings.

When you’re met with somebody who does look like you and has a life that relates to you, and you can imagine yourself as them it makes it easier to humanize us, and I think that’s the most dangerous thing for a regime that necessitates our erasure, and our dehumanization so that they can get away with our erasure. So, in a way I understand why Instagram censored us, because we are dangerous in the sense that we really question, and force people to question, the narratives that they have been spoon fed since they were children.

Resources for further learning

Articles

• Al-Haq, “Environmental Justice in Occupied Palestinian Territory” (2015)
• B D S, “Palestine is a climate justice issue - Israeli apartheid is not ‘green’” (2019)
• Friends of the Earth International, “Environmental Nakba: Environmental injustice and violations of the Israeli occupation of Palestine” (2013)
• Georgetown Law, Hana Kassem, “Environmental Justice in Occupied Palestine” (2021)
• Minorityrights.org, Interview with Muna Dajani, “Palestine: Climate change is not just a natural phenomenon but a political one” (2017)
• Science for the People: Vol. 23(1), Science Under Occupation, “An Environmental Nakba: The Palestinian Environment Under Israeli Occupation” (2020)

Podcasts

• Palestine Podcast, Episode 13, 6/2/21, “Stolen Kids and Blood Diamonds”
• Status Podcast, 12/1/17, “Climate Change and Water Rights in Palestine with Muna Dajani”

Books

• Edward Said, “The Question of Palestine” (1992)
• Marc Lamont Hill and Mitchell Plitnick, ”Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics” (2021)
• Multiple authors, “Reclaiming Judaism from Zionism: Stories of Personal Transformation” (2019)

Reports

• B’Tselem: The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, “A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This Is Apartheid” (2021)
• Human Rights Watch, “A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution” (2021)

Take Action

• Get involved in your local BDS campaign. Boycott, sanctions and divestment campaigns are a hallmark of nonviolent resistance movements around the world, and they yield results.
• Find local solidarity efforts. Some examples of organizations include: Breaking the Silence, CODEPINK, Jewish Voice for Peace, and If Not Now. Jewish people may consider researching the monthly global Jewish Fast for Gaza.

Follow on Instagram

• @thegirlgyno, @gazangirl, @thepalestinepod, @nouraerakat, @muna.kurd15, @mohammedelkurd, @malak_mattar_artist