Contributors

Photo of Asmaa Abu Mezied.

Asmaa Abu Mezied

Asmaa Abu Mezied is an economic development and social inclusion specialist working to address issues of gender, development, and climate change in the agriculture sector. Her research interests focus on the care economy, women’s collectives organizing in economic sectors, the private sector’s social accountability, and the intersection of Palestinian political, agricultural, and environmental identities.

Mosab Abu Toha

Mosab Abu Toha

Mosab Abu Toha is a poet, essayist, short story writer, and the founder of the Edward Said Library in Gaza. In 2019–20, he was a visiting poet and librarian-in-residence at Harvard University. His published work includes Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza (City Lights Books, 2022).

Portrait of Shahd Abusalama.

Shahd Abusalama

Shahd Abusalama is a Palestinian artist and the author of the Palestine from My Eyes blog. She has contributed work to several publications, including academic and literary journals. She is a PhD student at Sheffield Hallam University, exploring Palestinian cinema.

Dorgham Abusalim (Photo by Brian Barber).

Dorgham Abusalim

Dorgham Abusalim is a communications and media professional, working at the intersection of journalism, international affairs, and communications. He holds a master of international affairs from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, Switzerland.

Salem Al Qudwa

Salem Al Qudwa

Salem Al Qudwa is an award-winning architect and university lecturer, exploring everyday architecture as a resource for positive social transformation. He is a Fellow in Conflict and Peace at the Harvard Divinity School, and contributor to the book Open Gaza: Architectures of Hope (American University in Cairo Press, 2021).

Refaat Alareer

Refaat Alareer

Refaat Alareer is a professor of English, teaching world literature, comparative literature, and both fiction and nonfiction creative writing at the Islamic University of Gaza. He is the coeditor of Gaza Unsilenced (Just World Books, 2015) and the editor of (and a contributor to) Gaza Writes Back: Short Stories from Young Writers in Gaza, Palestine (Just World, 2014).

Basman Aldirawi

Basman Aldirawi

Basman Aldirawi (also published as Basman Derawi) is a physiotherapist and a graduate of Al-Azhar University in Gaza in 2010. Inspired by an interest in music, movies, and people with special needs, he contributes dozens of stories to the online platform We Are Not Numbers.

Yousef M. Aljamal

Yousef M. Aljamal

YOUSEF ALJAMAL is Gaza Coordinator at the Palestine Activism Program at the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC). Aljamal holds a doctorate in Middle Eastern Studies, is a Palestinian refugee from Gaza and is a senior non-resident scholar at the Hashim Sani Center for Palestine Studies, University of Malaya, Malaysia. He has contributed to a number of books on Palestine, including Gaza Writes Back and Light in Gaza.

Israa Jamal

Israa Jamal

Israa Jamal is an English literature graduate and a mother of five children. She writes about life in Gaza and is a contributor to We Are Not Numbers, an online platform founded in 2015 for Palestinian youth to tell the human stories behind the numbers in the news.

Nour Naim

Nour Naim

Nour Naim is an academic researcher interested in artificial intelligence (AI) ethics, AI for social good, algorithmic bias, computer vision, machine learning, and natural language processing. She received her PhD from the Department of Management and Artificial Intelligence at Istanbul Aydin University, Turkey.

Suhail Taha

Suhail Taha

Suhail Taha is a researcher based in Ramallah and a PhD student in anthropology at Sciences Po. He has contributed work to several publications including academic and literary journals.

Editorial Team

Jehad Abusalim

Jehad Abusalim is a scholar, writer, and public speaker completing his PhD in the History and Hebrew and Judaic Studies joint program at New York University. He has worked with AFSC since 2018. He contributed to other anthologies including Gaza as Metaphor (Hurst Publishers, 2016) and Palestine: A Socialist Introduction (Haymarket Books, 2020).

Tareq Baconi

Tareq Baconi is a writer, media commentator, and president of the board of directors at Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network. Among his publications is the book Hamas Contained: The Rise and Pacification of Palestinian Resistance (Stanford University Press, 2018).

Jennifer Bing.

Jennifer Bing

Jennifer Bing has worked at AFSC since 1989, serving in various capacities in its programs organizing hundreds of speaking tours, conferences, workshops, advocacy campaigns, and educational programs about Palestine and the Middle East.

Ann Lesch

Ann Lesch

Ann Lesch was a dean at The American University in Cairo and taught political science at Villanova University in Pennsylvania. She served as president of the Middle East Studies Association of North America. In 1974–77, she was the associate Middle East representative for AFSC in Jerusalem, and she has published extensively on politics on the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Mike Merryman-Lotze.

Mike Merryman-Lotze

Michael Merryman-Lotze has worked at AFSC since 2010, coordinating advocacy and policy work on Israel and Palestine in the United States. His areas of expertise are human rights and conflict resolution, and he has worked on programs in Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq, and the broader Middle East.

Sara Roy portrait.

Sara Roy

Sara Roy is a senior research scholar at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University. A distinguished political economist, she is the author of numerous books on Gaza, including Unsilencing Gaza: Reflections on Resistance (Pluto Press, 2021).

Steve Tamari portrait.

Steve Tamari

Steve Tamari teaches Middle Eastern and Islamic history at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and specializes in the history of Ottoman Syria.