Edward Said in the USA in the mid-1950s. Photograph shared with The Key by Mariam Said.
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As I write this, Gaza continues to be under attack. Over the past two years, Israel has used each day to systematically bomb, starve and deny the more than two million Palestinians who live in the Strip the basic requirements for life. Libraries have been burned, historical buildings demolished, farms scorched, livestock wiped out. The Israeli state has murdered children, assassinating them with sniper bullets to the head and chest. It has destroyed nearly all schools and universities, and it has targeted hospitals and healthcare facilities, murdering nurses and doctors, or abducting them to be tortured and imprisoned. More journalists have been killed in Gaza than in both world wars, plus the wars in Vietnam, the former Yugoslavia and Afghanistan combined. At the time of writing, a tentative ceasefire has been agreed, brokered by Israel’s main sponsor, the United States of America, which, in this tragic saga, is the party that behaves like a deity, deciding the fates of all involved. It speaks of the future of Gaza while hardly mentioning Palestinians.
