PALESTINE AT CHICAGO … AND MORE

In Italian with some English phrases:
“That night my grandmother said: ‘It’s the second Nakba. Just like in 1948. They fled Jerusalem when militias attacked. She still keeps the keys to their home. And I — I keep mine too. / After October 7, we lost our home. Bombed. Not once — but completely gone. They dropped F-35 bombs at noon — a lively, residential area. The shrapnel flew for meters. / We fled in minutes. No time to pack life. At the UN compound, we were 15,000 people. Then came the white phosphorus. I remember that piercing sound — and then, silence. Then smoke. Then fire. My skin burned. My mother cried. The children cried. / Later, we lived in a car for two weeks. Bombs around us. Then we moved again. 35,000 people. 16 toilets. I peed on a toilet full of worms. And cried. / This is what we Palestinians endure to survive. I’m not even talking about bombs. I’m talking about living. / We moved once more — to Rafah. On the third day, we left. I couldn’t even tell my family. But my mother saw me on Al Jazeera — and sent me prayers. She told me: ‘Don’t worry, we’ll be okay.’ But I was leaving her. Leaving Gaza. / She’s the most beautiful creature in the world. / I show my laptop — scorched by white phosphorus dust. Just the dust. Imagine the skin. This is proof: we can survive anything. / I remember seeing flour mixed with blood. And people ate it. They had to. Sand. Water. Blood. Because there is nothing else. / My nephew’s favorite game? Breaking wood to make fire — for food. They even bombed people collecting aid on Rashid Street. / They want to destroy your dignity. Make you hate your own life. / We were always under siege. Under occupation. Under apartheid. This is genocide: the erasure of our right to live.”
Amal leads a beautiful project in Gaza to teach teenage girls self-defense. In the video, Amal (now living in Italy) is shown speaking with another Palestinian about the “Boxing Against Harassment” project she manages for young women—still active in Gaza. She recounts to her interlocutor, inside a boxing gym, that she called the person in charge of the Women’s Boxing Club in Gaza. Excited, she spoke with him about new features for the project: buying a tent and setting up a ring inside it; and additionally, distributing food baskets to the girls and their families. Her interlocutor responds:
“A great choice, in my opinion, because it allows continued investment in a medium- and long-term project that projects them into the future. And it also values their combativeness and their desire to keep fighting—even symbolically.”
Amal says she feels very proud that the girls continue training every day, even under such conditions (in Gaza).

Palestinian Nonviolent Resistance from Nabi Saleh Village

by Manal (AL) Tamimi

The final words of Manal Al Tamimi, from the West Bank, in the first part of her Chicago speech were: “But finally, I want to say what Ivana said. On the first day. It was very moving and touching that she didn’t know anything about Palestine until I spoke last year at the Tangier forum. This is another form of resistance: raising awareness, and I’m happy to be able to plant seeds in people’s minds so that they start thinking and researching what Palestine is, what’s happening there and in this way… It’s a sense of freedom and a sense of alliance, so here you are, messengers or ambassadors for us, for our voices… I can’t reach Brazil. Maybe I can reach the UK, but I can’t reach every one of you. It’s very important that each of you come back to talk about Palestine because when you talk about Palestine, you talk about humanity. You talk about every human being, about pain and suffering, everywhere.”

PALESTINE: THE NAVEL OF THE EARTH

by M. Mirella D’Ippolito

Reading Manal Al Tamimi’s speech in Chicago, about the terrible, frightening, unspeakable things she, her family, her village, and, as she explains, the entire West Bank have endured for so many years—even if even more horribly today—my heart breaks in a thousand places. The same goes for listening to Amal Khayal’s video “Blood and Flour,” which I had already sent. These are terrifying realities that I knew and have been fighting against since 1968. They are terrifying realities that I had heard in part from Manal and Amal at the Tangier Forum last year. But rereading them and listening to them again, more deeply, ever more directly, makes my heart disappear: it becomes infinitely small. Pain, pain, pain.

I’d like to include here two links illustrating the history of the occupation of Palestine, one by Moni Ovadia, a Jewish person who has always opposed Zionism, “Speech by Moni Ovadia [Jew] at the pro-Palestine demonstration in Milan on May 25, 2025“, and one by Piergiorgio Odifreddi, a mathematician, logician, and essayist, “Speech by Piergiorgio Odifreddi: Einstein and H. Arendt: the Nazi-Fascist Roots of Israel“.

Countries that recognize the State of Palestine

And all of this, which has been happening exponentially for 80 years, increasingly convinces me of my horizontal vision, which I’m attaching here… PALESTINE: THE NAVEL OF THE EARTH

An Ethical Gaze at the Palestinian Genocide and the Reconstruction of Hope

by Ivana Rizvi