“Despite going through two wars as a doctor in 2012 and 2014, the fear of this experience was greater than what I’ve been through before, its terms are way more than I imagined.” Three Palestinians in Gaza – an engineer, a doctor, and a fashion designer – share their personal diaries about what has changed about life in Gaza during the coronavirus pandemic, and what hasn’t.
Four years after working on the feature documentary project “Gaza,” Mondoweiss’ Walaa Ghussein interviews directors Andrew McConnell and Garry Keane. McConnell tells her, “we both agreed that the best way to tell people about Gaza is to let the people of Gaza tell the story for themselves because we rarely see that.”
Our own Walaa Ghussein writes, “The challenge about being a journalist from Gaza — and the urgency to continue — is that the stories you’re telling are your own story, too. Even if we can escape war and occupation, we can’t escape our own humanity. But being able to capture it, these small snapshots of humanity, and share it with readers and supporters like you, is invaluable. If you value the essential platform Mondoweiss provides as much as I do, please support our work.”
Walaa Ghussein speaks with other young Palestinians who have left Gaza in recent years about how they deal with the ongoing trauma of war in occupation. “I later realized that I’m never ‘post’ my traumas,” Heba Al Hayek tells her. “As a Palestinian, I’m never given a real chance to process because I’m still there even if my body isn’t.”
Walaa Al Ghussein launched a GoFundMe campaign in late December to support her MA at CUNY. She recently extended her fundraising goal after she was notified the university sent her to collections. She has already raised enough money to cover her outstanding debt and registering her thesis. This last push it to pay off the creditors.
Gaza, the Palestinian enclave on the Mediterranean coastline, continues to suffer from the ongoing siege…