Triumph of spirit

I grew up in a Gaza refugee camp where we commemorated each massacre with rallies, general strikes, and artistic expressions. We knew the victims and immortalized them through chants, political graffiti, poetry and the like.

The war of extermination launched by Israel against Gaza in the last two years has fundamentally changed all of that. On a single day, October 31, 2023, the Israeli army killed 704 Palestinians, and 120 in the Jabaliya refugee camp alone. Single bombs would annihilate hundreds in one strike, often in hospitals, refugee shelters, or UN schools. Massacres were taking place every day, everywhere.

There was no time to reflect on any of these massacres, to pray for the victims, or even to bury them with proper dignity. All that Gazans could do was desperately try to cling to life itself, bury their loved ones in mass graves, and use their own bare hands to dig out the wounded and dead from underneath the massive slabs of concrete and mountains of rubble. Thousands remain unaccounted for, and about a quarter of a million Gazans have been killed and wounded.

The tally will continue to grow, and the degree of devastation keeps worsening, even now that the rate of killing has subsided. But why, then, does my social media feed continue to show Palestinians openly celebrating their victory? Why are Gaza’s children, though gaunt and exhausted due to the famine, continuing to perform traditional debka dances? Why is 5-year-old Maria Hannoun, one of Gaza’s many influencers, continuing to recite the poetry of Mahmoud Darwish and sending fiery messages to US President Donald Trump that Gaza will never be defeated?

To say that ‘Gazans are built differently’ is a massive understatement. I have spent the last twenty years dedicated to academic research on the people‘s history of Palestine, focusing heavily on Gaza, and I still find their collective will astonishing. They seem to have made a shared, conscious decision: the metrics for their defeat or victory would be entirely separate from those used by the media covering the war.

These measures are rooted in resistance as a foundational choice. Core values like Karamah (dignity), Izza (pride), and Sabr (patience), among others, are the standards by which Gaza judges its performance. And, by these profound standards, the people of the genocide and famine-stricken Strip have won this war.

Because these values are often ignored or misinterpreted in war coverage, many have found Gaza’s response to the ceasefire, one of unbridled joy and celebration, confusing. The scene of mothers waiting for their sons to be released in a large celebration in Khan Yunis, southern Gaza, was particularly illuminating. They cried bitterly, while clapping and ululating all at once. One mother perfectly clarified the paradox for a reporter: the tears were for the sons and daughters killed in the war, and the ululating was for the ones being released.

News media, however, rarely understands the complexity of the Gaza survival paradigm. Some, including Israeli military analysts, have concluded that Benjamin Netanyahu has lost the war because he failed to achieve any of his declared objectives. Others speak of some kind of Israeli victory simply because Israel managed to obliterate nearly the whole of Gaza and a large section of its population.

Excerpted: ‘The Unvanquished Will: Gaza’s Triumph of Spirit Against the Architecture of Genocide’. Courtesy: Counterpunch.org