PROF. AHMED ABU SHABAN
I used to work as associate professor in natural resources management at the faculty of agriculture and veterinary medicine, Al-Azhar University, Gaza. I was the dean of the faculty before the war.
At the time of the war, I was displaced to Egypt, where I just stayed for around seven months. And then I was offered a generous fellowship to spend one year here at York University as a visiting professor in environmental sociology.
When the war started, it was really a crisis. Targeting the education system in Gaza is not new. It has actually been performed several times before. The faculty where I work, the building was destroyed three times before. This is the fourth time. And every time it’s destroyed, we just rebuild the infrastructure and start again.
But this time was really massive. Because what they did this time, they did in a systematic way. They were targeting all campuses of all 12 universities in Gaza. It was not like there is a hot conflict zone where they just had to destroy a certain building because it just came into the conflict zone. No, it was like they are coming to the campus, they start to destroy building, and just after finishing one building, they moved to the other.
They got all the 12 universities out of service. Most of the buildings are destroyed totally and whatever is remaining cannot be used anymore. And libraries, laboratories, research stations, community services centres, everything in the universities were destroyed.
The faculty where I work was totally destroyed, our farm research station, everything was destroyed.
This has left around 100,000 students at higher education institutions in Gaza without universities, around 5,000 staff of university institutions with no salary, because all those universities depend on the student fees. That has affected many people, not only the students, but also their families thinking about the future of their children.
The Israeli very clear agenda is to make Gaza uninhabitable — just force the Gazans to leave. If you lose education, you lose health care, you lose infrastructure, you lose public services, and you live in a destroyed environment. You lose the house, you lose everything, so the only option for you is just to get out,to find another place.
They are trying to evacuate Gaza to make it unlivable for the people. This is actually the main impact of the war on the higher education system in Gaza.
I was one of those lucky people who were able to leave very early in the war. We left to Cairo where we were displaced for almost seven months. Displaced Palestinians are not given the residence permit to stay in Cairo. Of course, we are not requested to leave, but our presence in Egypt is not legalized. They believe that if they just legalize the presence of the displaced Palestinians from Gaza, that the U.S. would support the Israeli agenda to evacuate Gaza.
Because we don’t have a residence permit in Egypt, we are not allowed to work and our children are not allowed to go to schools.
There is no accurate number about the displaced people in Egypt, but we are talking about 100,000 to 150,000 people just displaced from Gaza to Egypt. Most of them live in a really difficult situation because of lacking financial resources, and difficulties to find a place where they can send their children.
The Palestinian Ministry of Education organized online teaching for the children which was provided by teachers in the West Bank. It was kind of a poor system, but it was a relief for Gazan displaced families to get any formal education while they are in Egypt.
Now the second year has started. We are also talking about an additional 700,000 students in Gaza without any means of education provided. We initiated to provide online teaching for our students, but of course with the many challenges. I mean lack of public services, electricity and internet back home in Gaza. Also losing some of our colleagues who were killed or injured.
With the support of some volunteer teachers from all over the world, they are providing online teaching for our students. But it’s a challenging process.
I really do appreciate and am grateful for this opportunity to come to Canada as a visiting professor at York. Colleagues here were actually very kind, very supportive since I arrived with my family, trying to provide all support needed. I mean, the level of solidarity and understanding of colleagues and the university is really something touching for me.
I do hope that there could soon be an end to this crazy war on Gaza. And I also hope we have suitable geopolitical context to restart rebuilding our infrastructure and start working. Palestinian people can be considered as a very good symbol for resilience.
We have been targeted as academic institutions several times before, and every time we just start again and rebuild our institutions again because, I mean, people have no other option. This is our land and we are committed. This is a commitment towards our students, the future of our land.
SANAD ALAJRAMI
I grew up in Canada for most of my life. My grandparents actually got exiled from Palestine for their political work. When I grew up here, a lot of the time my mom would try to teach me about residential schools and everything that happened to Indigenous people here. And I actually learned about that before I learned about where I was from and anything about Palestine.
I felt so much guilt and so much pain to be privileged enough to live here and to look back and see my family that is still in Palestine. Most of my family is from Gaza, specifically Khan Younis and Jabalia. My grandpa on my dad’s side is from Beer Al-Saba’ [now called Beersheba], and he was forced to flee into Gaza after the Nakba, and my grandmother on my dad’s side is from Haifa, and she was forced to flee to Nablus. So I have family all over Palestine.
To me, a big part of Palestinian history and Palestinian struggle that people sort of forget about is the the cultural genocide and the effect it has on humans directly. Like, growing up I struggled with learning my language. I struggled learning Arabic, I struggled with learning different aspects of my culture. And that’s never by choice. That’s always a result of that colonialism.
And so to me, the victims of Zionist colonialism are not just physical victims, but they’re also much more personal cultural victims, as the Palestinian identity as a whole is being erased. And I think that’s a very big thing.
My family in Gaza has had horrendous, horrendous circumstances to deal with, as literally everyone has now because it’s probably one of the worst places on earth to be right now, which is such a shame considering how beautiful of a place it is. I’ve unfortunately never been able to go. It’s actually my dream. My grandparents will send me photos of the beaches, and I’ve always really, really wanted to go. But now, you know, our homes are gone. So part of me is pessimistic, but it almost motivates me even more to fight and to speak out.
I think the word I’d use to describe the last year is I’ve been tired. I’ve been exhausted. I think everyone has been exhausted.
But because of the privilege I have here, I think it’s a common consensus — I spoke to so many people who have family in Gaza — that it almost feels like no matter what we feel, it pales in comparison to what our family is dealing with there. And so I’ve been trying to push through it.
You know, it’s weird. There are fleeting moments of optimism and grace, like happiness when I see the outpouring of support here in the West and other parts of the world for the Palestinian cause. Something that we’ve never seen, like that level, to that mainstream recognition, is beautiful. But then also comes the pessimism in me, and I see the apathy and the people who really don’t care, the people who still buy boycott things, who still see what is happening and almost disregard it as unimportant to them because there’s no personal connection.
In the West Bank, for example, I was supposed to go visit my family this year in Nablus. My grandmother’s a huge inspiration to me and I love visiting her. But unfortunately I was not able to go because she told me, like, you can’t come to the West Bank.
I’ve only been to Palestine once when I was much younger, but I really, really wanted to go again this year. And she said the situation is not safe, like the Israeli military is burning trees on the road, they’re shooting at cars. And to me, like genuinely, I almost didn’t care. I want to go regardless. But for my family’s sake, if they tell me not to, then I can’t.
I don’t even need to explain how it feels to just watch. It’s horrendous, honestly. It’s genuinely horrendous. And we’re lucky because we can turn off our phones. We can turn off our screens. But to them that’s 24/7.
A lot of the trauma and the effects that my family has dealt with, whether it be anxiety, depression, anything like that, the root cause has always been there, has always
been from living under that occupation, from living under that oppression. And so to see others who maybe aren’t even related to me come from that same home and deal with those same things, that same look in their eyes. It’s heartbreaking, really, that such kind people have to deal with that.
In terms of what’s going on here, I had a reality check, because often I’ve been like, you know, at least I’m here. I’m grateful for what I do have here. But I was actually at the Land Day protest on March 30 and I experienced one of the most traumatic events
in my life there. I genuinely was not sure if I was… what was going to happen to me, because I had to witness so many of my friends get choked, like with police knees on their neck, thrown to the ground. So many kids get thrashed, so many elderly people get hurt, horses run into the crowd, and I was choked on the ground by a cop. I had to go to the hospital after to check for a concussion and stuff, and I have a scar now on my hand and on my forehead. They’re small, but it definitely shook me up and sort of made me even more paranoid, which I think is something that comes with being Palestinian.
I hope people don’t forget the humans of Palestine. Like, that’s the thing that really matters. And I think that’s the thing that people sometimes miss out on in the movement, outside of the movement, even like the racists who scream at us on buses for wearing our cultural outfits. I think people forget at the end of the day that there is someone right now who could have been you, who could have been me. And I just hope that all of us are able to one day get to experience that humanity again.
I hope one day my family and I are able to do a family vacation to our home and get to have a big dinner together, get to eat our
favorite food together, get to swim in the beach together.
MARYAM ALNAZER
I was born in Palestine, in the city of Hebron. I finished my high school there, under the occupation, of course.
I witnessed many scary things in my childhood. I was maybe five or six years old when the Israeli forces came to my home to arrest my uncle, who was 16 years old, at 3 a.m. Can you imagine a child, five, six years old, to wake up to see the soldier over, with his full weapons?
We had many arrested in my family and in my city, friends and neighbours. It was also very difficult to walk to the school, and many times they [soldiers] came to the school, only trying to frighten people.
I still sometimes dream about that night that they came. And many nights also you see your neighbour, they kill them for nothing. Many young people.
So I came here as a skilled worker in 2017-18. I chose Canada from four countries. I preferred Canada because I thought I will find peace and justice here, right? And it’s the best country to live in.
Unfortunately, last year was very bad for us to see that there is no democracy in Canada. Without a democracy, there is no peace. I don’t feel really safe here anymore because I saw with my own eyes how the police, instead of protecting us, is attacking us. We are only demonstrating peacefully.
I really cannot understand when five big policemen attack a small tiny girl. One of them held her, and 20 of the other policemen
protected them, so we cannot help her. Can you imagine? I saw this. I couldn’t believe. I thought I can live in peace here. I am really scared of the police here. They remind me of the Israeli soldiers. They are the same, believe me. Especially the Toronto ones.
After Land Day [in March], they arrested me. They came to my house. Maybe 12 persons, with a ram to open the door if I don’t open it. Can you imagine? I’m 61 years old.
They took me to the station for five hours, and then they released me. I didn’t do anything. They are accusing me that I have a weapon and I hit a horse. It was my flag. This is a weapon for them. I didn’t even reach to the horse to push them. The horses are so big and he was walking through us.
My background is in physiotherapy. I have degree in physical culture and physiotherapy. So all my life I was working with people, sick people, handicapped, and treating people. I will not hurt anybody.
We are not terrorists. We are trying to protest peacefully here. I think that any nation under the occupation for 76 years has the right to defend itself.
We tried with Israel, tried with peace, but Israel is not respecting anything. They are still taking our land, killing our people.
But, of course, we still have hope.
This article appeared in the 2024 Oct/Nov issue.
