Update from Gaza
Welcome to the Gaza Embassy. You never knew we had one, did you? We do!
THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE
Here you will find a page that represents us, the people of Gaza and as far as possible, in our own voice. It is not an official site for anyone else. It is not representative of any government or party or faith. In the world media, Gaza’s people are spoken for, either as the belligerent voice of Hamas that most of us Gazans despise, or the enemy that Israel and the USA and others love to hate. We the Gazan people even when we are under siege have our own story to tell, and here we have this humble space to tell it. Hamas does not speak for us. And the IDF does not speak for us. The Palestinian Authority does not speak for us. We have a right to speak in our own voice. All we ask of you is to listen.
GUARDIANS OF THE STORY
This site is also a place of vigilance on how our Gaza story is told from afar. Most political commentators and politicians tell it with an interest to win votes and PAC money, sell more weapons and build higher walls. Sadly the news media on Gaza amounts to little more than propaganda. This ignorance of otherwise smart people is inexcusable.
“PERMISSION TO NARRATE”
The Gaza story has been stolen away from us, the people who alone can tell it with integrity. This page seeks to call out this repeated narrative theft. As Edward Said wrote, the oppressed must give themselves “permission to narrate.” We have permission here.
Our homeland of Gaza has two million people who exist in tiny piece of land by the sea. If a nation is a story, then our Gaza is a big country indeed, inhabited by a people whose borders are as large as our enduring hearts, as wide as the Gaza sky blending blue into the Mediterranean Sea, and as deep as the ocean of our grief that crashes relentlessly onto their shore, wave after wave, with the defiance of hope.