Tag Archives: Gaza

Food Pack 2024, by Mariam Salah (oil pastel on paper). Salah posted this picture to Facebook on March 1, a day after the “Flour Massacre,” one of the deadliest mass-casualty events to take place in Gaza since the start of Israel’s military response to Hamas’s October 7 attacks on civilians and soldiers. As people gathered in Gaza City to receive food from aid trucks, Israeli troops fired on the crowd, killing more than 100 Palestinians. Image courtesy of Mariam Salah
Khan Yunis, Gaza Strip
Interviews

No One Has Been Left Untouched: A Conversation with Palestinian Artist Mariam Salah

An artist and teacher living in Gaza describes the past year of death and displacement, the daily hunt for food and firewood, and the limited power of art amid unending war.


What is life like in Gaza, more than a year since Israel began its military assault there? I spoke to Mariam Salah, a twenty-nine-year-old artist and teacher who lives there, for a personal perspective on the war. Salah has lost six family members and eight friends since Israeli forces swept into the Gaza Strip in response to a Hamas-led series of attacks on October 7, 2023. They are among the tens of thousands of Palestinians reported to have been killed during the ongoing conflict, which shows no sign of ending. An estimated 1.9 million out of Gaza’s 2.2 million residents have been displaced, while the fates of dozens of hostages taken by Hamas are still unknown.

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When the Israeli military assault began, Salah was living in Gaza City. She and her family have been forced to flee their homes several times since then. Currently, they are camping out in Khan Yunis in the south—“seeking shelter amid the rubble we’re surrounded by,” as she puts it.

A painter and sculptor, Salah had her work exhibited in galleries throughout Palestine before the war. She designed costumes, masks, and puppets for a local company called Theater Days. Salah also worked with children as an art teacher and art facilitator at schools run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the main U.N. aid group in Gaza. She graduated in 2017 with a bachelor’s degree in art education from Palestine’s Al-Aqsa University—since flattened by Israeli strikes. “Every single place I used to study or work has been turned into rubble.”

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Ayah Victoria McKhail is a writer based in Toronto, Canada.

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Free at last


“It was like being buried alive really, removed from the world and occasionally terrifying…It became almost hard to imagine normal life again…The kidnappers seemed very comfortable and very secure in their operation — until a couple of weeks ago when it became clear that Hamas would be in charge of the security situation on their own here, and after that the kidnappers were much more nervous…It was appalling really…not to be able to report on the extraordinary turmoil, the events that I could hear going on, the fighting in the streets around the hideout, for days on end and I just knew the scale of things that were happening.  It’s the biggest story since I’ve been in Gaza, but I couldn’t utter a word.

— Alan Johnston, the BBC’s Gaza correspondent, who was freed yesterday after being held for 114 days following his kidnapping by the Army of Islam group, speaking about his ordeal.  On the day of his release Amnesty International honored Mr. Johnston with their radio award for his reporting on human rights in Gaza, where he has been reporting for the past three years.  

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Bombing of American International School of Gaza


Around 4 a.m. this morning a group of militants identifying themselves as part of a Gaza-based al-Qaeda organization attacked the American International School of Gaza.  After incapacitating the guards of the school, the masked gunmen set off three explosive devices in two of the buildings of the school — the only international school in the Gaza strip.  There were no casualties, but most of the furniture on campus was destroyed in the ensuing fire. 

The American International School of Gaza bears a remarkably similar name to that of the institution where I teach, although the U.S. Embassy denies any affiliation and the school does not employ any American teachers.  It is called an American school because it is a member of the consortium of American schools in the Middle East that stress the study of English in addition to Arabic studies. 

This private, kindergarten-through-high-school institution, which was only opened in the fall of 2000, has a slightly neglected but optimistic website.  Two teachers were reported to have been kidnapped from the school in 2006 and the school has repeatedly been damaged by Israeli-Palestinian clashes throughout the years. 

It outrages me to see institutions of education targeted by Islamic groups in their own communities.  The United Nations reports that the unemployment rate in Gaza runs at 36 percent.  Eighty percent of Gazans are under the poverty line and 34 percent of Palestinians earn less than $1.60 per day. Education is one of the most valuable resources of any community, and the availability of education is especially imperative for this population to equip themselves with the means to organize effective self-government to actively combat their deplorable social conditions and the injustices suffered as an occupied population. The American School of Gaza, although it promotes the learning of English, is not affiliated in any way with the United States government and places an obvious stress on Arabic studies.  Taking a look at the roster of educators employed at the school, four teachers are devoted to Arabic/religious studies — the greatest number of teachers on the entire roster dedicated to one subject.  Of the 30 teachers on the list, there is not a single non-Arabic name.  Who were these militants hoping to influence with this senseless act of destruction?  Just as clashes between opposing Palestinian factions caused immense damage to the Islamic University of Gaza in February — the first higher education institution to be established in Gaza — who does this type of destruction impair except for the very population it is meant to benefit? 

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