Maurizio Benazzo: [00:00:00] Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever in the world you are. Thank you for being here. We are with us. We are speaking to you from the unceded ancestral territory of Coastal Miwok and Southern Pomo, currently known as Sebastopol, California, and my name is Maurizio Benazzo.
Zaya Benazzo: My name is Zaya Benazzo, and it's an honor for us to have this conversation dispatches through the rubble with Haidar Eid and Ashira Darwish as the last conversation of the year.
Year. Yeah. This feels like the, the most important conversation to have as we are closing the year. And just to give a [00:01:00] context also of what's happening today. It's two years and two months since the genocide in Gaza started. US has provided close to $22 billion billion dollars to Israel since October seven.
And. The so-called ceasefire agreement that was signed in October. Since the beginning of the agreement, Israel has violated 738 times the agreement. Only one of the stipulations has been implemented and Israel has bombarded 3, 358 times, um, Gaza since the agreement, since the ceasefire agreement and killed close to 400 people.
And only one third, less than a third of the, the humanitarian aid is going actually into [00:02:00] Gaza. Israel is continuing to move the so-called yellow line that nobody really sees this where it is and killing anyone who gets close to it, including children. So, ceasefire us, Chris Hedges says is really, um. A way to rebrand the genocide at this point.
We, we,
Maurizio Benazzo: yeah.
Zaya Benazzo: Introduce Haidar. Yeah. Let's
Maurizio Benazzo: introduce the, our haar joint. Pleasure to, to be with us. Thank you for being with us Haida. I'm gonna read briefly a, a Bio Haidar Eid is an associate professor of post-colonial literature, a policy advisor with Als Shabaka, an author of Counter Nakba, one state for all.
He's a refugee, academic and activist heider wave waves. Together nearly two decades of dispatch of dispatches written from inside the Gaza [00:03:00] Strip spanning the devastating on lots of 2009, 2012, 2014, and the ongoing genocide that started, as we know in. 2023.
Yeah.
Zaya Benazzo: And
Maurizio Benazzo: should we introduce Ashira? Yes. Well, so we leave the space for the two of us and
Zaya Benazzo: Ashira will be the host for the conversation. And many of you of course know RO from
Maurizio Benazzo: where Olive Trees We Sweep. So Ashira Darwish is a former BBC journalist and human rights researcher in Palestine for Amnesty International Human Rights Watch.
And she's the co-founder of Catharsis Holistic Healing, a trauma therapy project, rooted in Sufi active meditation and ancestral wisdom shaped by her own recovery from a severe spinal injury. Her work bridges healing, resisted resilience and justice, and as I said. You know her from where? Olive tree.
Olive trees. Where Olive trees. We power the [00:04:00] movie we did together. Shera.
Zaya Benazzo: And we have also Yes, with us who will be coming in and out of the conversation as well. And Yesin is a Shera son.
Maurizio Benazzo: Um, and she will tell us more about,
Zaya Benazzo: he'll introduce himself. He introduce
Maurizio Benazzo: himself, or when? Anytime.
Zaya Benazzo: So, welcome Ashra and Ashra will be leading the conversation with Haar on his new book.
So Ashra welcome, welcome Haar and we'll be background. Just call us if you need us for anything.
Ashira Darwish: Thank you Zaya. Thank you Maurizio, for all the work that you've been doing and and activism. That's true to, true to what we really need from activists, to speak at a time where no one else is speaking and to speak at a time when there is, uh, a price to pay if you speak.
And even though you come from the world of spirituality, you took, no has, it didn't, you didn't hesitate for a second to stand up for justice. You didn't hesitate for a minute to speak up about [00:05:00] what is happening in Palestine. And you kept speaking about Palestine throughout this whole genocide, and you're ending this year with this conversation.
And this means a lot to us to have people who are supporting standing elevating Palestinian voices. So thank you for. Raising our voices. And thank you for bringing Haida to this conversation. It's an honor to be with you here, and it's an honor to talk to you, Haida, and to hear your song and to also listen to what you have to say.
And people need to listen to what people from have to say right now. So I'm just gonna start with asking you a question about how you feel right now. Where are you speaking to us from and how are you feeling two years and two months into the genocide? If you can tell us also where your family is so we understand also how this conversation can impact you, um, and these questions.
Thank you so much.
Haidar Eid: Thank you so much. I [00:06:00] really appreciate it. And I would like also to thank the organizers, Zaya Maio, uh, Lisa and yourself Ashira for giving me this opportunity. I'm speaking to you from Johannesburg, South Africa.
In fact, I've been, uh, yeah, I've been living in South Africa for the last two years. In fact, I spent the first two months of the genocide in Gaza. Between the 7th of October and the fifth of Decem of December, I was displaced three times together with my family, my partner, my wife, and my two, my two, uh, my two children.
And at the beginning of the genocide, in fact, uh, I happened to have dual citizenship, Palestinian and South African because in 1997 I decided to come to South Africa and further my studies where I joined uj, the University of Johannesburg. And I [00:07:00] got my PhD degree in post-colonial and post-modern literature, critical theory, et cetera.
And I worked here and I got my citizenship. And that's what helped me to leave Gaza two months after the beginning of the genocide. In fact, at the beginning I remember on the th second or third day of the genocide, I was contacted, contacted by the South African Embassy in Ramah, and they asked me if I wanted to leave, and I refused.
I refused because in principle, in principle, I didn't want to leave Palestine. It happened in 2008, 2009. Um, it happened 20 12, 20 14, 21, and I refused to leave. And the reason why I refused to leave in the previous massacres is because I didn't have children. And I thought that in principle I wouldn't leave.
This time is different. They [00:08:00] started targeting not only activists. Not only academics, but their families and families. And you know, the story of my friend, my late friend, I'm sure everybody's familiar with this name. And, uh, one of my former students who became also a BDS activist Halil, aia, he was also targeted in, uh, at the end of October together with his wife and his two little kids and his family.
I was with him three hours before, three hours before they killed him. So it came to the point where I had to decide I have a family, and I was staying with my sister and I wa we were about seven families staying in one flat in Rafa. That was my third displacement. So I had to take a decision and that's why I contacted the South African, [00:09:00] um, embassy and we were evacuated together with I think it was 17 South Africans staying in, in Gaza.
And I have been here in, uh, South Africa for the last two years. I'm still trying to settle in. We are still trying to understand the trauma. I mean, we, we are conscious, we are aware of, you know, that trauma we've been through. Especially the little kids, you know, joining the university. And luckily they speak English, but you know, it's a fight, it's a struggle.
And I was offered also the position of a research associate at the University of Pretoria and at the University of, uh, Nelson Man University in NMU. So this is, you know, this is my, my, my story. But in fact, before I start talking about, you know, the book and the genocide and Gaza, I [00:10:00] always start by, since I arrived, since I've arrived in South Africa, I always start by paying tribute to more than 38 colleagues of mine from university who have been killed by Israel's genocidal and killing machine.
I also. Oh start my, my interviews and lectures by paying tribute to more than 288 students from university, including some of my most brilliant students, and I can give names from Halil Pur to Aya was the last student who was killed actually in the last week before the genocide together with her parents in the Nora Refugee camp.
And I can't go on and on, on on, but I thought that, you know, I must mention that because, you know, this is the background that I come from. I am, you introduced me [00:11:00] as an associate professor, as a BDS activist, as, et cetera, et cetera, but I'm a genocide survivor. I am a genocide survivor. I am a voice from Gaza.
And this is why since I arrived, I decided, I mean the first book, this is the second time I'm being interviewed here. The first time I was interviewed about my third book titled Decolonizing the Palestinian Mind, which is very theoretical. And the new book that has been published in Canada, in fact is the one that we are discussing now.
Dispatches from Gaza, banging on the walls of the tank. So that's my caveat. Uh, Ashira, you can go ahead and ask whatever you like there.
Ashira Darwish: Thank you, hay. And may the rest in peace and shaah. Thank you. When you, when you began writing these dispatches, what did you actually intend them to be? Was it [00:12:00] in just for you to document or was it your act of resistance or survival or everything together?
Haidar Eid: Well, I think I would say yes, I would say everything together, in fact, as Shera, but I also, let me be honest with you, um, I mean, I noticed that there were about two or three books written by non Palestinians about the Gaza genocide. Now, I can ask you, ASRA, you are a Palestinian and you, and you know, all the comrades here that we have written.
How many books have been written about Gaza by Palestinians from Gaza? We need, in other words, you know, we need to amplify Palestinian voices in general and Palestinian voices from within, from Gaza in particular. I am a witness. I mean, if you notice people who, who have read the book. It's a kind of collection of essays, pieces, articles that have [00:13:00] been written over the last 18 years.
So as a witness from Gaza itself, I mean the first piece, for example, goes back to the 2006 elections. You know, when we were, when we Palestinians of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, if you remember ra, after the collapse, excuse me, after the destruction of Iraq, we were asked to hit to the polling stations and vote for our representatives in the legislative, legislative council.
And you know, if you remember, it was the George Bush Doctrine spreading democracy. In the Middle East. So one third, only one third of the Palestinian people were allowed to vote for their representatives. Palestinian refugees were never allowed to vote for their representatives. Israeli, uh, Palestinian [00:14:00] citizens of Israel were never allowed also to vote, and only Palestinians of Gaza and the West Bank went to the polling stations in January, 2006.
At the time, they did, they voted against the Oslo accords against the facade of the o the, the peace the peace process, which ended up being processed, but never peace in actual. I was in Gaza at the time. I never voted because I don't believe that you can vote freely under occupation.
That's why I'm, I'm opposed to that. But people voted against the, the Palestinian Authority voted. It's not because most people supported Hama at that time. It's because people wanted to vote against the corruption of the Palestinian authority and against the two-state solution, the racist two-state solution.
And therefore the united, um, apartheid [00:15:00] Israel in Kahoot with reactionary Arab regimes and the United States of America and the European Union liberal democracies in the world decided to impose a hermetic, a medieval siege on the Gaza Strip. And I was there, there were times when we couldn't find milk for our kids, when we couldn't find medicine for, I mean, how many people died because of the, because they couldn't find medicine at that time.
And as if that was not enough. Genocidal Israel. Three, two years after that decided to, to launch a massive attack cast lid, if you remember, 2008, 2009, killing more than 1,400 people within 18 day days only. So at the time we, you know, asra, we Palestinians are naive. We used to say we, [00:16:00] where is the world?
Where is the world? We expected international. Sorry, today. That's correct. That's correct. That's correct. But the thing is that we expected the international co, the international community to do something at least to force Israel to stop. Its at the time I called it. I called the genocide at that time and people said, you know, you are exaggerating.
And for 18 days, and as of that was not enough. The same thing happened again in 2012 for one week. And I remember very well because, you know, I lost com. I lost brothers. I mean, I can tell you in the last genocide, I myself from my direct family, cousins have lost exactly 54 cousins. 54, and I mean, whole [00:17:00] families have been wiped out.
But the thing is that there was like a prelude as Jo as Richard Ford called it at that time. He said the siege was a prelude to genocide. That was back in 2006, 2007. The same HA thing happened 2014 for 51 days killing more than 2,400 people, including 634 children. The great march of return. And you know, I have been a witness.
I witnessed all these massacres. I joined the great march of return. I lost relatives, Congress san. And I thought when I arrived in South Africa that I should contribute as a witness and as an academic, because I thought that this is my responsibility. I don't like to call myself an intellectual, but as somebody with education, I thought that it would, [00:18:00] it is my responsibility to contribute to the what Edward Saed called Palestinian narrative, a permission to narrate one of my favorite pieces of Edward Saed.
And this is the reason why I decided to come up with that book as, as Shera.
Ashira Darwish: Yeah. And I think it's very important to write as Palestinians, our own narrative and our story, but most of the people who write about this genocide and most of the reporting is as if it started today or it started in October 7th.
And I feel that when, when I use the term genocide, I always say the continuation of the genocide. 'cause it started in [00:19:00] 1948 and it's an escalation of this genocide. And part of your, the way that you write and document this is it shows that this did not start in one event. And as you rightfully said, they blockade.
And the, the, the onslaught that they, it's as if they kind of built up for this and they kind, they test how people's reactions would be, how the world reacted in 2014, 2012. And it continues. Do you feel that this writing actually also. It's an act of remembering or it's also a documentation for people.
It's a documentation of how, how this genocide has been throughout these, throughout this, throughout our years as Palestinians. And it's also a document to be used for those who, who seem to forget and we are forgotten. And it seems like history is just, you know, changing and they ha they own the negative.[00:20:00]
Haidar Eid: Yeah. You know, thank you for asking this question because this is the essence of our experience. You know, you know, Edward, uh, sorry, uh, Hassan can's book on resistance literature and try to link that to what Edward Sa had to say about I said that permission to narrate, you know, writing, writing the Palestinian narrative.
I think Hassan Cani. Managed in a way to start the process of narrating the Palestinian narrative, the Palestinian story. He managed. And this is the reason, if you ask me personally, I believe that the Israelis decided to assassinate sang Canani because he managed to capture the quintessential Palestinian experience.
And this is how the whole story started. I dunno, Hassan Ani was the first one to start with, you know, if you remember, [00:21:00] meaning the son, all that is left to you returning to Haifa, et cetera, et cetera, in the form of fictions, uh, reality reflected in Hassan Kanis fictions. And then I was affected. I think he was one of the gurus, him Edward Sa, uh, ud, et cetera, et cetera.
But Ra Rashan Kani in particular, in fact. I decided, and you know, I decided to teach his literature to my students because that is part I said of our role as Palestinian academics to continue writing the Palestinian narratives and Conant the new generation about our story. That as you said, exactly, I mean, I completely agree with you.
Did not start, you know, on the 7th of October as WIS mainstream, you know, Western Media Tries, which is a Zionist [00:22:00] actually, uh, Zionist idea that then as if Life on Earth has started on the 7th of October, completely ignoring the historical context. I mean, so what happened in 1967? What happened in 1948?
What happened in the 20th century and late 19th century? So we have to take, in order to understand what is happening in Gaza right now. You need to go back there. But I want to go back to the term genocide that you used, which I take as the theme of the Palestinian narrative, the word nakba. Why do we, I mean, of course the direct translation, the closest translation to the word nakba is catastrophe.
But you and I being Arab Arabic people, because we know that catastrophe doesn't exactly tell the essence of the world itself of the nbe, we know very well [00:23:00] the same thing when it comes to the genocide. Asra, I think seriously. I make it make it absolutely clear in the book, but I have really, I have been saying this has been an ongoing genocide, not, it did not start on the 7th of October.
And what's happening in Gaza right now is a combination of genocide and ethnic clean ethnic cleansing. And I think, and without using emotive language, and I'm trying to avoid being emotional. I'm trying, I'm doing my best, but I think it's extremely difficult to find an appropriate word that can describe and encompass in a way the horror of what is happening in Gaza right now, other than [00:24:00] Shahar.
Burlock absolute evil. And I'm using the word in Arabic because I know we have Arabic speaking people listening to us, and they would understand what I mean. Sure. It's evil, pure evil, a kind. It's, it's a kind of evil that is devoid of even the most minimal restrictions and deterrence, which however superficial, I think sometimes succeed in curbing the savage, savage evil that larks beneath the surface and limiting its manifestations.
I, I swear what I saw with my own eyes, the number of people I have lost count. Seriously, personally, I have lost count of the number of the people I have lost. [00:25:00] Over the last two years, and therefore this is, this is a, a different kind of evil devoid of all frameworks and explanations that justify and rationalize its consequences and find excuses for it after it happens.
Look, Israeli, you, you've been following then, Israeli political and military leaders have made it absolutely clear, have deliberately unleashed a genocidal war. War tore havo on Gaza. And this is why, and I have been trying to avoid, but I know that you wanted to ask me this question about figures.
I was checking the latest figure today and since October the seventh, and the figure that I have. A 70 more than [00:26:00] 71,000 people in the last 40 hour notice. We're talking about ceasefire in the last 48 hours, and they have just received the news. 29 people have been killed, 29 people. Now, if you look at these figures, these are the numbers of the people whose names the Ministry of Health has.
So what about the people whose names have not been registered? I was looking at a report by the Harvard, by Harvard, Harvard University, and that came out in June last year. And the figure is shocking. Shocking. 377,000 people. And what's the population of Gaza? 2.4 million people. If you look at the percentage, I think it's like America [00:27:00] losing about 22 or 24 million within two years.
It's like South Africa losing about 4 million people within two years. So let that sink in. And therefore I think these people whom we have lost as Shera have stories to tell. And I think it's incumbent on us people who can talk, who can write, who can express as much as we can, their stories.
Ashira Darwish: That's very important. And when you talk about these numbers I also get so angry about people reducing us to numbers and. How do you think we can protect the dignity of people in when they are, at the end of the day reduced to numbers? We keep talking so that the world can see, notice there's 10,000 Palestinian children who are killed, but yet we don't talk about the stories of [00:28:00] the children who survived.
And I was recently in Belgium to meet and work on a retreat for, um, families who were evacuated from and are there. And I broke. I couldn't, my heart couldn't listen to the stories. I told them at some point when one woman was talking, I was like, I can't I can't even. Listen, because I can't feel that I can help after the moment that I listen to these, to these tragedies of children losing their families, separating from parents being shipped to Egypt, from being shipped to Egypt, to trying to escape by sea to on a dinghy, to, to being in the water in, in the Mediterranean and not having anyone come to save them when they're dinghy, when they're dinghy, uh, drowned and going through drowning in the Mediterranean to get, to escape to Greece, and then from there to, to have them even sexually abused in the, in the centers.
It's how, how [00:29:00] are people? How can we protect all these stories? There's so many stories, and when we are outside, we try to explain it to people and we take the numbers. How do we protect the dignity? How can we protect people's dignity in this case?
Haidar Eid: Well, I think again, another important question and, uh. It has been bothering me.
It's not only me, I think every single Palestinian, every freedom loving person wants, wants to know the answer to that question. But I think, you know, before trying to answer that question, and I think by telling the stories, we are trying to do that. But before that, we need to understand, you know, the other side, why Israel, well is a Zionist state.
Israel is a settler colonial, apartheid state. But it has moved also into fascism. [00:30:00] And I think, we need to understand that. Not according to, I mean, this is not my opinion. According to recently published polls, the majority of Israelis support the eth ethnic cleansing and annulation of the Palestinians.
So in other words, the question is, why do most or rather, how have those millions of Israelis, how have they been persuaded, convinced, brainwashed to support the killing of Palestinian children, innocent Palestinians? There are dozens, dozens, even, you know, hundreds if not thousands of statements and recordings available on, on, on social media, and available on, on, you know, Israel media in which Israeli [00:31:00] politicians, journalists.
Citizens call for the flattening of Gaza. Its transformation into a parking lot. How many times we've had, you know, there are no innocence in Gaza, the expulsion of the residents of Gaza. I've had a an Israeli minister calling for the use of nuclear nuclear weapons. 60, 65% of Israelis do not believe that there are innocence in Gaza, and therefore we need a counter narrative.
In other words, the Israelis Zionists dehumanize us in order to be able to kill us a precondition. For killing Palestinians [00:32:00] is dehumanization. I'm speaking to you from South Africa, South Africa. There was Sharpville massacre in 1961 sway to in the mid seventies, the uprisings of the eighties. Almost the same thing, but it was not at the same scale.
Never in the history of apartheid did the apartheid regime use Apache helicopters, F sixteens, F fifteens, F 35 to attack black townships, for example. But this is what apartheid Israel has been doing. Now the question would apartheid Israel with Israel have been able to carry out all these crimes against humanity and war crimes without the support of the United States of America and the European Union, it is impossible and therefore.
I think we need to be able to understand the [00:33:00] Israeli society to understand that Israel is not does not represent a form of classical colonialism. The kind of colonialism England the UK Egypt, the UK Indian, no, this is settler colonialism. Almost all settler colonialism relied heavily on, uh, what Patrick Wolf called the, the elimination, or rather the annihilation of the natives.
How do you eliminate the native killing them? America, the Americas, Australia and New Zealand killed the brute called the Savage Brute. The Savage natives the indigenous population in South Africa. Because they needed their labor, they decided to resort to a apartheid. But the point is. Wherever you have colonialism.
I think it was Michel Fuko who said, wherever you have power, you have resistance. And then [00:34:00] Palestine, there is resistance. So in Gaza there is resistance. What is needed right now, we made it absolutely clear. I am a member of the BDS movement. I am a member of Pac B. The Palestinian campaign for the academic and cultural boycott of of of Israel Palestinian society issued a call in 2005, modeled on the South African BDS call.
We called on the international community to boycott apartheid Israel until it complies with international law. Forget about one state, two states, et cetera. And I will talk about political solutions. But as Palestinian Civil Society, we called for the implementation of international law. The withdrawal of Israel from the occupied territories.
1967, return of all Palestinian refugees and compensation in accordance with the United [00:35:00] Nation resolution 1, 9 4, and end of apartheid. Now, what is wrong with that? And because the international community refused to hit our coal a path hit, Israel understood that it could come back to Gaza, carry out an unprecedented genocide, and get away with full impunity.
Ashira Darwish: That's perfectly said. It's the impunity that allows them to do this. And I had a question for you about this, but you answered it beautifully. I wanted to ask you, you talk about BDSI know a part of me feels like yes, BDS is great, but, and that was helpful maybe before the, the, the expansion of the genocide in Za.
What do you think right now we as Palestinians need, what kind of forms of solidarity would be meaningful to people in Za? Because one of the things that I saw from everyone that I met from Za is this feeling of, [00:36:00] I don't know how to say it in, in English from the whole world. It's, it's appoint but in a higher, deeper meaning.
Yeah. How, what would people in really want to see?
Haidar Eid: We are on our own. And millions of statements by the Arab world, by the Islamic world, by the international community condemnations of what Israel has been doing, et cetera, et cetera, have done absolutely nothing.
Only people's power. If we rely on governments of the west, we know where that will lead us. I think the first thing to do is what do Palestinians want? That's the first question. The global BDS movement is Palestinian led. It's our Palestinian voice that needs to be, that needs to be heard. [00:37:00] And this is why I was in Gaza when, on the third day of the genocide, when the Gaza based civil society issued a statement calling for a ceasefire.
According for a ceasefire, how long did it take to convince the international community to per persuade Apartheid Israel to implement ceasefire and notice? We about 40 days ago, according to Trump's plan, which was endorsed by the security Council, apartheid Israel decided to start the ceasefire, and since then, more than 414 people have been killed.
In other words, what we need is a grassroots movement, which is spreading everywhere. By the way, on the streets of Spain, I'm speaking to you from South Africa. The South African government decided for the [00:38:00] first time to take Aate Israel to the ICJ International court of Justice. Israel have been accused of committing genocide in, in Gaza.
Now what is needed is a complete and total isolation of Israel as an apartheid. It apartheid is the second gravest crime against humanity. After genocide, Israel has been committing every single crime against humanity that you can imagine, from genocide to ethnic cleansing, to colonialism, to settler colonialism, you name it to military occupation.
And therefore, I think what is needed right now is an intensification of the BDS campaigns all over the world. And. Isolation of apartheid Israel. People need to understand that [00:39:00] there is a huge imbalance. You don't have two equal sides here. You don't have, the, you know, there is no equality, no equity between the colonizer and the colonized, the oppressor and the oppressed in Palestine.
And therefore we need the support of the international community because there is a huge power imbalance between the colonizer and the colonize. Aate, Israel has one of the strongest armies in the world, an army that is equipped with if 16, if 15, if 35, uh, me tanks. Israel is the only state in the Middle East that has nuclear heads more than 250 nuclear heads.
What do the Palestinian people have? Absolutely nothing. Our bodies and stones. Therefore, if we don't have the intervention of the international community [00:40:00] on our side, take apartheid South Africa as an example. Uh, there was a huge power imbalance between the apartheid regime, white supremacy, and the blacks of South Africa.
And therefore, a handful of a NC activists decided in the late fifties, 1958 or 59 to come together in London, and they decided to issue a statement calling on the international community to book the apartheid regime of South Africa. Divest from it, divest from international companies, benefiting from the oppression of the black community in South Africa and.
Impose sanctions against it. How long did it take the international community to read the call made by the OB oppressed blacks of South Africa? More than 30 years. If you remember [00:41:00] Ashira and everybody you know my age would remember Margaret Tacher, 1985 called Nelson Mandela. A Ronald Reagan, 1986, called the A NCA terrorist organization.
1990 Nelson Mandela was released. 1994, Nelson Mandela became the first black president of multiracial South Africa. So the question is, what happened to convince the governments of the West that supported the Apartheid regime? To boycott to boycotted? That's the lesson that we've learned from South Africa.
Boycott and total isolation.
Ashira Darwish: [00:42:00] Thank you so much. And I would add to that, like right now I'm in London and we have people who are, who have protested for Palestine, who are currently on hunger strike, and they are putting their lives on the line so that the genocide ends and these actions and supporting the hunger strikers and moving moving to, to put pressure on the UK government in a way that they cannot survive.
Keeping these people in prison, I think is also something that I would, would like to put a highlight. And I wanna take it also to your book, because pa supporting the Palestinians means also, uh, reading our narrative, sharing our narrative, having spaces where your voice and the voices of people from Raza can be heard, can be.
Elevated, and I [00:43:00] hope that people would buy the book would share the book. It would be a Christmas gift. It would be a gift for anyone who does not know to hear the voices of Palestinians to read and to see and support, and to understand what it means to be a Palestinian, because what it means to be a Palestinian living in Raza because it's, it's very specific to that.
And with that, can you tell us your title? Banging on the walls of the tank is very visceral. What is the tank today?
Haidar Eid: You know, uh, you know, that's taken from, uh, one of Hassan Khan's novels, men in the Sun. You know, the novel itself ends with this sentence banging on the walls of the tank. Uh, it's the story of, um, three Palestinians who tried to be, to be smuggled.
From Iraq into Kuwait, and they are led by another Palestinian driver who asks, who wants to smuggle them, ask them to hide in the tank that he's driving [00:44:00] between Iraq and Kuwait, and on the borders between Iraq and Kuwait. They die. They suffocate. And then this driver asked this question, why didn't you bang on the walls of the tank?
And there are two interpretations. The first interpretation, they were so cowardly that they were scared. They didn't want to bang on the walls of the tank because they were scared that they would be discovered by the border guards. The second interpretation, which I tend actually to uh, endorse, is that in fact they did bang on the walls of the tank, but nobody heard them.
The world is deaf, and I think Gaza is the tank. Gaza, as I said at the beginning Ashra has been banging on the walls of the tank. I told you in 2006 [00:45:00] actually, people went to the polling stations and they voted in Gaza. We tried everything, every possible pillar of struggle you can imagine, you know, in South Africa, I always say the South Africans, you know, my comrade, my friend Ron Casals, who was the leader of the military cutter of the South African Communist Party and the A NC, he told me they relied here in South Africa on what they called four pillars of struggle.
Armed struggle, excuse me, the armed struggle, political underground, mass mobilization. And BD, s and international support. We have tried every tool you can imagine to resist Israel. And the outcome [00:46:00] is absolutely nothing. Nothing. The world refuses to hear our call for all the reasons. You know, and this is why I'm saying Gaza has been banking all of Palestine in fact, but Gaza in particular, because Gaza, in the words of the Secretary General of the United Nations, has been turned into a graveyard.
A graveyard. We've been banging on the walls of the tank. But then what is the reaction of the international community? They call on both sides. Both sides, or rather they blame both sides, the oppressor and the oppress, the colonizer and the colonized. The Israelis and the Palestinians and therefore I decided to give it that title, bang, banging on the walls of the tank, expecting the international community to heed our call.
And what is our call? It's a call for our freedom [00:47:00] for the international community to isolate Israel until it implements international, international law, uh, United Nation resolutions. And again, I am not saying one state, two states. Later on, if you like to talk about, you know, political solutions because I really think that we seriously need to abandon the racist two state solution, the two state solution for actually for more than one reason.
Reason number one, because it is impossible. Impossible. To have an independent Palestinian seat in the Gaza and the West Bank because Israel has made it impossible by expanding the existing settlements. Now, I mean, if you remember Ashira in 1993 when the Oslo Accords were signed between the PLO, the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel, the number of settlers in the [00:48:00] West Bank and Gaza at the time was 193,000.
The number of settlers in the West Bank alone, now Uib there and you know, that has reached to more than 800,000. And we are not talking about, a course here. And of course there we're talking about towns. Settlements, you know, I mean, you know, whether, because you live there. I haven't been allowed to visit the West Bank since 1989, by the way.
So I, and then Israel decided to erect a monstrous wall slicing the West Bank. So where would the Palestinian establish their own state? And therefore, I think we, we need a paradigm shift. So we need to bang on the walls of the tank.
Ashira Darwish: That's amazing. And this, the book, uh, ani it, it also affected my whole life that you [00:49:00] can, you have to always bang on the wall. It was the lesson. Absolutely. And this is that your book is also a wake up called to writers, academics of what they can do, uh, in order to support and to carry on what is happening in Palestine.
What is the one message you hope survives long after this book and after the rubble is cleared?
Haidar Eid: You are talking about banging on the of the tank, right? Not the Oh, yeah, yeah, sorry. Yeah. I think it's, you know, people need to understand that it is it's both personal and political. As, as you notice, dispatches my testimony of being a Palestinian refugee residing in Gaza, you know, mainstream human rights organizations be Israel's mainstream human rights and be amnesty International Human Rights watch they called Gaza, you know.
After 2007, the largest open air open air prisons on Earth. [00:50:00] Of course, now I call it an extermination camp, but I also want to, to answer your question, people to understand then this book is, I would say it's a voice from within offering what I hope, a con offering a contribution or a way in a way or a way out of the manmade quagmire In Palestine, this is not a natural disaster.
What is happening is a manmade disaster created by genocidal Israel. Now, my decision to put together in a single book, the articles, as I said to you, articles, it says, op, it's that I have written. And published during the Israeli onslaughts on Gaza since 2008, and since the beginning of the blockade. It's [00:51:00] a conscious decision because I wanted to contribute to the writing of the Palestinian narrative.
As I said, following Edward Sa San and I, I'm conscious, the book itself has been affected by the works of the likes of Steve Biko, the late South African fighter and founder of the Black Consciousness Movement, France Fanon. I am very, I am a fan of the late, um, France Fanon and certainly Raan Canani, Edward Sa, among other, I would call them towering intellectuals and activists of our post-colonial world.
But I must also add, I'm conscious of the impact of my stay and studies in post apartheid South Africa. I arrived in South Africa in 1997. I [00:52:00] looked at this, the similarities and the differences. In South Africa, it was about exploitation, exploiting cheap black labor. In Palestine, it's about annihilation killing the Palestinians altogether.
So I think the point of the book is not to give, a final solution to what has been termed by right wing politicians and some mainstream media outlets as the Gaza conflict. It's not a conflict. Because there are not two equal sites here, so it's a voice from within. So this is, in a way, I don't wanna say, you know, there is one message.
No, there is more than one message in the book. And I would leave that to people, you know, to find out.
Ashira Darwish: Thank you. He, I wanted to also ask you, is there a moment of [00:53:00] beauty, of tenderness, uh, that you want people to know about from Raza? Something that also still gives you hope to keep going?
Haidar Eid: It's, uh, it, you know, since the 7th of October until last week, I was unable to read a novel. I was unable to watch a movie.
I love watching movies. Part of what I do, you know, my cultural studies, et cetera, et cetera. It's as if my life came to a standstill life before the 7th of October to just to give you, and I'm, I'm, I don't know. I, I don't wanna say that I'm, you know, I'm speaking metaphorically here, but actually this is what happened.
When I talk about myself before the 7th of October, I use the second personal pronoun he [00:54:00] ade before the 7th of October. He is a different person After the 7th of October, I use, I the first personal pronoun. I remember very well when I when I was displaced for the third time. I stayed in, uh, my sister's house, which has also, by the way, I lost my own house.
I lost my family house where I stayed when I was first displaced. And then I moved to Rafa has stayed. My sister and her house has been also demo destroyed. So in my third displacement the neighbor's house was attacked by an F 16 and seven members of the family were under the, the rubble.
They managed to extract six bodies. The seventh body was tel, by the way, the most hated word in Gaza [00:55:00] right now is anad debris or, uh, rubble. And what was written on the destroyed wall
is still under the rubble. And I felt. At the moment I had like an out of the, out of body experience where I had like a dialogue between me and myself. And this dialogue has been going on, and that is what, excuse me. What con what, in a way help me write this book. It's like a dialogue between me and myself, between Haar before the 7th of October and Haar.
Now, now, the hope that I have, I can, to answer your question as Shera [00:56:00] is when apart when, uh, South Africa decided to take Israel to the ICJ, when hundreds of thousands of university students decided to protest in the United States of America and the Colonial West? When millions of people took to the streets in Australia, the uk, the Hunger strikers right now in the uk the growing BDS movement.
I think there is. A shift in the narrative globally on, on, on our side. And I also think there is, I would say there is a historic rupture. I mean, 7th of October created a historic, [00:57:00] uh, rupture. And the question is, what can we, what can thought leaders, diplomats, activists, policy makers, and scholars play in shaping a just and equitable future?
We are talking about the Gaza moment. Last week I had a meeting in Cape Town, which is a two hour flight from Joburg with the leaders of the Hague Group. And I can tell you. The Hague Group, the formation of a of the Hague Group has given me us Palestinians that there is hope, exactly like the moment of the Bandon Conference in the fifties, and the formation of the non-aligned movement.
I think there is a clear schism right now between the North and the South, and this is what gives me not only US Palestinians, and I think the people of the South hope [00:58:00] because the South, if the peoples of the South do not move, the South will become Gaza. Gaza is a microcosm for what will happen to the peoples of the South.
Ashira Darwish: Thank you so much for what you're doing . So thank you so much Heida, for raising your voice. Thank you so much for writing the book, for making sure that our voices are heard around the world for making sure that our Also, I would like to say to you, being away from and away from your family and taking this choice must be so hard to be witnessing from abroad.
But thank you for staying safe. Thank you for protecting yourself and protecting your family. For being there to document and still raise the voice of the Palestinians. Thank you so much, Zaya and Maurizio. Thank you to everyone who participated in this conversation. Thank you, science and Nonduality, and the whole team for amplifying our voices and keeping true to [00:59:00] what we're doing and to support these amazing causes that we have in order to support people in.
Thank you so much.
Haidar Eid: See you all. Thank you. Thank you, thank you.
Zaya Benazzo: Thank you both. Thank you both for your unwavering clarity and dignity and for, for being, uh, an example of what a true, true stand means no matter what. So we all have responsibility listening to this conversation to keep going and continuing to make sense and support and protest and joining in whichever way we can.
Thank you so much, and please, uh, read the book. It's available online, banging on the walls of the tank, hide our aid and keep sharing it with others and till Palestine is free. That's it. We'll keep standing here. We call keep, meaning keep meeting on the streets until Palestine is free. Yeah, this [01:00:00] is our responsibility.
Now,
Maurizio Benazzo: as either said, this is just a test of what will happen to the world. It's happening. What is happening to the world. We have to stop this. We have to stick together and do something little or big. We have to do something. [01:01:00]
